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- [00:01]
Nick Loker
10 creative side hustles that make real money what's up? What's up? Nick Loker here. Welcome to the Side Hustle show because your 9 to 5 may make you a living, but your 5 to 9 makes you alive. It's that time of year again. It's time for our Thanksgiving tradition of showcasing some of the most interesting and creative side hustles that have come across my desk this year, starting with number one, mobile gift wrapping. Is this something you could do in your area? Michelle Hensley is a longtime side Hustle show listener and she's grown her business, Nifty Package Co to a $300,000 a year business.
- [00:34]
Michelle Hensley
I truly started Nifty Package out of a necessity. I was a pastor's wife, homeschooling children and running a nonprofit. I was in a position to give things away, not to have to make an income. What do you do with a pastor's wife after her husband passes away when she's 50 years old? Now? I was on a journey to create an income for myself at age 51. After I got home from an interview, one of my sons said, mom, you had a g basket business. Why don't you start that again? So ultimately, I made an art out of gift giving in order to bring joy to both the recipient and the giver. My gift basket and mobile gift wrapping services is Nifty package co. In 2018, while praying I was looking out my window and I noticed and realized my van was sitting there empty. I thought, gosh, I already make gifts. I wonder if anybody wraps gifts and does anyone go around and even do that? Is there such a thing as a mobile wrapping? Can I put all my gift wrapping paper in my van and drive around and serve people? I put a a webpage that day and I got a call from a current client within a week asking if I'd come out and wrap all his gifts. I was so excited. I piled everything into the van to take care of that job, brushing my hands when I was done. And then I realized I forgot to label every gift. So I had to go back and rewrap every gift. I learned a huge lesson which blossomed into a business. In March of 2019, I got a call from Too Faced Cosmetics asking if I could do a large scale gift design and gift wrap. I was so excited. This was right up my alley. Their brand is very similar to mine, which is a little edgy but still very beautiful. We got a million hits on that Instagram feed on their site. And then In August of 2019, I got a call from the Kardashian estate manager asking if I'd consider creating a design for Kim and Kanye. I was not sure who they were because I didn't watch TV at all. This is where I transitioned from pastor's wife, grandmother, mom, to business owner. I piled all my paper in the van and headed out to their home. My own team was there with me, and everyone was watching me from her team. She didn't like any of the five or six ideas I presented to her.
- [02:30]
Nick Loker
Her.
- [02:30]
Michelle Hensley
I walked outside, I'm like, lord, you brought me here, and I'm not going home without a sale. So I walked in and I suggested a fe gift wrap and created that out of fabric, and she loved it. And that's what started the celebrity gift wrapping. We continued to get referrals, and the brand continued to expand across the nation. I started training on how to gift wrap many women and teams all over. So we have several nifty corporate gift wrap teams everywhere, eventually becoming the number one mobile gift wrapping business in the nation. So although we do luxury gift baskets, the mobile gift wrapping is set 70% of our business. I've had many reach out to me and ask me how I ran my program. So now currently I'm starting to franchise and license across the nation because this is absolutely a new opportunity. It's a perfect hustle, especially for the holidays. You can do it with one person, you can do it with a team. So typical sales could be well over $200,000 for the season. In reality, for one person, it could be 30 to 50,000. So what's next for Nifty and myself? Well, I wrote a book, so you can go to my personal brand website, which is michellemhensley.com and you can read it, put your information in there. And all that it would be is the cost for shipping, or you can buy it on Amazon. I'm working to raise funds to start the franchise, which is already in place, but it just costs a lot of money in the state of California to do this. Also, I license and I teach others how to run their own profitable mobile gift wrapping business. You can join my unwrapping your mobile gift wrapping business masterclass and I teach my gift framework there. Thank you again, Nick, for this opportunity. I look forward to talking to anybody who has an interest. They can totally email me michelleiftypackage co or call 714-863-6058. Happy wrapping.
- [04:07]
Nick Loker
Happy wrapping indeed. Now we'll link up all of Michelle's resources, including her book master the business of mobile gift wrapping, where creativity meets convenience. She sent me a copy, which of course was very nicely wrapped in it. She says the average price for a nicely wrapped gift is $25. So you can start to see how the revenue in this business can start to add up, especially if you land a few corporate customers who are sending gifts out to their clients or partners, employees. And you may not need even a celebrity client like Michelle did to start to get some pretty serious business there. Next up on this list of creative side hustles is Print on Demand Candles. Now, sure, we've covered Print on Demand on the show before. We've even made some money doing it ourselves, my wife and I. But it's always been T shirts, stickers, mugs. Never knew there was such a thing as Print on Demand candles. Francisco Rivera started his candle focused Etsy shop in early 2023 and according to CNBC sold over $450,000 worth of product last year at an estimated 30 to 50% profit. Mar which is actually a really strong margin for a physical product business where he doesn't have any inventory risk. That was enough for him to leave his tutoring job and pursue the business full time. Full time in air quotes, because the CNBC article also has him saying he only spends around 20 minutes a day on his shop. And that's one of the advantages of a model like this, in that you can make sales even when you're not working. But there obviously is work involved in product research and creating and uploading new designs. Francisco uses Printify as his fulfillment partner and mentioned that neutral colored organic candles perform well with his witty and eye catching labels and that he uses Canva to create those. Now this made me super curious. What other random products could you do Print on Demand with? In Printify's catalog I found some interesting options, including pickleball sets that can make a good gift, right? Baby onesies, kids shoes that look like Crocs but aren't officially Crocs, of course, and some Christmas ornaments. Then you figure out what niche you want to play in and what kind of clever design that might make a good gift. And it's a pretty low risk business. All it costs is 20 cents to create an Etsy list listing and you can see if anybody wants to buy your thing. The Etsy sales system integrates directly with Printify, which handles the production and the shipping to the end customer. Now, one downside to this and to other Print on demand businesses is the issue of copycats. Pretty much as soon as you find something that sells. Other sellers and research tools can see that and are often going to blatantly rip off or copy your work, which can dilute the listings and push your products down in the search results. And still, Francisco says it's best to focus on creating new candlelight ideas rather than spending too much time trying to fight with copycats. Now, what's the next big thing for print on demand? If T shirts are too saturated, maybe there's an up and coming product category that could be a blue ocean for you. Creative side Hustle number three is Pay.
- [06:55]
John McCollum
What you want Poetry hi, my name is John McCollum. I'm 22 years old. I live in Nashville, Tennessee where I am currently a full time poet. My business is JM Street Poetry and my website is JM Street Poetry. My business basically consists of me sitting at a table with a vintage typewriter. Strangers come up to me, tell me what they want a poem about, I write it, they pay however much they want for it, and that's it. I first was inspired to do this when I was an English teacher and I was talking to one of my friends and they saw a guy doing something similar in New York and I had an old typewriter that someone had given me when they moved away. And I was so inspired by this story of a man sitting outside writing poems for strangers all day. I thought it was beautiful and creative and sounded like a great way to smoke this Saturday. So I bought a folding table, went to a busy street in Nashville where there's a lot of shopping, and I wrote a sign on the back of a manila envelope that said Poems for sale. Your topic, your price. I was expecting to maybe write a handful, but the entire day I had a line. People were paying anywhere from one to a hundred dollars for a poem. I was writing about everything and just having these wonderful interactions with strangers. It was the most creative day that I had had thus far and it was incredible. So I started going out every weekend I could and if school ever wrapped up early, I would be out there writing poems for people. I bought a nicer chair and a tablecloth and it was incredible. Saturdays I'd make anywhere from 4 to $800. Weekdays were quite a bit slower but still fun. And so when my school year ended and I had a summer to figure out what I was going to do next, I decided to try and take it full time. So I'd go out during all of the busy hours and figure out the scheduling, figure out when people were out, when they weren't out, and all of a sudden people started trying to book me for events. So we made business cards, designed a website, made an Instagram and started trying to book more corporate events and weddings where I would just sit there with the typewriter and people could come up to me. It's been an incredible journey of now being a full time poet. I just can't explain the joy of working for myself and doing this thing that I care about so much. My average week I make anywhere from 9 to $1200 working 15 to 18 hours a week, which is incredible because it gives me time to work on my personal writing and my personal poetry. As far as next steps, go for the business, I really want to build more of an online presence and I hope to be able to publish a poetry collection eventually. You can follow along, find out more on Instagram at jmstreetpoetry or by checking out my website. Thank you so much for having me on. Huge fan. Love what you do here.
- [09:38]
Nick Loker
JM Street Poetry. Give John a follow over there. How cool is that? What a fun and random business. I've got more creative side hustles coming right up right after this. Here's a quick side hustle you can do today. It's called the Substitution Game and it's an easy way to score what I call reverse passive income. In your life, that's money you're no longer spending every month. That goes straight to your bottom line. How it works is find lower cost alternatives to the things you're already spending money on. For example, I made the switch to our sponsor Mint mobile back in 2019 and haven't looked back. Mint Mobile offers Premium Wireless for 15 bucks a month when you purchase a three month plan. And all plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and keep your existing phone number along with all your existing contacts. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mint mobile.com side hustle. That's mint mobile.com side hustle. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mint mobile.com sidehustle $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month new customers on first three month plan only speeds slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. What if you no longer needed five separate apps for your business? Bank account, expense tracking, invoicing, contractor payments and tax planning? I'm excited to partner with our new sponsor Found for this episode because Found is business banking designed specifically for side hustlers, solopreneurs and small business owners like you. Under the hood, you'll find one easy to use app to help manage your money, track your spending, invoice clients, and even handle your taxes so you can focus on more important things like running your business. There's no minimum balances, there's no account maintenance fees, and there's no paperwork or credit checks when you sign up. One cool feature, Found calls in Pockets lets you allocate income to certain categories like marketing or taxes or profit, which is really handy if you want to practice the profit first methodology, but you really don't want to set up a bunch of different accounts. Over 500,000 small business owners like you chose Found as their banking solution. So stop getting lost in countless finance apps and try Found for free at found.comsidehustle Sign up for Found for free today at fond.comsidehustle Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Piermont bank member fdic. Found's core features are free. They also offer an optional paid product, Found plus. All right, three down seven creative side hustles to go, including a couple honorable mentions we'll sneak in. Number four on this list is Virtual Mechanic. In fact, the six fig figure virtual Mechanic. And when I think about jobs that can be done remotely versus jobs that really need to be done in person, Car Mechanic is one that fits pretty squarely in the, you know, gotta be there, hands on category, right? Well, Chris Pyle is proving me wrong, earning an average of $14,000 a month as a virtual mechanic through the Q and a site justanswer.com now the site's been around for a long time and Kris has been on it for a long time too, since 2006. It is a place where you can connect with experts and those experts get paid for their advice. On customer side, JustAnswer charges a monthly membership fee ranging from around 30 to $125 per month, depending on what kind of experts you'd like help from. It's interesting to me that it's packaged as a membership when I imagine most people coming to the site for the first time just have one specific problem that they want solved. And the complaints about Justanswer online seem to mirror that apparent disconnect, with customers saying, hey, I didn't expect to get charged for the next month. But on the expert side, you can earn 20 to 50% of what the customer paid to answer the question, and There are over 100 different categories in which you can join as an expert. Compared to other marketplaces, that fee is actually really steep. Normally you would see the platform taking 20 to 30% as a fulfillment or matchmaking fee for new members, not 80%. But each question, each question individually might only be worth 2 to 20, depending on the category and complexity. But still, if you enjoy answering questions, you can knock them out quickly. You can make good money, as Chris's Virtual Mechanic example proves. Chris originally trained as a transmission tech with Ford and stumbled upon this online side hustle turned full time income while he was researching how to fix a transmission he was working on. It didn't take long before he signed himself up as an expert on Justanswer and started answering questions after work. He told CNBC that he liked the challenge of diagnosing a motor that he couldn't see, touch or smell, and realized he had a knack for virtually helping people solve their mechanical problems. Chris made $500 in his first month and $1,000 in his second and eventually eclipsed his day job salary and exceeding what he used to make at that old day job. And one drawback here is that Kris is really putting in the hours in this CNBC article. He says he managed to take this side Hustle full time in 2012 and that it fits really well with his lifestyle and pays better than his old job, but that he still works every single day and an average of 40 to 60 hours a week. It looks like there's a pretty extensive vetting process to get accepted as a just answer expert, and there are all the career categories that you might expect like law and medicine and finance and technology and home repair pair. But there are also some expert slots in academic tutoring and homework help, in veterinary care, in antiques, in dream interpretation and even in etiquette. So maybe there's some less competitive categories on there too. So that's just a wide ranging pay for advice site that might make sense to test out as a potential new source of side hustle income, even in industries that are traditionally pretty hands on like car repair. I was surprised when I saw that headline about the six figure virtual mechanic Creative side Hustle number five is the high end dorm room designer. This year I came across Shelly Gates, a fourth grade teacher in Mississippi who turned her eye for design into a really lucrative side hustle designing college dorm rooms. Constraint breeds creativity Right here you got a small space to work with and kind of a tight window in which to do the work. Now Shelley's rates vary based on a number of different factors, but can go as high as 20 to 30,000. Doll. How crazy is that? And you'll hear her explain in the upcoming clip. She's got a wait list of clients and has already surpassed her teaching salary. Here's Shelly explaining how the business got its super fast start.
- [16:18]
Shelly Gates
Hey guys, My name is Shelly Gates and I own a company called Mary Margaret Designs where I focus on custom dorm room design. My website is marymargaretdesigns.com however, TikTok has become quite the platform for seeing my rooms and getting updated on Dorm Trends. For 2025, my TikTok is also Mary Margaret Designs. The idea for my dorm design business really started by accident. I've always loved design and beautiful surroundings and of course shopping. So when my daughter was a freshman at Mississippi State University, I had the most fun creating her room. I put the pictures of her room on social media for friends and family to see and it gained a ton of attention. The following year her sophomore dorm was featured on TikTok by an influencer and it really took off off. Here in the south, especially SEC schools, beautiful dorms are the norm and people love to see all the rooms. So this gave me the idea for my business. Also, since I'm a fourth grade teacher with my summers free, I thought this was perfect for a little summer side hustle. Little did I know that this side hustle would turn into 12 to 18 hour days in the summer to get everything done. The tick tock exposure was really great because it helped me book clients for my first year and because I was advertising exclusively on social media. That free advertisement made my startup cost non existent. But that first year was rough and I learned a lot. I took on far too many clients and I realized that I was stretched a mile wide and an inch deep. So I realized I had to limit my clients for the following year. I'm so proud to say that my business has become quite lucrative and I've already exceeded my current salary. Even though I love my 4th graders, I eventually plan to stop teaching and focus on this full time. I have such exciting plans for 2025. I'm hiring additional designers to expand the business, especially since I have such a long wait list. I really want each room to be unique so I spend months interpreting the girl's vision into the perfect dorm room. I really want to provide a turnkey room so I order absolutely everything from the custom pieces to the practical items like organization, even down to the light bulbs and cleaning supplies. But surprisingly A big part of my service is coordinating move in day. People always find it funny because I have movers for the room. But once you've carried heavy furniture up 15 flights of stairs in the 100 degree heat, you quickly realize that is money well spent. I also do a lot of consulting for rooms across the country, so I'm planning to expand that part of my business as well. After three years in business though, I can really just tell everybody that my favorite part is the relationship that I form, especially with the moms. Sending your child off to college is so hard. Think how hard it is to send your child to kindergarten. Now multiply that times a million. I can really empathize with the moms too because I've sent two girls off to college and my son will be starting college next fall. It is a huge life change letting your little baby bird leave the nest. So with that in mind, I really limit my clients because I want to invest in my families and encourage, love and offer support during this time. I am so proud of what Mary Margaret Designs has become and all the exciting opportunities that await in the future.
- [19:51]
Nick Loker
And of course, when I look at some of Shelly's designs, you can check them out at Mary Margaret Designs Underscore on Instagram, Mary Margaret designs on TikTok. I can't help but think back to my own dorm room experience where, you know, we just thought we were geniuses when we figured out how to loft my bed and stack up some cinder blocks at old newspapers to support a couch underneath it. What a wild business. And just a fun example of doing something she was going to do anyway. Sharing about it and getting such a positive reaction. Do you ever have those moments when you do something that is second nature to you, but other people are like, whoa, whoa, wait, how did you do that? Or they ask, ask, can I hire you to do that for me? That's a good sign. Pay attention to that. Pay attention to what wants to happen. That's creative side hustle number five. The dorm room design side hustle number six is somewhat similar. This is the virtual home studio design service. I want to introduce you to Kevin Shen, who has found a unique niche side hustle, helping people, I assume full time business at this time, helping people set up professional home studios. And unlike Shelly, his work is done 100% virtual, 100% online. So this is one that taps into the rise of remote work and virtual content creation. Kevin recognized this. There's this growing need for people to have high quality home offices, podcast studios, video setups. I mean if you want to impress people on Zoom calls or step up your YouTube game, his is the service you need. And he now charges $8,000 per client to do this studio design consulting. And if you go through his testimonials, it's like a who's who of online business. He's got Sam and Sean from my first million. He's got Steph Smith, Jay Klaus, Ryan Dice, Justin Jackson, Neville Medora, lots more. And looking at all their setups, they all look kind of similar, like there's a consistent vibe going on. But you can't argue they look good. And it kind of makes me want to step up my own studio game. So how it works, Kevin offers these consultations over Zoom where he walks clients through everything they're going to need to create this polished professional look that they're going for. And then he provides this detailed list of the recommended gear and equipment and supplies based on on the client's goals and budget. Obviously, paying attention to lighting, decor, sound quality and even will help you troubleshoot any issues as you go along. And since it's all remote, he can serve clients all over the world. Now Kevin's customer base includes YouTubers and podcasters and course creators like you might expect, but also remote employees and even executives who need or want more polished setups for virtual meetings. Now he also sells his design expertise as an online course. There's like the high end consulting price, right, the $8,000, you know, done with you type of service. But there's Also the more DIY version@dreamstudiocourse.com where at for $500 you can get the self serve on demand version. We'll teach you how to do this. And it looks like YouTube and Twitter are his primary traffic drivers and they appear to be working quite well. Now Kevin's business is an example of a niche business that taps into a few common themes on the show. First, it piggybacks on on the broader trend of remote work and video creation and even video podcasting now. And it's got some level of built in virality because when other creators see you've upgraded your space, they're naturally going to ask how you did it. And I think it illustrates the power of niching down. It's not a virtual interior design service that would be too broad. It's specific for video studio spaces. And that apparently was a wide open blue ocean to stake a claim to. It's kind of like Shelly, it's tough to compete as a generic interior designer, but when you niche down to interior Design for dorm rooms. All of a sudden, you're the only game in town. So the question is, is there a similar niche within a niche where you could become the undisputed market leader in remember, if you can't be first be different. Where can you play where you can be a market of 1? You can check out Kevin on all the socials at the Kevin Shen S H E N the one honorable mention to throw in here on the list is a listener sent me this story of basically being a professional tattletale, which means maybe makes it sound a little bit negative, I guess. There's a law in New York against idling vehicles. Hey, this burns unnecessary gas. It creates unnecessary pollution. So the city says, we're going to fine you if we catch you idling for too long. And where the side hustle comes in is you as the do good citizen, catch the idling vehicle in the act and you record the video evidence. New York will pay you 25% of the fine that they eventually collect, which could end up being paying several hundred dollars or even more if it's a repeat offender. Like it goes up the more and more times you get caught. And so naturally this has sprung up a little micro economy of people going out to do this, intentionally spending a few hours a day, in some cases walking or biking the city, and at least in one case hiring virtual assistants to support with some of the administrative paperwork required to file the cases. Like, it's turned into a. Like a legitimate business for some people now because it is the city and bureaucracy and all that. It can take several months to get paid from the time you find your offender. But I thought it was a super interesting example of taking advantage of a local rule and turning it into an extra income stream. I'll be right back with more creative side hustles right after this. Being an entrepreneur and being able to work remotely definitely has its perks. I've recorded podcasts everywhere from Vietnam to Italy, drafted newsletters from Japan, hosted mastermind meetings from Spain, ended up being in the middle of the night to get to US business hours, and outlined courses in Mexico. The common thread of all of these trips, though, is Airbnb. We love being able to get exactly what we're looking for in a place to stay and have a more local experience than staying in some giant hotel chain. And you know me, I'm always thinking about the next side hustle idea, the next income stream, right? And one that's at the top of the list is hosting our place on Airbnb while we're traveling. That way the house doesn't have to sit empty. We could use the income to help pay for the trip. And we've heard from several successful Airbnb hosts on the show, and what's interesting is a lot of them started with almost that exact strategy, renting their place or even a spare room while they're out of town. Taking inspiration from that, you might have an Airbnb right under your nose. In fact, your home might be worth more than you think. You can find out how much@airbnb.com host that's airbnb.com host to find out how much your home is worth. Creative side Hustle Number seven is a furniture repair service so here's a cool example of taking a skill you already have and putting a slight pivot on it to turn it into a viable business. In this case, the pivot was making it mobile. As in, I'll come to you. You don't have to carry your bulky couch, you can figure out how to transport it to our store. And it reminds me of a bike mechanic that I hired recently. Like I called up the local bike shop in town and they were booking appointments three weeks out. I wanted it done faster. I remembered seeing this mobile bike repair van around town. So I went to their website, booked an online appointment, didn't even have to call, and instead of three weeks out it was like, hey, next day or next couple days we can come and pick up your bike. And didn't have to put the rack on the car, didn't have to drive to the shop. Much more convenient customer experience. So here's side Hustle show listener Nathan Velts on how he got his freelance furniture repair business off the ground and turned it into a full time income.
- [27:08]
Nathan Veltz
My name is Nathan Veltz and my business is Fresh Furniture in Milwaukee with Skyline. The website is Fresh Furniture Mke if you'd like to take a look. What I do is in home furniture repair, which can go in lots of different directions from repairing a small dent in the table to tearing a sofa apart to fix a frame issue. What I have found is that there are some furniture refinishing and reupholstery shops that offer the same service, but they always want the customer to bring in their heavy and bulky pieces to their shop. Number one, I don't want to pay for a workspace and most of my repairs can be done in the customer's living room and under an hour. Many of my customers are really surprised I even offer to do this for them. I've been working in furniture repair for quite a while now, but always while working for a large retailer or a national repair company. What I have seen over and over is that if parts are needed, the large companies would always source them directly from the manufacturer, which is typically overseas. This involves wait times for customers for weeks and sometimes even months. Telling this to a customer with a broken lift chair that they use used to help to get to a standing position was heartbreaking and quite frustrating. What I realized is that a lot of these parts could be sourced locally or purchased online and received in days, not weeks. I established a relationship with a small family owned local foam company for all the seat cushion replacements. Not only are they great people, but now they go out of their way to get my foam cut quickly since I'm ordering from them usually multiple times a week. This company also allows me to pick up from them so I occur no shipping costs that became the start of fresh furniture. Knowing that I could complete a repair for a customer quickly and usually at a lower cost than a national extended warranty company. Startup costs were low for me as I had most of the tools and supplies. I did purchase a van for transporting pieces that were bigger projects and couldn't be repaired at home. I did spend money on making sure my logo was on all my work shirts. You definitely want to look professional when you're going into a customers home. Having a great looking embroidered shirt makes you stand out. I also took Nick's advice spent money on getting high quality business cards. This I found gives you an edge and makes you seem way more credible. My friend and I created the website. I'll be honest, mostly my friend. This worked for about the first year until I did hire a local firm to update it and unify the website to my logo and business colors. The designer used the same hosting platform and that definitely cut down the costs instead of creating a new one from scratch. I know it's been said on the show multiple times before, but getting the Google business page has been my biggest source of customers. Having the business page up to date and responding to customer reviews has been key. I will say as well that nice jobs for a review service has been fantastic. The fact that they blast out reviews to multiple social sites and your own website is a great time saver. And if you are a small business like me, they charge me a lower than advertised fee since I don't have hundreds of reviews a month. In pricing my repairs, I have standard pricing on certain pieces and adjust if traveling further than my normal service area. I've already had to increase my pricing due to demand. Just recently I've taken the side hustle full time and it's been completely overwhelming my first year. I plan on making my old saraline Hoping for more. What I'm hoping to do in the future is to approach companies offer to offer a touch up service to keep their lobbies looking great year round. Also I'm looking to send out a mailing to all the senior facilities in the area to become their go to contact for any lift chair repairs for the residents. I find this job extremely rewarding since most of my repairs are short term and fixing something that people thought irreparable, especially family heirlooms, just feels great.
- [30:32]
Nick Loker
Thanks Nathan for sharing that. That is Creative side hustle number seven furniture repair fresh furniture mke.com if you want to go check Nathan out over there Creative side Hustle number eight is a trailer rental business and so so earlier in the year Justin Martin of Jacksonville, Florida reported earning between two and three thousand dollars per month renting out this kind of flatbed trailer. It could be used for hauling furniture, vehicles, heavy equipment, pallets, that kind of thing. Now since then he's added several more products to his inventory, all in that same broad category of equipment hauling trailers like big, you know, you picture like the wooden slats on top they're towing behind a truck with rates ranging from from 300 to $750 per week. You can check out his site at rcrjax.com like rivercityrentals jacksonville.com rcrjax.com I'm finding these trails tend to cost between 2 and $5,000 a piece, maybe a little bit less if you can find them used. So you're looking at seven to 10 rentals perhaps to break even and then everything after that is profit. I wasn't able to get a voicemail for this one, but Justin said he normally spends or Otherwise budgets around $100 a month per trailer for maintenance. You know there's tires on them, you got to replace straps and things get get damaged. Now as far as marketing, it looks like Justin has focused on SEO and Google reviews. He's got over 200 five star reviews at this point, so he does a good job of marketing the service on the trailers themselves as well with his phone number and sign that says you know, Rent me or Rent this trailer. And even though it's a lot of one off customers like hey, I just need to move something from point A to point B, Justin also generates quite a bit of repeat business by providing A good service and positive customer interact. The other considerations for this type of business are obviously a place to store your inventory when it's not in use. It looks like Justin has a good sized property where he can park these things and then insurance to protect yourself if something goes wrong. And whenever you're dealing with physical products, especially big heavy things driving down the highway at 70 miles an hour, things can go wrong. In fact, Justin sent me a picture of one of his trailers with a tire blown out on the side of the road. As the business owner, he's got to deal with that. So it's not all rainbows and unicorns and passive income all the time. But as far as a rental asset, it's not a ton of moving parts on these relatively simple, low maintenance products and ones that probably have a pretty long useful life if they're well taken care of. You can follow along with what Justin is doing at Trailer hustle on TikTok trailer hustle.com where he's starting to help other people get involved in this business, one that I'll be paying attention to. Hopefully you can follow along with his journey as well. So naturally, the next question is, well, what else could you rent out for a profit? We've done episodes on party inflatables, like bouncy houses for kids parties. We've done mobility scooters, photo booths, portable hot tubs, a favorite of mine even most recently we did moving boxes in episode 635. Like here. Here's a low, relatively low overhead, you know, type of product. It's just a plastic bin now, you might not even have to own the thing you're renting out because we talked to Gar Russell from Fireside RV about renting out other people's RVs, basically acting as a property manager and splitting the income from those rentals. So that is number eight on this list, the trailer rental business. And maybe as an illustration of a broader equipment rental type of side Hustle, creative side hustle number nine is TV mounting. Now, I'm blown away by this story because I never imagined that you could make $30,000 a month mounting TVs for people. I mean, how many TVs are out there that need mounting? But that's exactly what Sina Omosawan has done with his TV mounting business business operating mostly in the Washington D.C. area under the brand Shine. Back in 2019, Sina is, you know, he's working on his PhD when a friend introduces him to his side Hustle, his world of TV mounting. So he shadows the friend for a few jobs, learns the basics and you know, consumes what he called hours of YouTube tutorials to really master the skills. And starting out, he priced pretty low to build trust and attract his first clients. Sina then started using Thumbtack to build his own client base, using the platform to showcase reviews and pictures of the job that he completed and client feedback. And that approach definitely worked and it continues to work almost as a virtuous cycle because now he's got over a thousand five star reviews. And that reputation makes it easier and easier to book more work. Right. He told Entrepreneur that he would initially book two or three jobs in a day. Each one would take way longer than he wanted them to as he kind of worked through this learning curve of how to do the job. But as his confidence and efficiency grew, now he's able to serve more customers every day. He can mount the TV in just 15 minutes. Like he's done hundreds and hundreds of these things. It becomes really quick. Lather, rinse and repeat. And he also learned the importance of being really responsive to inquiries because thumbtack, like a lot of these other platforms, is one where speed really counts. So keeping his phone on hand, answer customer questions, schedule those appointments right away. It is a business with relatively low startup costs, really just a handful of tools, some of which you might already own. But fast forward a few months and now Sina's got a decision to make. So he finishes up his PhD. He's got offer letters in his chosen field of plant evolution and food crop production. This is what he spent years studying, going to school to do. But over here he's got this side hustle that's working really well. So he makes the hard decision to go all in on the business instead of this traditional career that he's been going to school for. And he says, you know what, I'm going to go be my own boss instead. Today the business earns around $30,000 each month and appears to have expanded geographically to serve customers. Customers in Chicago and Indiana as well. Cena told Entrepreneur that he loves the control and flexibility the business gives him. He schedules jobs around family commitments and loves putting a smile on customers faces with a job well done. He highlighted the importance of prioritizing customer satisfaction over profits. In the beginning, remember he said I gotta, I gotta price low to attract clients to start to build a portfolio and build some momentum of positive reviews. He said that was really the key to growth early on. I think this is another really interesting example of owning a niche. Of course, a gentleman general Handy person service could handle mounting your tv. But as a customer, given the choice between the generalist and the specialist who's done it a thousand times, who are you going to pick? Is there a similar niche that you could own? Maybe it's a piece of what you're already doing. You could carve out and really choose to focus on just that. That's number nine, 30 grand a month mounting TVs. Number 10 is guinea pig cages. This is 17 year old Bella Lynn of California who is running a not so little side business called Guinea Loft, which specializes in these see through customizable pet enclosures for guinea pigs, chinchillas, rabbits, hamsters, ferrets, hedgehogs. She told CNBC she spends around 20 hours a week on the business on the side from her responsibilities as a high school student. Oh yeah, we still gotta go to school. Last year she averaged $34,000 a month in sales at roughly a 25% profit margin. Now, as is often the case in E commerce, she's heavily reinvested, investing those profits into marketing, audience research, developing new products. This is common where you're not able really to take a ton of cash off the table. You want to continue to reinvest in inventory and grow the thing. Now. Guinea Loft launched on Amazon two years ago with a startup cost of around $2,000 in prototypes. Bella sold out of her first production run of 100 units in a couple weeks with quote, unquote, no marketing, which I assume that meant just relying on Amazon's internal search and discovery features, like not paying for additional extra exposure. And that's interesting to me in itself because I would have assumed Amazon to be probably pretty crowded in the pet product space at that time. But goes to show you, if you can come at a problem from a unique angle or perspective, you can still carve out some market share. Bella had had guinea pigs as pets for years and didn't love the traditional cage options. So she set out to create something better. I love that. Is there a hobby niche that you're really into but frustrated with what's available on the market? Market, I mean, this was Chris and Julia Tunstall from a bar above. They had this content business in the craft cocktail space, but had a hard time recommending any really high quality bar equipment on Amazon. So they ended up creating their own, which turned into a multimillion dollar business. One possible example from our own house, the kids got a Nintendo Switch a couple years ago. The controllers that come with it are painfully small for adult hands. And since I like to play too. I ordered these larger controllers from Amazon. They're definitely better, but if there was an even bigger version, I would probably go for that. It's the kind of product ideas you come up with as a hobbyist or a user in a certain field. And that gives you an advantage over people approaching product research purely from a software driven or analytical point of view. Well, this one has, you know, a higher percentage of 3 star reviews, so there must be some opportunity to improve upon the product. And you should absolutely do that level of competitive research too. But you got to know the niche. I don't think, I don't know if this is just coming into something completely blind and agnostic as to what product is, is really going to work. You got to have a story behind it. And maybe what's even more impressive about Bella is that Guinea Loft wasn't even her first e commerce business. She started a leggings brand in 2019 that brought in around $300,000 in revenue in 2020. This girl knows how to move some inventory. But despite that revenue, the leggings business had a hard time generating profits. So she decided to pivot her attention to the guinea pig market. She told cnbc, I had a weird epiphany where I kind of realized there were a lot of other companies trying to make legs leggings. There was no innovation there. Whereas with Guinea Loft, I could fill a really big gap in the market. So one pain point or an area of innovation for her was in the floor area of the enclosures, which, not to get too nerdy on guinea pig cages, but these I guess, apparently were traditionally made with plastic bottoms. And she said, hey, they smell really bad. They're really hard to clean. So ultimately Guinea Loft created a replaceable bottom for the enclosures with biodegradable wax coated paper, which actually led to repeat business because they're like, well, okay, you sell a guinea pig cage and then, and then that's it. You never see that customer again. But because of this replaceable bottom, now they've got repeat customers. Customers come back and order refills of those. Pretty savvy, pretty inspiring stuff. A couple other honorable mentions before we wrap. The first one here is turning a regular bedtime activity into a side hustle. This is Sam Ramsden of Australia, who began making up and telling silly stories to his eldest daughter and eventually turned those stories into a podcast called Silly Stories for Kids. There's a marketing lesson there. Sometimes you don't need a clever name. You can just call it exactly what it is. Sam told kidspot.com au I've always loved storytelling. When my eldest daughter was two, I would lay on her bedroom floor and make up a bedtime story, he says. One day my father in law pulled me aside and said, hey, you ought to turn these stories into a podcast. It wasn't something that Sam had ever considered, but with that level of support and encouragement, he figured out how to make it happen. The first episodes of Of Silly Stories for Kids were only released a year ago and the show has already generated over 700,000 downloads. For the sake of reference, the side Hustle show took years to reach 700,000 downloads, so he's off to the races. I didn't hear any ads on the episode that I listened to, but Sam did make a plug to join his listener membership ranging from 20 to 50 per year and powered by Buy me a coffee on the sillystoriesforkids.com website. There's also a story store with some merch for sale. Here's an example of selling your sawdust right hey, I'm already telling these stories. I enjoy making them up. Why not record them? Why not put them out to the world? Pretty cool idea. Another one I thought was interesting was Lena Pettigrew's houseplant business. I'd never heard of this site before, but it's called Palm street, the number one live shopping app for plants, crafts and crystals. Did not know this was a thing, but Lena sold almost $150,000 worth of plants in her first year. It seems kind of like Twitch but for plants, like a live streaming marketplace where you can follow your favorite growers gardeners and support them by buying their stuff. Lena said she can sell a thousand plants in a single session and ships them out to customers all across the country. Now, I'm not sure how often you can do that volume of sales because hey, these are living things. They take some time to grow. But I've also got to imagine the cost of goods sold is pretty low, especially if you can start to propagate them from clippings from plants you've already got, even if you're sourcing them, you know, from your local nursery. But now all of a sudden people want to buy from you because of the brand you've created. Maybe you can command premium pricing because of that. It's an example of riding that house plant wave, looking for those trends to piggyback on filling demand instead of creating demand. Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate. Hope you take a pause for gratitude today and really every day to start to build that muscle to be a little more grateful and a little less hateful. And you're going to start to notice these little moments of happiness and bring awareness to those. I think it's a really powerful and positive habit. If you like this type of Roundup Style show, we've been doing it every Thanksgiving for the last several years. There's a Spotify playlist for you called Creative side Hustles where you can find all the episodes in this series. I think this is our seventh. I have a blast putting them together and I want to invite you to send me ideas for the next edition. Maybe we don't have to wait until Thanksgiving to do it if we get enough that come in, but if you do come across an interesting, surprising, creative, inspiring way to make extra money, I would love to hear about it. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in with Gratitude each and every week. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.