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The Side Hustle Show
650: 7 Proven Ways to Generate New Business Ideas, with Real-Life Examples
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- [00:00]
Nick Loper
You probably already know that Airbnb can help you earn some extra cash when you're not using your home. Maybe you're traveling for work, you're taking an extended vacation, or you're just snowboarding someplace warmer. But here's where it gets interesting. You don't have to do all the work yourself. You can tap into Airbnb's co host network. This is a team of local pros who handle the nitty gritty so you can focus on what matters most. Think of it like outsourcing for your side Hustle. These professional co hosts help with everything from creating a killer listing that stands out to guest communication and even on the ground support. You provide the space, they handle the details, and you get paid. Personally, I'm a fan of income streams that don't require constant oversight. When I'm traveling for work, I'm at a conference or a mastermind, or if I'm on vacation, I'm trying to be present with my family. Here's a way to add an extra income stream without having to be glued to my phone the whole time. When you're ready to get started, see how much your space could be worth and get connected with an awesome co host@airbnb.com host. 7 proven ways to generate new business ideas with real life examples. What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle show where we've been helping make day jobs optional since 2013. Today, I want to introduce seven business idea generating frameworks you can use to come up with your next side Hustle idea. And the first one on this list is called rip, pivot, and and jam. I first heard about this method from the tropical MBA show probably 10 years ago. Hat tip to Dan and Ian for this one. Here's how it works is you rip you look at another successful business copy their model and the key here, pivot, is step two. Pivot it to a new industry, a new vertical, a new audience. Right? And that's the little turn. And then the jam part is the hustle to go get new customers, do the work. Now, we saw a couple examples of this in the last year, including Sarah McCaffrey's clothing consignment business in episode 640.
- [02:02]
Sarah McCaffrey
So I did a kids consignment event selling my kids used clothes and I had no idea what I was doing. I just showed up, you know, price the things, showed up to sell them and when I went to pick up my check, it was for $800 and it blew my Mind, this was you.
- [02:16]
Nick Loper
You selling your kids stuff through through somebody else.
- [02:19]
Sarah McCaffrey
Yes, it was. That's how I got the idea. And after I picked up that check for $800, I just thought, why exist for adults? There are a lot of kids consignment events out there and not very many at all for adults. And I just thought, I know so many people with closets full of clothes that are in great condition that people would buy. Why is nobody doing this?
- [02:39]
Nick Loper
Yeah, why is nobody doing this? Was there a reason that the people running the kids ones didn't do the same thing? It isn't because we have gone to those kid event. I don't know if we've ever sold anything there, but we've definitely gone as a customer for them locally. So. Yeah, you're totally right. That's a thing.
- [02:54]
Chris Andrews
Yeah.
- [02:54]
Sarah McCaffrey
And it's funny because a lot of people think they're similar, but adult events are so different from kids. We're willing to buy, you know, whatever for our kids. They're going to be running around outside playing in it, it's fine. But when you're selling adult clothes, you have to find the right audience for it. We're a lot pickier. So the sell through rate's different than kids consignment events. So they just have to be marketed differently.
- [03:15]
Nick Loper
Okay. Okay. So as far as you could tell in the initial market research, nobody was doing an adult focused clothing event near you. I think our mutual friend Megan was maybe doing furniture consignment nearby who connected us.
- [03:28]
Sarah McCaffrey
Yes, she was.
- [03:29]
Nick Loper
But say, hey, there's an opportunity in the clothing space. And what was your first step in turning that from idea to reality?
- [03:36]
Sarah McCaffrey
Yeah, well, first I tried to make the idea go away because it just felt crazy. You know, I have two young kids, I'm running a photography business. I was the breadwinner for my family. It felt crazy to, you know, divide my attention and try to start a whole other business. So I really tried to ignore it for a while, but I, I got to where I couldn't sleep. Like the idea would not leave me alone. And so a couple months later, I just decided, you know what? I'm going to go for this. And that night I found our software that we could use. I had a friend who gave me the name that day who named it Statement. And then I stayed up all night building a website on Squarespace. And I just thought, you know what? This idea will not leave me alone. I have to do it. Like I had no other choice.
- [04:16]
Nick Loper
When you get those ideas that won't leave you alone. That's a good sign. So in Sarah's case, the inspiration for the consignment event was a kids clothing event. And Sarah's pivot was to make it for adult clothes. And then in the rest of that episode, episode 6:40, we talked about the jam, all of the things that she did to market and grow that business. Another example of the rip pivot and jam framework came from Chris Andrews. In episode 632. Chris started a local food tour business in Mobile, Alabama. A friend of mine did a food tour in Savannah, Georgia. I had never heard of a food tour before. And when she came back home and was telling us about her experience of going to different restaurants and, you know, she did a tour of the, of the city of Savannah and they went to different landmarks in the city and the tour guide was talking about the landmarks. That was all really, really interesting to me. I've been a history buff ever since I was a kid, especially local history. And I thought, you know, that's absolutely what we need in Mobile, Alabama. You know, we've got 300 plus years of history in Mobile. It's one of the oldest cities in the United States. Yeah, and, and, and, and fantastic food. There's a, a great food scene that's in downtown Mobile and, and, and kind of capitalizing on that. And, and that's kind of how the, that's how the food tour got started in Mobile. Was anybody else doing it? Like it's not a new concept? No, nobody in Mobile was doing it at the time. I think mainly you would find food tours in large cities around the country, you know, in tourist places. Of course, New York has probably got seven or eight of them. New Orleans, which is about two hours from where I am. They probably, again, you know, have five or six food tour operators. But no, nobody was doing this in Mobile. And so that was another big thing for me. You know, it kept me up at night thinking about it. I, you know, somebody's going to do this eventually and I'm not going to be able to live with myself if that person's not me. Isn't that funny how Chris said the same thing? It was keeping me up at night now, not a completely new business idea. Here's one that's already working in another market, so there's some validation, there's less risk. And then Chris's pivot was just applying the same concept to his town. Episode 632, if you want to learn more about his food tour business in Mobile. But RIP Pivot and jam. Pay attention as you go about your day for interesting businesses and then put them through the lens of, well, what's the potential pivot here? Could you do something similar but serve a different audience or in a different industry or in a different location? And one of my most successful side hustles was my virtual assistant directory, which used this exact framework. I had come across a wine club directory and review site and thought, well, shoot, this is kind of an interesting model. So I had to ask, well, what other industry could I pivot that to that I was interested in, that I knew a little bit about? And that turned into my VA site. I even used the same theme that the wine site was using in the first version, just swapped out the content instead about wine. It's now about virtual assistants. So that is business idea generating framework number one, rip, pivot and jam number two is what I call the sniper method. And this is where you look at a broad service or market and instead of trying to be everything to everyone, you focus in on a small sliver of that market, a small segment of it, and in doing so, you can position yourself as the go to authority on that one topic. And when you do that, you often reduce competition, sometimes altogether, and potentially can improve your pricing power quite a bit too. Here's how Carter Osborne explained it in episode 601. I started out tutoring standardized test prep like the SAT and the ACT. I tutored academics, everything from pre calculus to history to English. And then I also tutored college essays. And the college essays were my favorite part. I always knew that that was something that I wanted to invest more heavily in. Frankly too, I had to look myself in the mirror and go, I am not a good standardized test tutor. I mean, I'm just not. I'm not the kind of person who has the kind of organization and rigor and the sort of like dedication to.
- [08:09]
Chris Andrews
Repetition that it takes to be a good SAT tutor or a good SAT taker for that matter, even though people.
- [08:15]
Nick Loper
Were referring other students to me, just wasn't the right direction for my business. And the same went for academics. I remember sitting down in coffee shops or cafes with students and learning pre calculus as I was trying to teach it to them. I was remembering how to do things from my old high school pre calc days as I was trying to teach it to them. Like, it's been a few years here. Yeah, exactly. Stay one chapter ahead of the kids.
- [08:36]
Chris Andrews
Exactly.
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Nick Loper
And I'm going, yeah, I don't think this is what their parents are paying me for. So so eventually I went, okay, I think that I have enough of a foothold in this whole tutoring industry to specialize in one service. And yes, that means sacrificing clientele in the short term, but hopefully it also means defining my reputation as a college essay specialist in the Seattle area. And with that more specific reputation, tapping into a broader market of clients in the long term. Right.
- [09:00]
Chris Andrews
So it was sort of short term.
- [09:01]
Nick Loper
Loss, long term gain.
- [09:02]
Chris Andrews
That was the theory and that's exactly.
- [09:04]
Nick Loper
How it's worked out. I kind of like this tactic of starting a little bit broader just to get a sense of what you like doing and what is delivering results for clients because you have to kind of test the waters there. And when I'm a beginning freelancer, like if you're going to offer to pay me for whatever it is, like I'm going to take that work, I'm going to say yes, yes. Like play the improv game. Yes. And by the way, we could also offer this other service. But as that business matures, you start to recognize, okay, well this is really where I think my wheelhouse is. Even if it means it's kind of scary. Like I might be cutting off 75% of my revenue here, but I think there's a bigger piece of the pie or an opportunity to really carve out a niche for myself here. On the essay prep side, Carter went on to turn that singular service into a six figure side hustle with far fewer competitors than he had as the more generalist academic test prep tutor. That's episode 601 in your archives if you want to go back and check it out. Similarly, we caught up with Kate Johnson last year on her bookkeeping business. And early on she said, look, I'll take any client, you know what, I'll take any client I can find. But later on she decided to focus solely on Those customers using FreshBooks as their accounting software. And not only grew the business as a result, but really simplified it as well. I don't have to learn a dozen different software tools anymore. I'm going to focus just on this one. And early on this was kind of my method of madness for my original side Hustle, my footwear comparison shopping site at that time their were dozens of really broad market comparison shopping sites out there. Nextag, pricegrabbershopping.com, sites like that. But they all had this super broad, call it a shotgun approach. They tried to include every product under the sun and as a result left an opportunity for, you know, a so called sniper like me to Use this sniper method to come in and say, look, we can build a better mousetrap by focusing solely, pun intended, in this case on shoes. And I remember John Lee Dumas advice to niche down until you can check the box of being the best slash worst slash only player in your niche at that time, it was the best, worst and only comparison shopping site for shoes. It was, you know, or later on, you know, it was the best, worst and only virtual assistant directory and review platform. The best, worst and only podcast specifically for side Hustlers. Right? What is that niche that you can really use that sniper method to hone in on? That is what I call the sniper method. Definitely one that I've seen work personally and from side Hustle show guests over the years. Keep an eye out for those broad serving businesses and be thinking of how can I carve out a little sliver of that market for myself. I've got more idea generating frameworks coming up right after this. All right, it's sponsor time.
- [11:45]
Sarah McCaffrey
Now.
- [11:45]
Nick Loper
I could read you a script about Gusto's payroll and benefits, but instead I wanted to share some reviews and feedback from real Gusto customers. The first one says, with Gusto, I think of payroll as a 32nd job. The website is so friendly and a joy to use. Anything that makes payroll a joy. You don't hear that every day. Amy from Utah says, they do our medical, dental, vision and life insurance. It's like going to the spa and we've got great options and rates even though we're a super small team. What about customer service? Here's what Amneet says about Gusto's support team. Whenever something comes up, I reach out and literally 24 hours later, they tell us what to do or assure us that they've already handled it for us. That's what happens when you combine smart technology and friendly humans. And really, that's just a small sample of the positive feedback that Gusto has earned over the years. Right now, side Hustle show listeners get three months free when you go to Gusto.com Sidehustle yes, that's three months of payroll, benefits, admin, and more. Totally free again, gusto.com sidehustle creating really great retail experiences is tough, especially if you've got multiple stores, teams of staff, fulfillment centers, separate workflows. It's a lot to deal with, but with Shopify Point of Sale, you can do it all without complexity. Shopify's Point of Sale system is a unified command center for your retail business, both online and in store. One thing that's really cool about Shopify POS is you can keep customers coming back with personalized experiences and collect that all important first party data to give your marketing teams a competitive edge even if that marketing team is just you. Now how about some data to back that up? Businesses on Shopify POS see real results including a 22% better total cost of ownership and benefits equivalent to an 8.9% uplift in sales. Want more? Check out shopify.com sidehustle that's all lowercase and learn how to create the best retail experiences without complexity. Again, that's@shopify.com Sidehustle we're talking business idea generating frameworks on the side Hustle show this week and number three on this list is the Shovels in the Gold Rush method. And you've probably heard the advice in a gold rush Sell shovels. And here's a little bit of history trivia for you. That phrase is attributed to Sam Brannan. He's called the Paul Revere of the Gold Rush because he's famous for jumping off the boat in San Francisco and excitingly spreading the word about gold being discovered in the Sierra foothills. This is like, you know, 18, you know, 49, right? The 40 49ers football team named after this California Gold Rush. But supposedly before he made this announcement, Brannon bought up all of the mining supplies, the picks and shovels and stuff like that so he could resell them to hopeful prospectors at marked up prices. The sell shovels in the Gold Rush method helped Sam allegedly become California's first millionaire. And even though this happened 170 years ago, gold rushes still happen all the time. We're just not looking for literal gold in the ground anymore. We're looking for it in the form of the latest trend or the hot fad. And in my 20 years of online business, if you've been around for any length of time, you've seen gold rushes around ebay, around niche sites, self publishing, print on demand T shirts, Amazon, fba, probably lots of other examples too. And every time, some of the best businesses to come out of those gold rushes are the supporting software and services. For example, Liz Wilcox of Survivor fame. She took the trend of online business and online newsletters and built a simple $9 a month membership model around that, where she gives you weekly newsletter template inspiration. Pretty simple business that tapped into that gold rush of more and more people needing to send emails.
- [15:29]
Sarah McCaffrey
I knew I was good at email marketing and I knew that most people aren't. And I knew the missing piece for people Is a weekly newsletter just following up with their subscribers every week. That's something you're a side hustler. You're just working a few hours a night on this project. Like sending an email. Is that really what you need to be doing with your time? So I knew if I could just write that newsletter for you, maybe you'd give it a shot and you would see results like mine. So within the membership you just get a weekly newsletter template to take and make your own. That was low responsibility for me because in my client work that's what I was already doing. I was writing emails for people. I had owned two businesses prior writing emails to people. I had an entire catalog of emails that I had been writing for years and years and years. I can just have this one deliverable of this thing. I already have a back catalog of that I can templatize and I can send out once a week.
- [16:30]
Nick Loper
In that episode, episode 600, Liz described how she grew that simple low cost membership to thousands of members. In what I thought was a really creative example of what you might call selling your sawdust. She already had this library of emails that she'd written for herself or for clients. It was just a matter of repackaging those for a different audience under a different offer. Do you have something similar in your business? A byproduct of what you're already creating? What kind of sawdust might you be able to sell? And going back to the sell shovels in the gold rush method, what other gold rushes or trends come to mind? So one that probably is on top of everyone's mind is like that short form video is eating every other kind of content. So it could be something in that space. You could take a look at sites like Google trends or exploding topics to see what is increasing in interest. You can ask your kids, especially if you got teenagers. It could even be capitalizing on an up and coming marketplace Like Devin Ricks did with her video game teaching social hour online side hustle on the outschool marketplace. What outschool does is it has created.
- [17:34]
Sarah McCaffrey
This space where teachers are background checked and parents feel safe letting their children can log in online, all the sessions are recorded and then they can play together and it's a good environment for them.
- [17:46]
Nick Loper
Yeah, we would call this a buy buttons platform. You know, go where the cash is already flowing and here's a platform that has a built in audience where it's relatively easy. It's got to go through this background check process. Yeah, you got to come up with an idea of what you're going to teach, but relatively easy to put your thing out there for sale and have people come and do business with you. And actually you kind of sparked an idea here because like my son and his friend in California, like they've hung out on Zoom doing like LEGO builds way more than they've ever hung out in person. And it's like, oh, I wonder if there's like a LEGO building class where you could do like, okay, different challenges or something so people with different pieces could still try and build a. Okay, today we're going to build a bird or something. Like I don't know, that would be really interesting. Oh, there's definitely LEGO classes.
- [18:32]
Sarah McCaffrey
I have a good friend who teaches LEGO classes and yeah, she'll be like, this is the inspiration you create.
- [18:37]
Nick Loper
Create your own version. And so then everyone's building their own.
- [18:40]
Sarah McCaffrey
Legos with what they have.
- [18:41]
Nick Loper
But yeah, that's totally a thing. So the gold rush, in Devin's case, we'll call it the general rise in interest in interactive online classes for kids and adults, really, and then coming up with a unique offer to sell into that space. And it's always the example that I give. Like, look, if you can make money teaching video games for kids, you can monetize just about anything. That is idea generating framework. Number three, the cell shovels into a gold rush. What gold rush might you be able to sell some shovels into? Number four is what I call the intersection method. And this aims to find potential business ideas at the intersection of your skills, your interests and your network. For example, I started a freelance book editing business several years ago using this exact method. Number one, I thought I was a decent writer and a decent proofreader. Like I was an A student in English in school, even though I'd never been paid to do that before. I was interested in reading nonfiction self improvement business books. I'd even written a handful of myself. At that time I was in Facebook groups. This is the network piece. I was in Facebook groups with other self published authors and it worked well. It was a fun little side hustle experiment. I read some, actually some pretty fun and interesting books and some not so great ones along the way too, and earned some extra cash. Another cool example of this came from David Paxton from Daily Golf Golf Steals. Where he was interested in golf, he had some skills or learned some skills in sourcing deals in a systemized way. And he was an active member of a popular golf subreddit. So skills, interests and network, unlike most affiliate businesses which take months or maybe even A year plus to gain any significant traction daily Golf Seals posted two grand in your first month. So talk to me about how you made that happen.
- [20:27]
David Paxton
Yeah, absolutely. It was very nice off the bat to have quite such a good month. So it was a confluence of a few different factors. One, it was July, so a good month for golf. It's sunny, everyone's playing golf, people are outside and they probably even got a bit into that golf season looking to purchase that next piece of equipment that's going to get them over the hill. So that was kind of one piece and then the second and I'll talk a bit more about it and the fact that Reddit plays this is July.
- [20:52]
Nick Loper
2021, just for the sake of timeline.
- [20:54]
David Paxton
That is correct. Yes, exactly. So just about going on two years ago now. The second piece here is Reddit. Just as an audience. It's an amazing community and if you can get them on your side, you get them engaged, you're providing value, they can be your biggest advocates. And the fact that in the first month was able to just get that level. I can't remember the quite number of clicks, but just people instantly engaging, instantly using your clicks to go through to these websites and making purchases and it's really just a showcase in the value that a free audience can do as long as bring them along for the ride.
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Nick Loper
Was there even a website at that point or is it you're posting affiliate links directly to a golf subreddit?
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David Paxton
There was a website and the website, I'll be honest, it's not the prettiest thing but it gets the job done. And that really was the funnel, I mean Reddit back to some of its, I would say it's sometimes anti corporation, anti shilling. They are a bit wary. However, I was able to sort of, I would put up about five to seven deals. I would give some that were kind of freebies, they would just go straight. I wasn't making any money of them and trying to find that right bal and then two or three of them at the time I would actually have them go to Daily Gulf steals and then they would need to make that click and then go through and those ones that would be actually monetizing.
- [22:03]
Nick Loper
Now I am curious to hear how you gently started dropping these links because like you said, Reddit could be very anti self promotion and if they sniff out that you're there not as a member of the community but as a for profit corporation and all of a sudden it's like wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I mean, I guess you're coming in with, hey, look, I'm trying to be helpful here. I'm trying to save you guys some money. Like here's some cool stuff that we found, but just curious how you approach that.
- [22:26]
David Paxton
There's a couple things. So one, the R Golf subreddit is a weird grandfathered position. So for whatever reason, going back, I think three or four people, there's always been someone who's the go to deal person on the subreddit, posting those deals, doing it of the goodness of their heart. So there's kind of an established role. There's actually someone who was already doing it that I kind of sort of tried to work alongside. A bit of friendly competition, I'll say. So one is an established position and then the second piece here is demonstrating that value. It is really about actually spending that time digging in with the deals. I'll get into a bit more about how I automated and sourced them, but it was like, I think people kind of said, okay, yeah, maybe it's an extra click, maybe there's a bit of self promotion. But if he's actually finding me good deals and I'm making that purchase and the number of messages I was getting from folks that said there's real value here, you started to actually see that engagement and build some support. I think that's the other piece I would say here too is people would actually jump to my defense. Some would be like, hang on, like this is shilling self promotion. And then someone be like, no, hang on. Like he's actually doing this. He's been doing it consistently. That's okay. And I think that's really the way it goes. And I mean, such a strong part of Reddit is the community. And that was the other thing. It's like I would listen to feedback, someone would say, hey, that deal's no longer live. I'd be like, oh, okay, let me update it. Or like actually chatting to people. It's not just post the link and be done. It's post the links, engage, ask questions, have other people contribute. Really buying into that community aspect.
- [23:49]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Being a part of it in that sense, you weren't relying on SEO for discoverability. It was like, I'm going to shortcut the, the audience building phase. Go directly to the hungry crowd. Who wants this stuff? Again, that's episode 583 with David Paxton. What do you like doing? What are you good at? And who can you connect with that might value those things? That's the intersection method. And maybe you've seen the Ikigai Venn diagram type of picture. Japanese word, loosely translated to reason, for being or purpose, where you're ikigai and apologies if I'm, I'm butchering that pronunciation. But it lies at this intersection of what you love, what you're good at, what you can get paid for, and what the world needs or what the market wants. Maybe a little more broadly. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert the comic strip, described it as finding a combination of potentially common different skills or traits that when combined can turn into a superpower. He gave the example of being a slightly above average cartoonist and a slightly above average humorist, but combining the two to make a really successful comic strip. James Clear the same way, gave himself a little more credit. He called himself a 90th percentile writer. Not the best in the world. Not going to put that kind of pressure on yourself, which on its own, probably not enough. But then combine it with what he also described as a 90th percentile marketer, and all of a sudden it's a really powerful combination. And Atomic Habits goes on to sell millions of copies. Christy Da Silva was another example from the podcast in the last year. She gave this example in episode 627.
- [25:20]
Sarah McCaffrey
Everyone was saying like, niche down, niche down, niche down. And I was like, but I don't even know what I like to do yet. So I took some time and I did a little bit of everything. So I was just a virtual assistant. I did like admin, content creation systems, all the things. And after about six months, I would say I decided, you know what? I don't want to do everything for everyone. And that's when I decided to invest in my first business coach where our first session together, basically she had me just like word vomit, all the things that I loved about my job and did not love about my job. And we very quickly realized at the end of that session that what I was really passionate about was getting people organized and the pathway to do that was through systems. So at this point, for my clients, I had already set up my two favorite tools, ClickUp and Honeybook. I've also set up different CRMs and project management tools for people. But I felt very strongly that these were the tools that I wanted to master. And at the time, I'll be honest with you, Nick, I actually didn't see many people in the online space, like just niching down into specific tools and being like pros. They had ClickUp Consulting at the time was a very small group of people. Honeybook Pros wasn't even a thing I was one of the first like 12 Honeybook pros. And so it felt like again this like leap of faith, like starting is leap of faith continuing. You're constantly having to believe in yourself but then niching and taking such a drastic turn was definitely like a mindset thing of like I feel like this is the right thing, but I hope that it pays off.
- [27:11]
Nick Loper
And pay off it did. Christie went from generalist to specialist in ended up 10xing her hourly rate. As a result, she was interested in and excited about building systems. She had some skills in a couple specific software tools and she could potentially get certified through those platforms as a fast track way to connect with potential clients. That is episode 627 in your archives if you want to go check it out. But this is the intersection method. What do you know, what do you like and who do you know? What's the network? Amazing. Maybe your network's network. Who? What kind of people do you know? To go a little bit broader and at the intersection of those is a potential side hustle. Number five is the scratch your own itch method. This is solve your own problem, the saying goes, because other people are probably facing the same issue. For Lou rice in episode 589, inspiration for her Kindle E reader strap struck in the middle of the night. So you drop the cig on your newborn's head, obviously probably upsetting for him. And then you're like, shoot, what happens next?
- [28:12]
Sarah McCaffrey
Yeah, I mean very upsetting for me too. Right? And I think it's that new mums, middle of the night, hour long breastfeeds and you don't want to be on your phone all the time. So reading a Kindle is a great option. And that happened about 2:00am Ben ran in. We were all crying. But the next day. Ben's a bit of a creative type. He had a piece of silicon, a silicon mat and he fashioned a really crude style strap with staples. And he gave that to me to try out. And after a month of that, I was pretty hooked. I didn't want the Kindle without it. I was able to obviously do a lot of things one handed as you need to when you have a baby. So we kind of thought, oh, this could be something.
- [28:51]
Nick Loper
And this is like 2021. Had nobody thought of this before. They had to be a competitive product on the market.
- [28:57]
Sarah McCaffrey
We had a little look around. Obviously on Amazon there are similar products, but they were pretty ugly. They had like little metal claws or they're very industrial looking.
- [29:06]
Nick Loper
Okay.
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Sarah McCaffrey
And nothing kind of sleek and stylish like our straps are. So the silicone means it's the perfect fit. Like it molds to your hand.
- [29:15]
Nick Loper
When we spoke, she was selling like 50 grand a month worth of these simple, lightweight Kindle straps. And I know she's gotten some great press since then. From pain and frustration to opportunity. Here's how Gar Russell described the origin story, story of his RV rental business in episode 625. You have this idea, like, it's going to be a fantastic birthday present for your lovely bride, or an anniversary present, rather. And hey, honey, we got this rv. Let's go. We're going to have all these fun times in the woods. Imagining the years of outdoor fun and adventure ahead of you. And her reaction is not quite what you're hoping it will be. Yeah, we got to the campground and we got set up. I thought all was going well. Well, the first morning when she's chasing our toddler around and seven months pregnant with number four, and she said, I'm going home, baby. And I thought, oh, what did I forget? And I didn't forget anything. She was just miserable and she was done camping and we were supposed to be there six more days. Yeah. So that's not how anybody wanted it to go down. No, no, not at all. And I went right into panic mode of, oh, my gosh, I just bought this RV for a lot of money and my wife doesn't want to be here and jumped onto Craigslist and threw it up for rent. Okay. So you've got this big, expensive asset slash liability at the moment, but hopefully it turns into an asset, sit in the driveway and said, well, shoot, what am I going to do with this thing? So you turn around, put up for rent on Craigslist. What kind of reaction does that get? Any takers? Yeah, you know, it blew my mind. I literally had inquiries coming in within a couple hours. So the light bulb, like, immediately went off. People are, hey, I need it for this weekend because that was in July when I purchased it for. So it's like in the middle of summer and people like, oh, hey, we're going camping this weekend or that weekend, you know, sure. So it was. It was wild. That is idea generating framework number five. Scratch your own itch, figure out, well, what annoys you. You can keep a mental note of all the things that frustrate you that you spend money to solve. You can look at your credit card statement where what are is a disproportionate portion of your spending going towards what do you wish you didn't have to deal with. What are the things that your friends, neighbors, co workers complain to you about? Because on the other side of all of those is Potential Business Idea, Potential side Hustle. We've got a couple more idea generating frameworks coming up for you right after this. Did you know there's a disease running rampant among side hustlers and new entrepreneurs? It's called Superhero Syndrome. Symptoms include a feeling like you gotta do everything yourself, thinking you're the only one who can do it right, and struggling to let go of certain tasks. Does that sound familiar to anyone? But the good news is there is a cure. Our sponsor, Indeed can help you find the best candidates for the roles you need to fill and find them fast. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. Indeed Sponsored Jobs help you stand out and hire fast. With Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want want faster than ever. Sponsored Jobs posted directly on indeed get 45% more applications. Don't let superhero syndrome hold you back. That's why for my next hire, I'm using Indeed. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed side Hustle. Show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@inn Indeed.com Sidehustleshow just go to indeed.com Sidehustleshow right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Sidehustleshow terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. If saving more and spending less is one of your top goals for 2025, you're going to want to hear this. When I switched to premium wireless with our sponsor Mint Mobile, it added hundreds of dollars a year back to my bottom line. Why is that? Well, because Mint Mobile lets you maximize your savings with plans starting at 15 bucks a month when you purchase a three month plan. Even better, all their 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 bring your existing phone number and all your existing contacts. They make it super easy to get this new customer offer and your new three month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month. Go to mintmobile.com sidehustle that's mintmobile.com Sidehustle Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com Sidehustleen $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. Idea generation framework number six is called Expert Enough. The idea here is you probably have an area of your life, or maybe several areas of your life life where you know more about than the average person. And this one can be a little tricky because once you know something, it's hard to imagine not knowing it. It's called the curse of knowledge. And you almost assume everyone else must also know this thing. It's not that special, but you'd be surprised that other people might pay to access the stuff that's in your head that is second nature to you. The stuff that you don't think twice about. Here's how Hugo Ortega described it in episode 602 last year.
- [34:35]
Hugo Ortega
So, basically, working as Yach crew, it's really, really common for people to have envy towards your job. Ask you, how did you get into this? What do I need to do to do the same thing? It's, it's kind of something that we blow off because you wouldn't be surprised how many people ask me. I give them the breakdown, I explain it, and then everyone goes, well, you know, okay, cool, I'll do that sometime. And it just kind of got used to doing the same pitch copy and pasting the same notes over and over. But I saw that more and more people were making money online and it was becoming more and more common for people to be able to work from their laptop top. So I was based on a boat at the time in the Netherlands. It was really cold, it was winter, it was bleak, it was snowing all the time. And it was a huge contrast between what I'd been previously doing, whether it was in the Caribbean or in the nice Mediterranean waters. And I just thought, maybe there's something I can do on the side so I can transition less to doing this and maybe kind of work a little bit on the boats, but also have something on land. Because ultimately I knew that I didn't want to be permanently on the boats.
- [35:30]
Nick Loper
And it wasn't. Wasn't the first side hustle that you thought about or that you started, was it?
- [35:35]
Hugo Ortega
No, no, actually, I was trying a few different things. I was looking at drop shipping, I was in the middle of building a website, trying to sell different Chinese trinkets and different things. I was thinking about a lot of different things. Ultimately, I kept coming across more and more people that were doing information products or courses based on stuff that they already knew. And it seemed like people were really successful when they actually either had the knowledge or they had the passion for the topic that they were thinking about. So that got me to thinking about the niche that I currently work in. And I was thinking, well, there's not that many people that actually work on yachts. There's a famous TV show that a lot of people think they know about yachting, but it's kind of a caricature of my industry. But anyway, I thought maybe this is something that I have that other people would like to do. I mean, I knew that people had been asking me about it all the time, so I just thought maybe I can package that together and show people how to do it and that could work.
- [36:23]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it's interesting. It's a very niche type of career, but still something where you've been able to find a large enough audience that's interested in it to say, okay, we can turn this into a business. Yeah, it's definitely helpful if you've got the actual knowledge and experience to go out and do that thing. Definitely helpful than just the current trend inside hustles. Well, let's just regurgitate a bunch of AI and spin up a website and see if it ranks. It's like, I don't know how sustainable that's going to be long term. And in your case, it was kind of like this aspiring yachty career advice seeker, like people trying to kind of land their first job in the space. Like, that was kind of a thesis of who I'm going to target.
- [37:00]
Hugo Ortega
Right. That was probably my original target as well. But then I also wanted to target people that maybe just wanted to travel. They wanted to work abroad or make money, just in an unconventional way, because that was pretty much what I was doing. When I first discovered yachting, I had never been on the water much. I didn't even know how to swim at the time. And while I was backpacking in Southeast Asia, I met someone who was doing this job. And just the more and more they told me about it, it sounded more and more appealing. And again, my love for travel was really what drove me into the industry. It wasn't so much a love for boating or a previous sailing experience. So I figured that it'd be nice to try to find people that were in the same situation as me, because I felt like if I could do it and I could have a successful career getting even up to the position of captain, that I thought a lot of other people might be able to do the same thing.
- [37:43]
Nick Loper
So Here's a quick exercise. Make a mental note or even a physical note of the stuff that people ask you questions about. That's a that you've got some perceived expertise in that area. You might not be the world's foremost thought leader on the topic, but you don't have to be. If you're just a step ahead of your target customer like Hugo found, you just might be expert enough. You can also take stock of the problems or challenges that you've overcome, the things that you found frustrating but figured out a solution for, or the things that come easy to you that other people struggle with. And that's a sign that you might be expert enough. Again, that's episode 602 with Hugo building an online expert based business based on his experience working on yachts, working on big boats. That's framework number six. And before we move on to our final framework, I think it's worthwhile to share a counterpoint for Expert Enough. A counterpoint for this one, where you can actually build expertise over time by following your curiosity. And the Side Hustle show is probably a good example of that. Where I had a little bit of side Hustle experience when I started. I'd already, already quit my job to run the side business full time, which I figured at least gave me some authority to start talking about this stuff. But I've definitely gained a whole lot more experience by embedding myself in the space for the last 11 and a half years. But the counterpoint that I had in mind is Harry Duran from the Vertical Farming podcast. Get this, Harry was running a podcast production company, but he didn't have any agriculture experience. He didn't have even any connections in that industry. It was just something he was curious about. So we started recording conversations with leaders in the vertical farming space and built a really inspiring side Hustle on the back of that. Here's Harry on how he landed his first guests. And then I started early with influencers in the space, people who were writing news sites about vertical farming. I got those early people on and then I started going for the CEOs and thankfully a couple of them said yes. Isn't that funny? I want to pause there because like, if you're just a dude, say, hey, can I pick your brain calling up some random CEO or cold emailing them and be like, who are you? Again, no, I'm not taking your call. But if you say, I have the vertical farming podcast and you are clearly a leader in this space, would you give me an hour of your time? All of A sudden it kind of flips that conversation and they're flattered by that invite in a lot of cases. And it's a chance to talk about what they're doing and hammer, hone their agenda. I think it's really cool. I think what a lot of people overthink sometimes is this idea of reaching out to people and saying, oh, this person's never going to say hi. I'm a little embarrassed to ask. They don't know who I am. And the first thing I did is I whipped up Airtable, one of my favorite apps. I just started dropping in all these companies, workfarming companies, just doing my research. Who's the CEO, who's a founder and building my list. Some people call it a dream 100, but people I wanted to have a conversation with. And when I started early, those early conversations, I would say, hey, I, I'm reaching out to name one, name two, name three these CEOs. And people would see that. And even though I hadn't actually had the conversation with them, by virtue of them seeing that name, they're like, oh, he's going for like the big names in the space. Once those people started confirming, I would change the language. I would say, I've now confirmed a interview with so and so. And then obviously once I started, okay, okay, yeah, and stair stepping, just kind of banking on the name recognition that you know, people are going to know who those other their names were. Okay. And then once those started getting confirmed and scheduled, I said I've now scheduled in an interview. So I just kept changing language. Obviously once I recorded. I've recorded three interviews with A, B, C and D. Harry went on to explain how he booked a $9,000 sponsorship deal before releasing a single episode. And it was something like $80,000 in total sponsorships over the course of the show for a very part time project in a niche he had no expertise in. So maybe we should call that this framework. Number 6.5. Curious enough in contrast to expert enough, but a super Inspiring story again. 586 in your archives if you want to go back and check that one out. Number seven is the probing for pain method. And this can be incredibly profitable if you know how to ask the right questions. How this generally works is calling up a business owner, could be someone you have a previous relationship with, could be somebody you never met, and asking questions like, hey, tell me a little bit about your business. What's the biggest challenge facing your industry over the next five years? What does a typical day look like for you what's the most frustrating or time consuming part of your business? Jonathan Stark is a pro at this. He explained how it works in episode five zero five.
- [42:04]
Chris Andrews
Okay, so let's assume that you've. You're good. You're really good at something. You know, you're good at it. You know, you don't have to be the best in the world at it. You just need to be a lot better at it than the people you're going to serve. So, you know, for example, if you want to sell web development services to web developers, you need to be great. Great.
- [42:19]
Nick Loper
Right.
- [42:20]
Chris Andrews
But that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about here. Let's say you totally understand how Facebook ads works and you want to help. We'll use dentists again.
- [42:28]
Nick Loper
So you say dentists are getting picked on.
- [42:30]
Chris Andrews
Yeah. Dennis are like my favorite vertical. They're a great one, actually, because virtually everyone knows one. So if you do something for Dennis, you could basically go to a party and literally everyone at that party can recommend, can introduce you to a dentist.
- [42:43]
Nick Loper
Fair enough. Okay.
- [42:44]
Chris Andrews
But any. Anyway, so let's say you do Facebook ads for dentist. Dentist. You already know Facebook ads. You taught yourself that maybe you did it for fun on a side project or whatever, but you just consider that you know a lot about it, probably more than the average dentist.
- [42:57]
Nick Loper
Yes.
- [42:57]
Chris Andrews
And then what you do is you go to that party or you just email your friends, or you, you know, in some private forum, you say, hey, I am thinking about putting together a new service for dentists. Does anybody know anybody that you'd be comfortable introducing me to so I could talk to them about this business idea? And you're going to get. Get virtually every, you know, assuming you have some friends and family, you're going to get a bunch of names, okay? Then either, either you have them intro you, or you reach out to the. The dentist directly and you say something along the lines of, you know, hey, I got your name from Bob, and I'm thinking about starting a new business. But before I do that, I wanted to talk to a few people like you or experts in your field and find out if I'm barking up the wrong tree or if this is valuable to anybody. This isn't the sales call in any way. I just want to pick your brain for. For 15 minutes. And in exchange for that, I would love to answer any questions you might have about Facebook ads or other things that, you know, other sorts of social media advertising.
- [43:53]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [43:54]
Chris Andrews
I've had some people go nuts with this and send out Maybe a hundred emails like that had other people just send out maybe 20 emails like that. And in both cases, you get a, you get about a 10% response rate. People are generally pretty happy to, to help you out with stuff like this as long as, one, they believe that it's not a sales call.
- [44:15]
Nick Loper
Right.
- [44:16]
Chris Andrews
And two, that you're not some kind of, like, direct competitor who's trying to find out trade secrets.
- [44:23]
Nick Loper
Oh, okay, okay.
- [44:24]
Chris Andrews
So you have to be really sensitive about those things and the kinds of questions you ask them when you get them on the phone. But assuming that you're, you're sensitive to that sort of thing, and, and it makes perfect sense why you're asking given questions, then it's, it's really not that much of a problem. So when you get them on the phone, you say, you say, hey, you know, in your mind, you're thinking, I have this hypothesis. I have this problem that would be valuable to be, you know, dentists would find valuable to be solved. And you validate that without leading the witness too much. So you don't want to put words in their mouth like, hey, if I offered, you know, a service where I advise you about your Facebook ads, or I manage your Facebook ads for you, do you know, at night or whatever, then would that, Would you pay for that? How much would you pay for that? Because that's too, it's too much. It's. People are either going to be nice and just say yes or they're gonna. It's gonna feel weird and awkward and salesy. I prefer to ask questions that are more like, the last time you did some advertising, how did you do it? And they'll explain some situation, you know, some. Something or, you know, and that'll lead you to the next. Next, you know, have you ever thought about this? Or have you ever thought about that? You're not putting words in their mouth, but you are directing them somewhat, at least on the topic area. So, you know, you, you don't want to get on the phone call and just come straight out with, like, if you could wave a magic wand and make your dental practice better, what would it be? Because they might go off and say, like, oh, if this teeth whitening stuff was cheaper, then, you know, that would be fantastic because it costs so much and I can't, you know, and they'll go off for 15 minutes talking about something that there's no way you can help them.
- [45:53]
Nick Loper
Okay. Okay. So they will, you know, specific to your, your, your service area or your, Your hypothetical service area, like, you know, what, what kind of advertising have you done so far? What's your social media presence like?
- [46:04]
Chris Andrews
Right. And literally everybody on every one of these calls, I call them market research calls, everybody. Is their hypothesis usually blown out of the water or at least blown sideways by these? And that's why they're so important. Because if you just went out and did all the work to set up a sales page for this service or started putting together, you know, a bunch of content marketing that you were going to put on an email list, like a drip campaign, it would be a giant waste of time because it would turn out that the specifics of what people actually find valuable in your expertise space is different than what you think.
- [46:41]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [46:41]
Chris Andrews
And there's another important piece is that they're going to use a bunch of words that a non expert would use to describe the stuff that you are an expert at. And you need to get those words and put them in your marketing materials so that your perfect ideal clients will recognize the, the message.
- [46:57]
Nick Loper
Oh, okay. So if they're not talking about, you know, CPMs and you know, all these different jargony words, they're like, I could really use more, I could really use more patients to get in my dental practice, right?
- [47:09]
Chris Andrews
Yeah, they're going to talk about, they're going to talk about their business in their business terms. And you need to get. This is the benefit of targeting a specific market is that you pull that language that's specific to that tribe to use the Seth Godin term, and you can put that straight into your materials. So at the top of the page, when you say, I help Dennis with Facebook ads, they're going to read down that page and they're, it's going to be like they're talking to a dentist. Like you obviously get them. It's going to be a, it's a really good trust builder, you know, from just a static, static page. Or if you're doing it over email, which you know, in this case probably better, you know, know, it's, it's amazing the difference. You get their heads nodding immediately.
- [47:44]
Nick Loper
Oldie but a goodie. That original call with Jonathan Stark. If you scroll down to number 505 in your podcast feed, you should be able to find it. My hope is that this episode has shown you there's no one right way to come up with your side hustle idea, your next business idea. But there are lots of different methods and exercises to try if you're struggling to find something that resonates with you. To recap what we covered, number one, was rip, pivot and jam. This is take somebody else's business model, pivot it to a new market, a new geography and jam. Go out and do the work. Number two was the sniper method. Look at a broad serving product or market and or service and figure out how can I carve out a tiny little sliver where if everybody else is a shotgun, how can I be a sniper rifle and just carve out a tiny little niche. Number three is the shovels in the gold rush method. Looking for trends and opportunities, opportunities and figure out, okay, how can I support the minors in that space? How can I tap into those trends with something that would be beneficial to them? Number four is the intersection method. This is what you know what you like and who do you know. How can you get connected with people that might value those other two things? Number five is the scratch your own itch method. This is looking at your own pains and problems and saying, well, if I've got this struggle, it's probably a struggle for somebody else as well. Lots of examples of that in the archive. Number six was Expert Enough. This is looking at the areas that other people ask you questions about. You have some perceived expertise and authority in that space. Even you might not even think of yourself as being an expert there, but other people do and that's a good sign. And there might be a market there. Six and a half. We took a pause to talk about Curious Enough, the counter example to Expert Enough, where if you can bring some unique curiosity into a space, you can build credibility and authority over time with the example of Harry and his vertical farming pioneering podcast. And number seven was what we called probing for pain. This is a little bit of the market research, the one on one conversations. What do people really want and how can you use their own words to build a service that would be beneficial to them? And then of course the other method, number eight is to just go binge on the side Hustle show until you find something that sounds good. We've got hundreds of ideas to choose from, so lots of different episodes mentioned in this one. I'll do my best to link up the those specific references in the show notes. Easiest way to get there is follow the show notes link in the episode description. You find the full write up on all of these different frameworks. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. As always, you can hit up Sidehustlenation.com deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. Friend. So fire off that text message to somebody who's looking for their next side Hustle. 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.