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- [00:00]
A
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. Hey, it's time for another round of business Idea Giveaways. And to help me out is a longtime friend and friend of the show. You know him as the entrepreneur from my wife. Quitherjob.com Steve Chu. Welcome back to the Side Hustle Show.
- [01:18]
B
Happy to be back, Nick. I always enjoy recording these episodes and they do well on my podcast as well.
- [01:23]
A
Awesome. It's become a tradition. I think this is our third round of third time.
- [01:28]
B
Yeah.
- [01:28]
A
Business idea Giveaways. If you like this format, make sure to go back and and check out the other two. We'll link up those episodes in the show notes for this episode. Now, I want to pitch you an idea that came to mind recently. This is a household item that I can almost guarantee you have several of in your house that experts recommend you replace probably more often than you do. This item, experts say, can contain up to 16 different species of fungi. And up to 10% of the weight of this item is now dust mites. And this their waist. Do you have a guess of what this is?
- [02:06]
B
Is it a water filter or air filter?
- [02:08]
A
Neither of those. This is your pillow on your bed.
- [02:10]
B
Oh, no way.
- [02:11]
A
Okay, so the idea that I want to pitch is pillows as a service, a pillow subscription service. You would take some quiz, determine your. Are you a Back sleeper? Are you a side sleeper? Okay, what density, what thickness, you know, is going to be perfect for you? And then we're just going to ship you a new one of those every three to six months, whatever the cadence is. That turns out to be, like, optimal for, you know, cleaning this thing and having a less gross sleeping experience.
- [02:37]
B
I kind of like that. So is it the pillow or the pillow case or both?
- [02:41]
A
I think it's the pillow itself that, you know, obviously, you know, wash your pillow case as often as you. You care to, but, like, the pillow itself collects all of this nasty stuff that just is. Is difficult to get rid of.
- [02:54]
B
Interesting. I kind of like that idea. I'm very particular about my pillow, though, so. So I like a tempur pedicure.
- [03:00]
A
It's. It's very personalized, but once you, once you find one that you like, it's like, okay, I'll just keep getting that one.
- [03:04]
B
I like that idea. Actually, I never thought of that because come to think of it, one of my buddies cannot sleep at night. And then he started, well, changing his sheets like three times a week. And that actually fixed it. So this is similar, I think.
- [03:18]
A
Interesting. Yeah, we spend, you know, we're supposed to spend, you know, eight hours a day sleeping. And so you spend a lot of time, a third of your hours on top of this thing, and you start to think about, like, oh, this is kind of gross. Dead skin cells and everything else is going on there. You're like, yeah, we should probably replace this more often. More often than we do. I can't remember the last time I got a new pillow.
- [03:41]
B
You know why I like recording these episodes with you, Nick, is we have completely different ideas. So mine are kind of very E commerce focused. Selling focused. And.
- [03:49]
A
Yeah. Well, this. There's an E commerce angle to this.
- [03:52]
B
There is, there is, there is. So. So my idea was because right now I run an E commerce store, and a lot of us don't want to be doing customer service, meaning, like, answering phones and whatnot. And you know how AI is all the rage right now. And so a lot of stores are having these chat bots just being like, the first line of defense. Yeah, it's really easy to just train your chat bot to know your products. And so I was thinking a service. And again, you have to figure out how to do all this stuff, which is, not surprisingly, not that complicated. Train them up and then offer it as a service to just create one of these bots. Customer service bot for an online store or any store that just knows the products and can answer simple questions.
- [04:32]
A
And so this would be a process of feeding in all the product details and exactly, kind of like the frequently asked questions, basically like the database of knowledge. And you could probably feed in chat transcripts from like the, you know, previous 10 years of human, you know, customer support representatives and say, well, what did they, how did they respond to this?
- [04:50]
B
I mean, the least techy way to do this is to literally just create a spreadsheet of all the products, product descriptions and everything, and then just send them into an AI bot and train it just for that store as a service.
- [05:03]
A
Yeah. Okay. The question is like, how do you. Would you just send cold pitches to people, you know, on Shopify, do random product searches, see what stores show up?
- [05:11]
B
What I would do is I would just go through the Shopify database of stores and just start reaching out to them through their contact forms. There's a lot of demand for this. I know because I'm a member of all these forums and people are asking how to do it. And then there's like ridiculously overpriced services that offer more than this. Obviously at the base level, it's a very simple thing that an individual can do for other companies.
- [05:35]
A
Okay, so you go sell it as a service. And the pitch being we're going to save you so many human hours of customer support time or like that first line of defense. Right. If we can reduce the number of inquiries. And you see this on so many tech support where it's like, you know, check out our knowledge base or check out our frequently asked questions, you know, do you still want to submit a ticket? Did this question, you know, did your question get answered? Like, you know, sometimes it's not even clear that you're going to get somebody, that a human is going to read your question.
- [06:01]
B
Yeah. And oftentimes, like, if you look at our most commonly asked questions is where's my order? And. Or what should I buy? Like, I'm looking for this, what should I buy? And you can answer that question really easily with an AI bot because that knows your products.
- [06:13]
A
Yeah, that's. That's interesting. I help people on their decision making. Not just, you know, tech support, troubleshooting, triage, but like actually on the front end of, well, this is my situation. Help point me in the right direction?
- [06:24]
B
Pretty much, yeah.
- [06:25]
A
I've got one that I'll throw out. This is probably under the umbrella of smart home automation, but I'm going to call it the second guess remover. Because how many times have you pulled out of the house. And it's not until you, you know, turn the corner out of the neighborhood that you start to think, did I close the garage door?
- [06:43]
B
I do that all the time.
- [06:44]
A
And now that you've planted that seed of doubt, your wife is like, oh, I think we did, but I'm not really sure. Why don't we just go back and check? And so the second guess remover is, you know, maybe it's an app on your phone. Maybe it's some way to either remotely close it with some smart device or it just, you know, some way to double check. Like, yes, in fact, we did close it. And you turn around and nine times out of ten, of course you closed it, because you always do. But one time, the one time that I can remember where we didn't actually close, it was one of your starting our 13 hour drive from California back up to Washington. And we turned around, we were like, oh, crap. We were going to be gone for a couple of weeks, so this thing was wide open. So it's like that. For that reason, we always do turn around and go check.
- [07:23]
B
How did you know that it was open?
- [07:25]
A
It was just that, that seed of doubt, like, we better turn around and we better go check.
- [07:28]
B
Oh, that seeded out. Yeah. So I actually, I haven't talked about this publicly, but our house got broken into a couple of weeks back, and so now we've got like cameras everywhere.
- [07:38]
A
Yeah.
- [07:39]
B
So I guess I would accomplish the same thing as this.
- [07:42]
A
Yeah, I guess if you had the camera pointed at the garage, you could check.
- [07:44]
B
But yeah, I like that idea. I do that all the time, actually. I second guess myself all the time.
- [07:49]
A
It's bad. It's bad. Yeah, it is. Like, of course you closed it because that's just part of like the pulling out of the driveway process. But sometimes it's like, did I hit the button? I don't know. Another one? You know, while we're on the topic of, you know, theft deterrent, kind of in this, in this ballpark, a neighbor of ours has, you know, how people have the yard signs like this home protected by, you know, Xfinity monitoring or ADT or even like Simplisafe. You see all this stuff. This guy went a different route and his sign said something like, this home protected by, you know, a trigger happy second amendment voter or something. I was like, hey, that. That's a bold move. I don't know if this guy is armed or not, but it's enough if I'm a prospective criminal to be like, I'm going to. I'M going to go to the next house.
- [08:33]
B
I think that would work in 49 out of the 50 states in California. That would not fly.
- [08:39]
A
You don't think so?
- [08:40]
B
I don't think so. But you're. I mean, yeah, they might think twice. I mean, it's all about being less appealing than the next house.
- [08:45]
A
Right, right, right. Again, how can I make myself less of an easy mark, less of an easy cognitive?
- [08:50]
B
So my next idea also has to do with shopping, but this is a trend that's been happening all over Asia and I'm not sure if you watch TikTok or any of those, but. So there's this one lady who's. Who's famous for this and made it all over the News. She made $13.7 million in 7 Days Live selling on the Chinese version of TikTok. And she's just taking other people's products and just.
- [09:11]
A
I thought TikTok was the Chinese ver. TikTok. There's like a different.
- [09:14]
B
Douyin is a Chinese version. The Chinese version of TikTok has educational videos and stuff. Not. Not the stuff that we have in America, but it was just this lady holding up stuff. Holding up for like three seconds and then sliding it over.
- [09:25]
A
Okay.
- [09:26]
B
And so basically there's a lot of e commerce stores that want exposure to this audience so you can offer live selling services. And again, you don't need an audience to do this on TikTok, which is, which is the beauty of it. But if you just go on, it's a consistency thing and you go on, you sell. There's a whole like career of people doing this now, but they're not doing it for. On a mass market trying to recruit other companies to list their goods.
- [09:54]
A
So this would be. I'm the micro influencer selling random stuff.
- [09:59]
B
So basically you, you send me your product and you reach out and then you will just live sell on Facebook. TikTok just stream all at once and you just be like a virtual salesman, kind of like an affiliate in a different way. Like, remember we had affiliates in the web world where you click on a link.
- [10:14]
A
Yeah.
- [10:15]
B
This is literally like the home shopping network.
- [10:17]
A
Okay. But if you don't have any following, like who's.
- [10:20]
B
That's the beauty of it. You don't need a following on these platforms. As long as your selling style is appealing over time, these platforms like TikTok will find people that watch you.
- [10:31]
A
Okay, so are you sending your wedding linens to people doing this kind of thing? I could see if we can move.
- [10:36]
B
Some product well, so what's funny about all this? The reason why I came up with this, I was like I was going to do this for our own products.
- [10:43]
A
Yeah.
- [10:43]
B
Like, who wants to see a middle aged Chinese guy selling wedding linens? Right. I would want to find someone probably female for our products. Probably, you know, in the demographic that we're looking for for doing this.
- [10:55]
A
Yeah.
- [10:56]
B
And so what's funny is a lot of these ideas that I've come up with here today are things that I actually need for myself. And I know stores are looking for this.
- [11:04]
A
Interesting.
- [11:05]
B
And TikTok affiliates have already been big. It just hasn't been organized as much.
- [11:10]
A
We've heard from some e comm sellers that they've had some pretty good success going after micro influencers in their niche and even people kind of doing product reviews and pointing towards a TikTok shop.
- [11:21]
B
I think the problem is you have to go out and find these people. Whereas if there's someone you know who's very eloquent and good on camera and you go to the store more often than not, they'll be like, hey, sure, because it's all on consignment anyways. Right. You don't have to pay the person until they make a sale.
- [11:37]
A
Okay. All performance based, where you kind of set a target. The cost of acquisition.
- [11:42]
B
Yeah, pretty much.
- [11:43]
A
That's new to me. I don't spend any time on TikTok or these other ones. More business idea giveaways with Steve coming up right after this. Years ago I was sitting in a conference in Santa Barbara and the presenter asked this question, are you working on your business or are you working in your business? And at that point I'd already quit my job. I saw myself as a full time entrepreneur. But it was this moment of clarity that no, I'm still very much working in the business. So when I got back home, that's when I made my first full time hire. It was the first in a long series of steps of learning to truly take control by being okay. Of letting go of certain tasks. Now when you find yourself in that position of needing to hire like yesterday, you need Indeed. With a sponsored job on Indeed, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can stand out and reach the right people faster. Plus, there's no monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts and you only pay for results. 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 at Indeed.com Sidehustleshow just go to Indeed.com SidehustlesHow right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Sidehustleshow terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need Running a retail business is no joke, especially if you're selling online and in person, and especially if you're doing it as a side hustle. But Shopify Point of Sale makes it simple. Shopify POS is your all in one command center, seamlessly connecting your in store and online operations, whether you've got one location or a thousand. That means customers can shop however they want and you've got the tools to help close the sale every time. And here's the kicker. Acquiring new customers is expensive. You already know that. Shopify POS helps you keep customers coming back with personalized experiences that people have come to expect and the first party data that give your marketing team a serious edge, even if that marketing team is just you right now. Plus, the numbers don't lie. Businesses using Shopify POS see an average of an 8.9% boost in sales and a 22% better total cost of ownership. Want more? Check out shopify.com sidehustle all lowercase and learn how to create the best retail experiences without complexity. Shopify.com Sidehustle do you have solar panels under your house?
- [14:13]
B
We do not.
- [14:14]
A
Okay. This is something that we've been trying to figure out and contemplate. Even though we live in the great gray gloomy northwest. We have a south facing roof and very simple roof structure where it's like, okay, this would be good. And it's, it kind of pains me every summer when it does get hot out. It's like almost this greenhouse where it's like we're just soaking up all this juice and just absorbing it, like we're not doing anything with it, like how can we harvest this in some way? But the world of solar sales is pretty opaque and sometimes a little bit shady. And people making all kinds of promises about, well, this tax rebate and then you can claim the depreciation on top of this. And other people are like, yeah, that's, that's not a thing like that. Who, who told you that? And it's just. So the idea here is like the, you know, local consultant person who can kind of play matchmaker, analyze your, your situation and your needs and they might tell you like, look, this is just not a Fit for you. But we've got relationships with local vendors, the local installers, and figure out, okay, what is a realistic and. And good price for this type of. Type of installation. And we also just had a few months ago, the bomb Cyclone 2024. This was like a mass power outage event where, you know, half a million people or something out of power, and we were down five days or something in the dark, and, you know, had to toss all the food out of the fridge. Thankfully, no property damage in this storm, but it was like, it got everybody thinking about, like, well, what is my, you know, home energy backup plan? Like, is this a battery system? Is this a generator system? Is it, you know, what. What makes the most sense? And this was, you know, a once in a generation event. I was like, well, maybe if I just allocate what I would have spent on a battery towards, you know, a hotel room or, you know, and restocking the freezer, like, oh, I could survive the next several storms and it would still be coming out ahead. But it's something that a lot of people were thinking about in response to that. So it's kind of the home energy backup consultant. I know on a previous one of these, we talked about the. You pitched the zombie apocalypse consultant. And it's. It's like in that same. In that same realm.
- [16:18]
B
Yeah, yeah, same thing. Same thing. You know, since we're talking about solar, there was this article that I was reading where like, within, like the first couple years, the effectiveness of your solar panels degrades dramatically because dirt gets accumulated on this. So how about, like a service where you just go around and clean people's solar panels?
- [16:37]
A
Yeah. Oh, we can. We can boost the efficiency. Yeah, yeah, we can get you back up.
- [16:40]
B
Exactly. I mean, that wasn't one of the ones I had on my list, but your. Your idea made me think of that.
- [16:45]
A
Yeah, we'll put it down.
- [16:46]
B
All right, here's one that literally I just thought of the other day as I was eating at a restaurant. So I was ordering from a Chinese restaurant for Chinese New Year, which just passed, and I noticed that the company that I was ordering from was offering to pay $3 per photo of their food so that they could populate the app with, like, authentic pictures of their food. And these photos are meant to be casual, so they come across authentic. Right. Not like a stage shot.
- [17:16]
A
Okay.
- [17:16]
B
And so I was thinking my business idea is to just go around to these restaurants. Clearly there's this need and offer to just take organic pictures of their food. And maybe in the beginning, you just do it in exchange for a free meal, just for kicks. But maybe over time, you could turn this into, you know, real business. Because restaurants want people taking pictures and making videos of their food and posting them, whether it be on the app or are on their own accounts.
- [17:40]
A
So they're trying to incentivize, like, a crowdsourced image gallery, basically. Like, oh, of course we're going to have our, you know, fancy professional product photographer come in and take these shots. But, you know, it looks more. It looks more legit. It looks more official if it's, you know, just random customers posting pictures of their food.
- [17:56]
B
Yeah, if it's a customer, like, holding up the plate or the food or eating it or whatever.
- [18:00]
A
Okay.
- [18:01]
B
Instead of, like, a stock photo. And so they were willing to pay $3 per photo.
- [18:05]
A
Wow.
- [18:06]
B
And of course, we did this, right?
- [18:07]
A
Yeah. You take some pictures.
- [18:08]
B
Yeah, you just take a picture of the food that you just got, like, eating it. So clearly there's a demand here. And maybe you can do this on.
- [18:14]
A
A mass scale, and it only takes, you know, one to get a toehold. And then you start going to the neighborhood or the restaurant down the street. Like, did you know these guys must be onto something. Hey, they're paying $3 a picture, you know, to get these different things. Is it just to, like, populate Yelp or where are they putting these things?
- [18:30]
B
So the one that I used, I can't remember the service. There's a whole bunch of these delivery services.
- [18:34]
A
Oh, okay.
- [18:35]
B
That they have. So maybe like, DoorDash. We didn't use DoorDash, but DoorDash could be one of those. Right. It's one thing to see, like, photos of just the food. It's another to see, like, real people enjoying the food.
- [18:45]
A
Okay.
- [18:46]
B
And so maybe that's, like, a way to. I don't know the economics behind it, but if they're willing to pay $3 a photo, clearly there's a demand for this.
- [18:54]
A
Yeah. So that helps. That helps their average order value. That helps their conversion rate in these apps or something.
- [18:59]
B
Conversion rate, Probably. Yeah.
- [19:00]
A
Interesting. Okay, I've got one that is related to software price increases. I think you and me both share a frugality gene. And so whenever some tool that I'm using, like, jacks up the price, like, it pains me a little bit. And it. It pains me that the switching cost is so high. It pains me that I feel, like, kind of powerless to do anything about it. And so it makes me want to, like, research alternatives, like, better, faster, cheaper alternatives. The one that really hit me was leadpages recently where to their credit, they had not increased the rate in 10 years. And so it's like, I understand, like this is due for a rate, but it was such a shock because it was like, it almost doubled. It was like, oh, did it?
- [19:41]
B
Oh man, really?
- [19:42]
A
Like, hey, I've been a customer for 10 years. This is what you're going to do to me. I was like, spent the whole day researching alternatives and trying to migrate over to optimized press for 25% of the price. And so the service that I want to pitch is like the software migration service. And it could, it didn't have to be leadpages. It could be anywhere. You see people complaining about a price increase. It could be people looking for, you know, fill in the blank product alternative. Like Zapier did this a couple years ago, or they really increased their rates. Anytime you see people complaining about that, like, there may be an opportunity to be like, hey, you know, I'm a specialist in migrating from this thing to this thing. And maybe you build some tool to help you do it. Like, I don't know, there's probably a way to do it faster. And the thing is, a lot of these are kind of proprietary, closed off software systems. Like, maybe it's a little more challenging than, than that, but if you, if you get good at it, I imagine you can knock these out pretty quickly.
- [20:32]
B
You know, it's funny that you mentioned Zapier, because I can't remember how many years ago when Zapier doubled their prices. I moved everything over to, to make.
- [20:40]
A
Yeah, me too.
- [20:41]
B
Oh, you did? It wasn't called make it. They make. Acquired the company. I can't remember what it was called. It was some.
- [20:46]
A
Yeah, it was like Integromat first.
- [20:47]
B
Integromat. That's what it was.
- [20:49]
A
Yeah, but yeah, because. And the challenge is there's a learning curve. It's like, well, I already know how Zapier works. Do I really want to do this? Is it worth the time? But it's like, well, if I'm going to have this for another five or ten years, then yeah, it adds up every month.
- [21:04]
B
I like that you would have to specialize in something. But yeah, that'd be really easy to do because people tend to complain on Reddit. Right, right. You could say, hey, I just use this to migrate and it's like your own service.
- [21:15]
A
Yeah, right.
- [21:17]
B
I love it. I like that one. I like that one.
- [21:19]
A
Who can I, can I go again while we're on the Topic of Reddit. So as you know, like, the world of SEO has kind of been turned upside down the last year, year and a half or so with Google really prioritizing both AI search results, but also sites like Reddit and like Quora kind of these, you know, user generated content type of sites. And so. And I've actually met somebody doing this, but they're providing Reddit marketing services where we'll create these different accounts and will kind of build up their Reddit credibility. So it's not like they're just coming in and spamming links, but they're kind of like strategically and intentionally highlighting your brand in kind of an organic Reddit approved way in a lot of cases where you could start, well, if Reddit is, you know, all of a sudden siphoning off a bunch of my traffic, like, how can I get in front of that traffic in a way that at least from the outside looking in appears to be authentic and playing by those rules.
- [22:13]
B
Yeah, you know, those gamification services started happening almost immediately after. Have you been approached by the Reddit services?
- [22:21]
A
Not by anybody serious, that I can tell.
- [22:23]
B
I mean, I've been approached and I always thought it was spammy, but like the people who've approached me. But yeah, there are companies paying lots of money for this service, so. Absolutely.
- [22:33]
A
I mean, it's basically a ghostwriting service where they're taking your content, your ideas and putting it up there and like, you're probably not going to get the same traffic, the same traffic value, but it's a way to get your message.
- [22:44]
B
It's funny, our. Our mutual friend Spencer Haas, I think, tried one of these services.
- [22:48]
A
Oh, okay.
- [22:49]
B
And he had some good results. I know you probably had him on this podcast at some point.
- [22:52]
A
Yeah, we'll have to catch up with Spencer for sure.
- [22:55]
B
Okay, so my next idea has to do with the fact that we recently moved my mom into our neighborhood and she was moving from a gigantic house to a little teeny tiny house because, you know, housing so expensive over here.
- [23:07]
A
Yeah.
- [23:07]
B
Anyway, she had to get rid a lot of stuff. And you know, if you go to these estate sale people, it's all like a super sketchy industry. Like you have. They can't give you prices on anything and they just kind of give you this check and they don't even give you like an itemized list of what was sold and for how much. They just kind of hand you this check at the very end, which I found really sketchy. And we interviewed a whole bunch of these services. But so I Was thinking there's a lot of people moving, right. And they need to get rid of their stuff. So why not just put like an above board sort of selling service where you'll offer to just ebay all of their stuff. And it's completely transparent. You show them the auctions, you just go and you take photos. For some reason, I could not find a service that was willing to come to my mom's house, take a full inventory, and just list everything on ebay.
- [23:57]
A
Oh, okay. No, I like this. Lots of. I mean, it taps into the trend of, you know, empty nester, baby booner, baby boomer is downsizing and, and a typical. I mean, what's an estate sale fee is they take 40, 50% of everything they sell.
- [24:11]
B
They. Yeah, they pretty much take half. But it's the lack of transparency that bugged me. Like they can't make any promises and they don't even give you the itemized list of everything. At least the ones that I interviewed in Maryland. And I could not find a place that was just willing to ebay everything and come to the house. Like, you can bring all your stuff to them and they'll ebay. I found those services.
- [24:30]
A
I had met a guy a couple years ago who was doing something similar. It wasn't, maybe some of it was ebay, but another segment of his business was like a dedicated, like auction site, like almost a dedicated estate sale type of site. It's like, I'll manage the whole thing for you. Partnered with local real estate agents who kind of knew the customers as they were selling their house and knew they were going to need to get rid of some of this stuff. And it was all on consignment, it was all on performance. Whatever sells, we'll take a cut and we'll pass on the rest.
- [24:58]
B
Yeah, I mean, the key for me was transparency.
- [25:01]
A
Yeah, right.
- [25:02]
B
I like to see the auctions and whatnot. And sure, you can take your cut, but at least in Maryland, the estate sale people that I went through, it just felt like kind of dirty to me.
- [25:12]
A
Yeah, I really like this one. And then, you know, do that realtor partner angle or start with friends and family who are going through this process. Get a few reps under your belt and figure out, you know, how to streamline that process and then provide that. Yeah, it's kind of the, the anti positioning. It's like you position it as. We're transparent. We're the, you know, homeowner advocate. You know, like there's different ways. It's like, you know, when you See, like cruelty free on like a shampoo or any type of product or something. You're like, yeah, well, now I automatically assume that every, every other thing is like filled with cruelty.
- [25:45]
B
Right.
- [25:46]
A
And you're like, well, that's an interesting anti. Positioning.
- [25:49]
B
Yeah. Just the fact that you can see the auctions that they're conducting and what the actual selling price is. Yeah, that'd be good enough for me.
- [25:55]
A
Cool, cool, cool. Do you have a OURA ring?
- [25:56]
B
No, I do not.
- [25:57]
A
Yeah, me neither. And the reason I don't is I believe the sleep score is largely irrelevant. Where it's like, I'm going to wake up today and I got to be the best version of myself, you know, whether I slept well or whether I slept poorly. I still got to show up. I got to be a dad. I got to do all the things. I got to go crush the day. And so it's like, you know, maybe there's an opportunity for the aura ring that just shoots back, you know, 98s, 99s, like all the time. It's like you nailed it last night. You know, you might feel tired, but no, the data says you did great. You might as well, you know, go out and crush your day. Something that's kind of been. Been on my mind. It's like, you know, sleep is getting a lot of attention lately with we're recognizing like how important it is for brain recovery. Like, you know, all sorts of different health consequences. And it's like, yes, do all the things to make sure you try and get the best night's sleep possible. But it's kind of silly like, oh, I'm not going to do what I plan to do because I only got a 73. Like, oh, really? Like you still have to go do your day.
- [26:54]
B
So this is like a positive reinforcement type of OURA ring.
- [26:57]
A
Yeah, I like that.
- [26:58]
B
That cheers you on.
- [26:59]
A
You have to be connected to any data. Like it just has like fake looking Bluetooth or something. Gag. Gag Gift.
- [27:05]
B
You know, I considered getting the OURA ring because I know like what you eat has a lot to do with how well you sleep. So by just eating certain things and then taking, you know, the score, you can. Because I know, like, for example, if I eat something super greasy, like Chinese food, for example, like the night before, I don't sleep that well.
- [27:22]
A
Yeah.
- [27:23]
B
And it's. It's taken me years to figure that out. Whereas maybe something like that ring could have, could have told me. So maybe more like an application specific type of ring.
- [27:31]
A
Okay.
- [27:31]
B
Where you enter in what you Ate. And then you get the data, you know, to see if there's any correlations.
- [27:36]
A
Some of those simple things. And maybe it's just like a reminder in the morning. Carpe diem. You know, it could be something simple like a simple push notification, like, hey, today's the day. Go get it. You're not getting any younger. We had some guys on the show years ago there, that was their app. I think it was called We Croak. And it was just like a daily death reminder. And it was, you know, like the memento mori thing. It was like, yeah, hey, just a, you know, I don't know. 1:27pm hey, just. Just a heads up. You're gonna die someday. And it's like, well, shoot, I better go get after it.
- [28:04]
B
Nice, nice. So this next idea is, I hope Tony doesn't get mad at me. But what was funny about this next idea is I got it from her during Seller Summit. So Seller Summit's the annual E commerce conference that I run. And hilariously, at the last event, she was actually helping some attendees optimize their dating profiles because they're these guys that they come to Seller Summit every year and they're still single. And they. We just struck up this conversation like, yeah, you know, how do I improve my dating efficiency? So Tony looked at their profile and they're like, oh, okay, you need to change this, this, this, this. Right, yeah. So now with. With a whole bunch of these AI image tools and whatnot, and AI just in general to help with the copy, you can easily put together a profile that your foot in the door, and then it's up to you to screw up the date or whatnot. But so Tony was helping people with their dating profiles for at least two or three people at the event. I was like, tony, you should do this for a living.
- [28:58]
A
It's her next business, her next side hustle.
- [29:00]
B
Exactly. And there's all these AI tools that can touch up your existing photos to make you look better from an existing photo that you upload too.
- [29:07]
A
Yeah, No. I had a friend who recently did an AI LinkedIn headshot kind of thing. He fed in a bunch of existing pictures. Like, hey, this was a lot faster and cheaper than hiring a photographer.
- [29:18]
B
I mean, of course, you know, once people all start doing this, you're not going to be able to believe anyone's profile. But, you know, at least it gets you in the door, you know?
- [29:25]
A
Yeah. I mean, how many of these dating profiles are, you know, completely honest and truthful to begin with?
- [29:30]
B
That's true. That's true. But it's very easy to screw up one of these too, because certain people are looking for certain things, right?
- [29:35]
A
Yeah. My brother's rule was, you know, anybody who had, you know, anything Seahawks related was like an automatic out. He's like, I don't care about football. Anybody who's like, you know, holding a beer, it was like, automatic out. He's like, is he sober? It was just, you know, it's kind of interesting, like everybody has their own different filters and criteria where for somebody else it would be like, hey, you know, you're drinking beer and watching football. It sounds like my kind of person.
- [29:57]
B
Exactly. But the conference shows that a lot of people need help in this department, so there's clearly a demand for it.
- [30:02]
A
I mean, that taps into some other trends too, of, you know, people, you know, postponing a lot of major life decisions, getting married later in life, having kids later in life. Like, you know, the loneliness epidemic. Like, this is. This is a real thing. Like help people find their partner. I mean, that taps into a big, big market.
- [30:18]
B
That is, until AI becomes that partner. But that's a topic for a different episode, Nick.
- [30:22]
A
That's another episode recently. It was like I interviewed my AI self, like Robo Nick, you know, just prompted ChatGPT to respond as me. And it did it surprisingly well. It was like, hey, that's. That's kind of the answer I would have given. And, you know, it only made up a few facts, which were a little weird, but it did surprisingly well. I was like, are you trying to take my job?
- [30:42]
B
You publish that on your podcast? No, I haven't tried that yet. That sounds like a very interesting episode.
- [30:46]
A
Yeah, I mean, because you've got, you know, this 10 year body of work out on the Internet too, where, you know, Ed absolutely could respond to Steve.
- [30:52]
B
Link that episode up. I want to listen to that one. That sounds like a great idea, by the way. Yeah, love it.
- [30:57]
A
All right, I'll send that one to you. We've got more business idea giveaways with Steve coming up right after this. Friends. Don't let friends overpay for wireless. Which is why I'm excited to partner with Mint Mobile for this episode. Don't let the traditional big wireless carriers take you for a ride this year. I made the switch to Mint Mobile over five years ago and haven't looked back, saving thousands of dollars over that time. With Mint Mobile, you get premium wireless plans starting at 15 bucks a month. All of those plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and even bring over your existing phone number and all your existing contact. So join me in ditching overpriced wireless this year and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint mobile for just 15 bucks a month. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans@mintmobile.com Sidehustle that's mintmobile.com Sidehustle upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 per month new customer offer for first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. C Mint Mobile for details look, payday is awesome, but when you're the one running payroll, calculating taxes and deductions, staying compliant, it's not as simple as it was when you're just on the receiving end. That is, unless of course, you have our sponsor, Gusto. Gusto is a simple online payroll and benefits tool built specifically for small businesses like yours. Gusto gets your team paid while automatically filing your payroll taxes. Plus you can offer other benefits like 401k health insurance, workers comp. And it works for both W2 and 1099 workers. Gusto's gotten a lot of love from side Hustle show guests over the years, and some friends of mine have even mentioned using it to pay their own salary. On top of that, they've got great customer service, and certified HR experts are standing by to help. If you have any question, it's no wonder why more than 300,000 small businesses already trust Gusto to help run their payroll, and 99% of them say the value they get from Gusto is worth the price. Side Hustle show listeners get three months free when you go to Gusto.com Sidehustle again, that's Gusto.com SidehustLe to try three months free. All right, what's. What's next? Is it my turn?
- [33:09]
B
It's your turn, but I got a couple more too.
- [33:11]
A
Next one for me is in the world of content creation, and I'm calling this. You know, I'm feeling lucky for podcast editing. And so what we've learned over 10, almost 12 years of podcast editing, it is at least as much about what you don't say as what you say. Like what what you don't air. And so my job as the host is to cut the fluff, cut the stuff that doesn't add to the conversation. Or like we went off this tangent, didn't really go anywhere or that question kind of landed with a duh, like, okay, fine. And so my job after recording has been to go through the transcript and find those little sections just to try and tighten that up. And maybe we'll record for an hour and try and find the best 50 minutes. And maybe there's a sliding scale on this. You know, I'm feeling lucky. Editor. I think this is going to rely on AI. You feed in the transcript, you feed in examples of past episodes that you really like. And my thought is this is going to make suggestions on where to trim the fat, what's what, what could you cut out of this and not lose the overall message and takeaways, but just make it a tighter listening experience?
- [34:19]
B
I've been waiting for a tool like that as long as I've been podcasting. I think the closest thing that I've used for that is a tool called Opus Clip. Have you tried that tool?
- [34:30]
A
No. This is like the we'll make AI shorts for you.
- [34:34]
B
Yeah, it'll make shorts for you, but it actually does a reasonably good job of picking out, like, something that you can just cut to the front, you know, to get that hook and the attention. Okay, but something like that, More along the lines of what you just described. I would definitely pay for a tool like that, no questions asked.
- [34:51]
A
This is where I love being a podcast guest, where I just show up and as soon as the recording is done, like, my work is over. But as the host, it's like, well, now I gotta review this whole transcript and figure this out.
- [35:01]
B
I know.
- [35:01]
A
And thankfully have an editing service to help, you know, perform those actual cuts. But even just a starting point, you know, maybe that's what it is. It's like, okay, we want to end. The sliding scale is like, you know, I want to, you know, how strict did you want it to be? Like, okay, it's only going to keep the best 15 minutes. I think that would be really, really hard. But if you're just, I want to trim 10%. You know, give me the bottom 10% of this episode, and maybe it will make suggestions on that.
- [35:24]
B
So all these ideas that I've given you are just ones that I've come up with as a result of things that have happened in my life. So as I mentioned before, my mom just moved in our neighborhood, and, you know, as you get older, you want to spend more time with your parents. Right. And what I've discovered, just hanging out with my mom a lot more, is that she has all these stories to tell that you don't know. About that, you probably wouldn't have asked when you were younger, right?
- [35:46]
A
Yeah.
- [35:47]
B
And so there was a service that we used a while back where the company basically just emails your, your mom or your parent a list of questions and then they compile their answers in a book for you, right?
- [35:58]
A
Yeah.
- [35:58]
B
But I was thinking of taking that one step further. So this is a book that sits on my shelf that I treasure now because it's all stories.
- [36:04]
A
But what, what service did you use for that?
- [36:06]
B
I forgot what it was called, but I can find out for, for your listeners if they want.
- [36:10]
A
Okay.
- [36:10]
B
The problem with that service though was like the, the parent or whatever has to do a lot of writing.
- [36:15]
A
Yeah.
- [36:15]
B
It's actually quite burdensome for them, especially if English isn't their first language. So what I was thinking about doing was taking that one step further. All you have to do is you come with the questions ahead of time and then you just take a film crew and you just go interview that person. That way you have it on video. I think that would be much more valuable. I love the book, don't get me wrong. But it was just kind of hard to. To make sure it got written in. Whereas with video, if you send a film crew there, you know, it's just off the cuff and it's actually your parents speaking, which is a valuable keepsake for anyone to have.
- [36:46]
A
Yeah. And then they, they can turn it into like a documentary style.
- [36:50]
B
Yes.
- [36:50]
A
Yeah.
- [36:50]
B
And maybe that could be an extra service. You turn it into. You do the editing and you turn into a docum type thing.
- [36:55]
A
I think this would be really cool because you're exactly right. I looked into some of these parent story capture services.
- [37:02]
B
Yeah.
- [37:03]
A
And you're exactly right. It's like it's a gift. That's what we're looking at for Christmas gifts. But it's like this is just a lot of work. Like now all of a sudden every month you got to answer all these questions and you know, for what real benefit? Like, you already know these stories. This is more of a gift for us. But it was challenging and it kind of first came to mind with my grandpa on my dad's side. So listen to the hardcore history, like 18 Hour Saga of, you know, World War II in the Pacific. And I know we served there, like, you know, Navy quartermaster or something in Northern Australia. That's like all I know. But it's like, what else, you know, what was your level of involvement here? Like, did you see combat? What was it like being shipped off at 20 years old across the world? Like all that kind of stuff is gone now. And I think this is a really powerful one to potentially capture some of that for future generations.
- [37:52]
B
And this is incidentally why I interviewed my mom for the podcast. It wasn't for my listeners, for the, you know, it was, it was more so I could have her on the episode. So you could do the same thing just audio wise too. Just over zoom. It'd be, you know, kind of informal. And if you're good at asking questions and getting extra information out, like me and you are, for, for example, we could turn this into a service.
- [38:12]
A
This was on snl, like where the, the son is interviewing the dad and then they, you know, get super vulnerable, you know, to just have these conversations because all of a sudden you put mics in front of their faces and then, and then they turn to the camera and do like a Squarespace ad read.
- [38:28]
B
I haven't seen that episode. I'll have to check it out.
- [38:30]
A
It was fun. Okay, so that's kind of the end of life or approaching end of life. How do we capture some of these stories? You know, it's like the movie Coco, you know, and Hector is fading away, like, oh, he's being forgotten. Right. How do we remember the people who came before us? I think that's a really cool idea. And like that, you know, professional filmmaking. So like to rent out even freelance professionals to do this for a day, it's not going to be cheap, but it's not going to be like over the moon expensive. Yeah. The one I have is the opposite of that. Not end of life, but beginning of life. I'm going to call this the digital baby service. We're going to secure your kids domain name, we're going to claim their social media handles, we're going to register their Gmail account, and for this we're going to charge you, I don't know, a hundred bucks a year. Like, you know, there's going to be a decent margin because basically the domain, all this stuff is free except for the domain, which maybe costs 10, 12 bucks a year to renew. But we're just going to secure this for you so you don't have to worry about it. And so when your kid becomes old enough that they care about this, all of a sudden we have that locked down for you. This is something that I did when the kids were born. We better go register their domain names just in case. We wouldn't want anybody else to have that. So it's something that would probably be, there might be a market for that as A service?
- [39:45]
B
Yeah, actually there's a lot of things that you could do, but yeah, it would be a service where you just lock down the names for any relevant service that you might not be able to think about. Right. Besides the obvious ones. So, yeah, I like that idea. Kind of along those same lines. My next idea is a little bit. Well, it more caters to, like, the personalities of the younger folks these days. So I kind of got this idea after reading an article about how people are paying money to rent venues for social media. So, for example, a lot of these make money online. Guys literally rent a jet set. So it looks like you're on a private jet when you're really not.
- [40:23]
A
Okay.
- [40:23]
B
And I think that's just like a reflection of where society has been going. But you could profit from it by just creating a bunch of these sets, whether it be a private jet or a luxury hotel suite or a botanical garden or just something cool where it's literally just the set for, for Instagramming or doing lives from. And then just rent that time out to people. Wow, I might have a problem with this one. But I, I thought of it because people are paying for these services.
- [40:48]
A
Yeah, I think there's, there's probably something to that. And yeah, you have a warehouse space where you have like four or five of these set up. Yeah. Have people come in. Oh, your two hour block. You know, they come in, knock out a bunch of reels or a bunch of videos and you're set.
- [41:03]
B
This is very pervasive in China, actually. So if you see like a TikTok video of a factory of someone like, you know, making stuff, chances are it's fake. Like literally it's just like a table and just like the backdrop of it with this machine, like rotating the same products over and over again.
- [41:20]
A
Okay.
- [41:20]
B
So I've been just seeing a lot more of those, you know, debunked because, you know, people want to look like they're successful or doing these things. And it's. Maybe it's just like a sad reflection of where we're going, but you know that there's a market there for renting out these services.
- [41:35]
A
Yeah, this was speculation for years. Or certain influencers, like, oh, you know, they're standing in front of the rented Lamborghini. They don't really own that. Like, that's not really their life. It's like, I don't know, I guess maybe a certain demographic that appeals to. It's like, who cares?
- [41:49]
B
It's the younger folks because we're old and crotchety. Now, Nick, you know, get off my lawn.
- [41:56]
A
No, but this is, this is cool. And I do love me a rental business. We've talked about, you know, the photo booth business. We've talked about renting mobility scooters. We had a guy renting out reusable moving boxes or plastic storage bins basically. And so here's another example of something. Hey, build it once or build that set once and get paid for it over and over again.
- [42:16]
B
What do you got? You got a couple more?
- [42:17]
A
I've got, I think one more. And this is around a personal pain point of mine. And I'm curious to get your take on this. As a prolific YouTuber these days, what I struggle with is the scripting, right? That's kind of the bottleneck for me. And we've got this huge body of content we've seen in my mind, like people stating very obvious things like, hey, have you ever thought about this as a side hustle? Like really, like that is getting a hundred thousand views. Like that's like the most basic idea ever. But it's like it's all in this scripting. It's some sort of video scripting service. Or, you know, maybe it's an AI or maybe it's a human, where it's like, just, just tell me what to record. Like do it in my voice, you know, load it up. I could fire up the teleprompter, or I could just do the voiceover and we'll, you know, lay over some other imagery. But just. That's like the big bottleneck in producing more video content for me.
- [43:11]
B
If you find such a service, I would sign up in a heartbeat. You're absolutely right. The scripting is where it's the most time consuming. I've got it down now where I can script something with the help of AI in about 90 minutes for a 10 minute video, right?
- [43:24]
A
Yeah, that's still, that's still 90 minutes though. That's helpful to hear that it's not instant for you.
- [43:28]
B
Well, if you think about it this way, I used to spend a lot more time on a blog post. I used to spend like three or four hours on a blog post. And what I like about YouTube scripting is it doesn't have to be grammatically correct, nor does it have to have the proper punctuation either. So that's why it's faster for me. But yes, I've tried so many things, Nick, training AI to talk like me. And we have enough body of work between the two of us now that it's pretty Easy to do that, but I don't think it's just hard to find that replacement. From what I've seen.
- [43:58]
A
What's a typical process for you going from something that you maybe have written about it could be years ago, but it's still relevant to turn that into a video version because it's like there's a different formula. Right. You couldn't just read off the blog posts and have that be compelling.
- [44:12]
B
You know what's funny is that's how I started my YouTube channel. I just read the posts and you're right, that doesn't work. Well, I can corroborate that. So which you can just feed it into ChatGPT or Claude. Yeah, and I have a prompt for this because I do less of this now. But I, I had a process for this where you give it a prompt and since we have enough work out that you can say in the voice of Nick Loper or Steve Chu, okay. And it comes out with something that you can modify into a script, and then you, you also have to make changes to it. So it's not, it's. It still takes time, but it, it, it makes things much faster because there's a whole big difference between SEO written blog than there is, you know, a compelling YouTube video.
- [44:55]
A
Well, speaking of YouTube, you're closing in on half a million subscribers over on the My wife quit her job channel. What kind of videos do you find? Do? Well, like help me out on the you I'm gonna pick your brain for some free coaching here.
- [45:07]
B
I can. Yeah, it's been a struggle. It's been a struggle, Nick. So I teach E commerce. And what I found is that if I just go and teach E commerce on that channel, it gets like no views. Right? Because that's not what people want. Like the, the common folk does not want E commerce strategies, which is unfortunately my specialty. I mean, that, that's what I like creating content about. So the struggle is mixing that content, my teaching content, with something that the mainstream viewer actually wants to see. So it's basically dumbing down the content. Maybe that's not the right word. Making it more appealing to the masses. That's the secret.
- [45:46]
A
Any videos that have done particularly well for you?
- [45:48]
B
I mean, I have a whole bunch of videos that have gotten over a million views that when I published the time were topics that were in the news too. So recency helps too. What people are searching for and wanting to look about, you know, read about. And right now, if you think about it, I feel like the world is in chaos. Right now, at least the US is in chaos. There's tons of topics that people are searching for right now.
- [46:07]
A
Any criteria you use, like a tubebuddy or Vidiq to. To come up with?
- [46:11]
B
I use Vidiq. Yeah.
- [46:12]
A
What's the metric you're looking for? Like minimum search volume or minimum score there?
- [46:16]
B
I don't actually even look at search volume anymore. I mean, I do, I do. As a last step, I should say, I shouldn't say. I don't look at it all.
- [46:22]
A
Okay.
- [46:23]
B
But I'm just trying to create topics that I know I can do a good job writing a good hook for. And then keyword research is actually secondary. It didn't start out that way, but now that's how I do it.
- [46:32]
A
Hook first, keyword research second.
- [46:34]
B
I got one more idea. The audience before we go. This is something that once again, I got from talking with my mom because we hang out a lot more now. She lives right down the street. This is what I call like a forgotten skills online course series. So my mom, you know, back in the old days, she was telling about all these skills that she had to do from first principles. Like there's a lot of things we take for granted now. Right. That everything's machine made and whatnot. But back in the day, they did stuff by hand. And so we're talking about skills like Asian calligraphy, Morse code, how to read a map. Like, I don't know if I don't think my kids know how to read a map. Right. Because it's a skill that you don't need anymore because you have GPS and what now? Yeah, metal working. Old school photography, where you're developing photos with the chemicals and everything. Just a way to document and teach all those old school things and put them in one place.
- [47:23]
A
I mean, what's the point of learning Morse code at this point? Like you try to send somebody a telegram.
- [47:28]
B
Well, so the idea is there's a bunch of people out there that like, for me, as an example, who would want to just learn these things from first principles. Like my personality is such that I don't like depending on services, handling everything for you.
- [47:43]
A
Yeah.
- [47:43]
B
Because once something goes down, you're in trouble. So I actually would like to learn these things from first principles. And I can't be the only one out there.
- [47:50]
A
Fair enough. How to read a map I'm on board with Metalworking has. Has not been relevant to my life ever since like metalworking merit badge or something when I was 12.
- [47:59]
B
Well, these are just examples for me. Right. Like Asian calligraphy, you know, artistic things that are not as big of a deal now, but they're still beautiful. And, you know, I think the art should be carried on to future generations, that sort of thing.
- [48:12]
A
That's fair. All right. That's all. Those are all the ideas that I've got. You got anything else?
- [48:16]
B
I think that's pretty much it. Yeah, we've covered a lot in this episode, actually.
- [48:19]
A
Yeah, this was a ton of fun. Some really good ones out there that I hope you as a listener will go and run with. Like I mentioned, this is our third round of business idea giveaways. If you like this format, go check out the other two. Those are numbers 5:30, episode 530 and episode 563 in your archives. You'll be able to scroll down in your podcast app and find those again. My wife quitherjob.com you can find Steve over there. Check him out on YouTube by the same name, my wife quit her job. Big thanks to Steve for sharing his insight once again being a repeat guest. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up Sidehustlenation.com deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. 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. So fire off that text message to that friend of yours who's always kicking around new business ideas. I know you got somebody like that in your life. 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.