← The Side Hustle Show
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
Nick Loper
12 big ideas from 12 years of the side hustle show. Now the first 10 ideas here aired in the milestone episode 500 back in 2022. And I'll be back at the end with a couple new ones to add for this 2025 edition. Big idea number one is to set a vision for your life and determine why it's important to you. Where do you want to go and why do you want to get there and who do you want to take along for the ride? Because without that driving motivation, it's going to be too easy to quit. It's the same reason people give up on their New Year's resolutions. They didn't want it bad enough, it wasn't that important to them, otherwise by definition they would have made it happen. I was never much into vision boards or affirmations or anything like that, but a couple people challenged me in 2018 to actually sit down and write out a three to five year vision of what life was going to look like. One of those people was Brian Scudamore, the founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT Junk. My number one tip would be anyone out there who wants to improve their life, improve their business, grow a business, I'd say come up with your vision. What is your painted picture, I call it, of where you're going now? I sat down on a dock, my parents summer cottage, when I was at a million in revenue and I wrote down on paper, one page double sided hour paint picture which said we'd be in the top 30 metros in North America, we'd be the FedEx at junk removal, we'd be on the Oprah Winfrey Show. All these things and more happened because we had a destination, a clear vision of what that future would look like. So for anyone in life, I think it's what's your painted picture? What does your life look like in 3 to 5 years? And write it down. At that time when I recorded with Brian, his business was doing about a million dollars in sales every day. And maybe there's some survivorship bias going on here, but when an entrepreneur at that level gives that advice as his number one tip, you gotta take notice. And since Bren and I went through that painted picture exercise four years ago, we actually made quite a few moves to get closer to it. And maybe on the other side, it's made it a lot easier to say no to projects and so called opportunities that don't support that shared vision that we had. Because if you don't know where you're going, how are you going to be able to reverse engineer a path to get there. At some point there needs to be a force, either internal or external to get over the inertia of doing the same thing and hoping for or expecting different results. Mitch Davis put it this way in episode 324. Number one tip is you got to do something. Otherwise tomorrow, the next day and the next month and the next year is going to be the same. That's a line I refer back to quite a bit. You gotta do something or tomorrow's gonna be the same. And when you find that reality unacceptable like Shane Sams did, you have no choice but to take action and do something about it. Long story short, I found out my son was being mistreated in a daycare. He was being abused. They were locking him in a bathroom for hours at a time. And and the day that I needed to take off work to deal with this, my boss told me that I needed to handle my personal problems after work. And that's what inspired me and moved me to go work for myself. And I promised myself that I would never be in that situation again. I would control every second, every minute of my life. Someday, somehow it starts as a side hustle, but it ended up being more as a parent. That's just a terrifying thought. But it illustrates how motivating a bad situation can be to get out of. If things in your life are pretty good, relatively speaking, you gotta find another powerful why to get going. So that's big idea number one. This driving motivation or optimistic vision of what life could be. But visions and motivations don't pay the bills. So what do you do next? The second big idea I've noticed from the last 500 episodes is what I call the piggyback principle. Find a hot trend and piggyback on that hot trend. That would be my best advice for anyone starting out is find something that's really hot or popular and instead of just going for that item, something, sell an accessory or an add on to the really popular item. That was Tony Anderson way back on episode 194. So when you're trying to come up with a side hustle idea, we've seen some great success stories of people catching a rising tide. In a sense, this is the old business model of selling shovels into a gold rush. For example, you know, more and more people are hiring cleaning services. Maybe you could start one of your own in your own town, like Anthony and Janilka Hartzog, like Chris Schwab. Or maybe you could build some booking software that makes their Life easier like Jobber. Or maybe you could help them collect more reviews like Krystalini. And more people are starting podcasts as another example. Maybe you could help them with the editing or the show notes like podcast fast track or awesome pros who's been on the show. Companies are getting involved in content marketing. Maybe you could offer a freelance writing service like Georgia Austin. More and more parents are homeschooling, so maybe you could offer a class on outschool like Jade Wetherington or Devin Ricks. More and more people are using XYZ specific software. So maybe you could create some, you know, video training materials and consulting services like Paul Miners. Example after example of this Big idea number two, catch a rising tide, piggyback on those trends. And I think you're going to have an easier time than, you know, fighting against the current, trying to convince someone that this is something that they need. So be on the lookout for new trends in your industry because there's an advantage to being early as well. So now we've got the motivation. We're keeping an eye on interesting trends, just paying attention to what we see happening. Or you can use a tool like Google Trends to measure the relative interest in a search term over time. Or you can subscribe to a newsletter like Trends Trends Co, which is really well done and I think there's still a free trial over there. But after that, it comes time to solve a problem, and that's big idea number three. The vast majority of guests that you hear on the side Hustle show built a business to solve a specific problem. That's what customers pay money for. That's what I pay money for. As a business owner, as a customer, as a consumer, I don't particularly care about your passions and motivations as long as you can make my pain go away. Here's John Lee Dumas to explain. Frankly, a lot of people are getting some so. So advice out there. Like, one of the pieces of advice people are getting are follow your passion. Like, that's enough. Like, just do that. And that's terrible advice because, listen, if it's just your passion and there's no value to go with it, it's just a hobby. Because, listen, people are gonna be happy for you that you're passionate about something, but unless it's providing real value to their world, unless it's providing a real solution to their problems, they're not gonna care that much, I promise you. And that's just called being a human being. So you need to say, okay, what am I passionate about? What am I excited about? Good check. I know all these things now. Okay, now step two. What am I good at? What skills do I have? What value can I add to this world? Okay, step two's done. I know those things. Now step three, how can I combine what I'm good at, value that I can add to the world, skills that I have with something that I'm passionate about and excited about and fired up about? What does that look like? What is that zone of fire that I call that lies in the middle, that intersects those two? That's a combination of and a commingling of your passions and your skills, of your enthusiasm and your expertise. That's your zone of fire. That's where your big idea lies. Because now you're excited about it. You're gonna get up every day and do it. But also, guess what? You are gonna be adding value to the world. You're gonna be solving real problems. And other people are gonna care then, because they will care when you provide solutions to their problems. Now, the good news here is that humans, we're natural born problem solvers. So how do you go find problems you can solve? Number one, through conversations. You can ask people questions like, you know, what challenges are you facing right now? What are the biggest threats to your business? What's the most annoying thing in your life right now? Number two, maybe your own pain points. Where do you spend your own money? And especially the money that you're kind of meh about spending like you wish there was a better option out there. Julia Tunstall explained recently on the show she couldn't in good conscience recommend any of the barware that was being sold on Amazon. So she and her husband Chris ended up having their own stuff manufactured, and they were off to the races with that. And then maybe the third thing is, what do other people complain to you about? If other people are complaining to it, maybe on the other side of that, there's a business opportunity because problems are everywhere. But it's the solution that maybe the money making opportunity, the side hustle opportunity. The trick is to find a pain, find a problem that's both real and perceived and hopefully worth spending money to solve. This is Greg Hickman from episode 270. Pay really close attention that you are falling in love with the problem that you solve, not the solution to the problem. Why do you say that? Just because the solution may change. Yeah. All right. Fall in love with the problem. So can I give a little backstory on that real fast? Yeah, let's hear it. So before system Ly I had a business called Mobile Mix. It was a blog podcast turned into mobile marketing engine. We were selling mobile services specifically to independent retail. Guess what? Independent retail a didn't think they had a problem at all. So I had to convince them they had a problem. Then I needed to educate them on mobile because they didn't even know anything about it. Then I needed to connect mobile as a solution to their problem. These guys weren't even using email yet. Like, you think they're going to be investing in mobile? It was a pain. I was basically slamming my head into a wall for a year or more. Actually, more than that, where we were just stuck 5 to 7k a month in revenue. Yeah, you were the mobile marketing guy for years. Yeah, over a decade. And so. Talk about pivot, right? But when I really looked at it, I was so in love with mobile because that was my background. I spent a decade there. I was the mobile guy. Like, literally. People sometimes even say like. And it got to the point where I was like, I just had to have a really tough conversation. I was like, do I care more about being the mobile guy or do I care more about having a business that can create leverage and have longevity? And obviously that decision came down to, yeah, I don't care about being the mobile guy anymore. I can reinvent myself, which is what I had to do. Yeah. Now we're here talking about funnels, not mobile. Right. So just be careful that you might be good at something or love something so much that you become blinded to the fact that the person you're you want to sell it to, despite you knowing it will help. If they don't feel like they have a problem, you're never going to sell it. So fall in love with solving that problem and the solution will come and you will find a way. But as long as you can be in love with that problem, you will always have a business because you can always solve that problem no matter what the solution is. Like, fall in love with solving the problem, not the way that you solve the problem and in your conversations. And this is straight from Dane Maxwell, Start from zero. You can even ask people, well, what would your ideal solution look like? How much would that be worth to you? So now you've got your problem and a hypothesis on how you might go about solving it. But this is where so many people get stuck on the side hustle, sidelines. I don't want that to happen for you. Hey, this is Pat Flynn from the Smart Passive Income Podcast, one of my favorite productivity hacks. Involves just a little note that is on my computer that says one single word. And that word is start. You know, an object at rest tends to stay at rest. And for me, I do a lot of things often that just try to fill in that space before I know I'm supposed to do something. So I often just procrastinate is really what I do. So I just tell myself through this note, just to post a note just on my computer. Very simple to just start. Because once you get started, it starts to go a little bit easier. You build that momentum. And that's just the best thing that has helped me is just reminding myself to start. Because we always try to get in our own way, don't we? This is big idea number four. Just start. Out of all of my guests number one tips, this is far and away the most common. And when so many entrepreneurs attribute their ultimate success to simply getting started again, it's something you got to take notice of. The frustrating part is what's often left unsaid. Just start. Yeah, but start what? What should I do? And the truth is, it really doesn't matter. This is Julie Sharon osher from episode 123. It's like a chess game. It doesn't really end if we have chess lovers in the audience. Please don't throw things at me for what I'm about to say. But it's like it doesn't really matter what's your very first move is going to be if you're the first player starting a match in chess. Because whatever it is, you're just trying to drive response from your opponent. And this is what we're trying to do. We're trying to get some sort of feedback from the universe, from your clients, from your customers, from the people around you, from your. The readers of your blog, listeners of your podcast. We're trying to feel what is the right thing to do. And you know what, even if you get like a horrible response and people say, boo, this is not what we want, this is crap, you're still in a better position. You know what? Because this is not a beauty contest now you know which path not to go. And it doesn't testify anything about you or your abilities. It just means that you are one step closer to. To finding the right thing to focus on. One thing that's interesting about the last nine years of interviews is we've seen a lot of entrepreneurs where the business they're running today isn't the business they necessarily started with. I mean, for me, I started selling paint jobs by Going door to door never would have expected it would lead to talking to you and tens of thousands of other listeners today. Ryan Finley described the phenomenon this way way back in episode 72. Some of the best opportunities that you're going to find in business are going to be found once you've already started moving in a direction, like very infrequently. Do you see incredible opportunities before you even start? Pretty much everything that's happened around this business, the appliance school, all the training, everything that's come out of my buying and selling at Craigslist, there were just opportunities that just kept presenting themselves after I had started and after I, like put in a bunch of hard work. I just want to encourage your listeners, try to get something to work and, and then just keep your eyes open for opportunities along the way. There it is. One of my most frequently cited pieces of advice. The best opportunities become visible once you're in motion. And if opportunities become visible once you're in motion, the only rational thing to do is to get moving and stay moving. I'll call it the Loper law of side hustle physics. Get started and stay started. Big idea number five coming up right after this. When you're running a business, every missed call is money left on the table. Customers expect speed. Think about the last time you had a plumbing emergency. If the first plumber didn't answer, my guess is you moved on to the next one on the list. With our sponsor, OpenPhone, you'll never miss an opportunity to connect with your customers. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or computer. So that means no more carrying around two phones or using a landline. With OpenPhone, your team can share one number and collaborate on customer calls and texts, just like a shared inbox. That way, any team member can pick up right where the last person left off, keeping response times faster than ever. Right now, Openphone is offering side hustle show listeners 20% off your first six months at openphone.com sidehustle that's o p e n p h o-n e.com openphone.com sidehustlez and if you have existing numbers with another service, Openphone will port them over at no extra charge. Open Phone. No missed calls, no missed customers. Who not how. That's the unlock that transforms side hustlers into business owners instead of business doers. You're always going to run into problems, and problem solving is a really important skill. But I'm constantly trying to remind myself I don't need to know how to solve everything. I just need to be able to find the people that do know how to solve it. Who, not how and when. You need to hire great talent fast. You need our sponsor Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. On top of that, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed get 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs, all with no monthly subscriptions and no long term contracts. 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 on this podcast. Indeed.com Sidehustleshow terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Big Idea number five is to go where the cash is already flowing. In fact, this idea was so big I wrote a whole book about it in 2016 called buy buttons. The thesis is this. Go find the marketplaces and the meeting places and the connection hubs where your target customers are already looking to buy the kind of thing that you're selling. That's why we talk about Fiverr and Upwork and Udemy and Amazon and Outschool and Facebook Marketplace and Etsy and Redbubble and all of these places that make it relatively simple to go put your product or service up for sale. Tap into this big pre existing audience of buyers and make it easy for them to find you and do business with you. I wasn't necessarily thinking anything would come of this Fiverr account, but I made it and I uploaded my first. I think it was just one gig at the time. It was a website content gig and to my surprise, I got my first order within two days. That was Georgia Austin from episode 479, who was doing 90 grand a month through Fiverr for freelance writing when we spoke. Now think about that experience. In contrast to if Georgia had just set up her own website and said, I can write website content for you. Crickets, right? But no, she went to this marketplace where people were already looking for this type of thing and put the offer in front of them. Similarly, you can take a look at existing listings on these marketplaces to see what's working. Here's Rachel Jones on doing some initial product research on Etsy. Success leaves clues. So my biggest recommendation is to Go on Etsy and just explore. I mean, you can go as simple as just type in the word printables or digital download and see what pops up. And then one key thing you're going to look for is bestseller tags. So Etsy gives this information away, which I love for doing research. But if you're looking at listings, you can just kind of zoom out and glaze your eyes so you're not paying attention and distracted by the pretty pictures. But just look for that bestsellers tag and then once you find that, you can dig a little deeper and that will give you clues as to things that are selling. Because there's, you know, I'm sure millions of products on Etsy and there's, it's hard to tell which ones are selling and which aren't. But you know, if they're a bestseller that they are getting sales, people are purchasing those. And so there's a reason why those are popular in just about every niche. There's going to be a marketplace to set up shop and put your product or service up for sale. But if there isn't an obvious marketplace, you can follow Big idea number six. And this can work with online businesses, with e commerce products, with service businesses. And that's to fast track your side hustle with partnerships. This is a super common marketing theme throughout the archives, even going back to 2013, 2014. We had Ryan Cote on episode 34 talking about the value of strategic referral partnerships for his SEO agency. We had Daniel DiPiazza the very next week talking about his marsupial method. He called it, I guess because you're getting in the metaphorical pouch of a referral partner. But the gist of it is thinking who your target customers are already doing business with and then building relationships with those people as a fast track way to potentially connect with their customers. And it can be online or offline. For example, here's one way Erica Kruipen marketed her pooper scooper business. What I did was something that was really creative. I went to Dunkin Donuts and I went and got donuts and I broke them up into half a dozen each. I walked into local vet offices and pet supply places and I said, hi, my name's Erica, blah, blah, blah, blah. I have donuts and business cards. May I leave both of them here? Okay. Okay. Yeah. And that worked really well. And so they put my little. Cause I have a little hot pink cards. They put them up front and center and they were like, this is the coolest thing ever. Okay, yeah, that's that's an interesting way to break through the clutter. First the hot pink business cards and then the donuts. Like, hey, can I drop my business cards here? Ah, who are you? Get out the door. But hey, you brought us donuts. Fantastic. Exactly. And they get really excited. Especially like I went to one pet store and they love donuts. So they're like, yes, this is amazing. And so now they know me as like the poof scooping lady and the donut lady. Could you go speak at a conference? Could you guest on a podcast? Some of the biggest spikes on the side Hustle social download chart have come immediately following a guest appearance on other relevant shows like Entrepreneurs on Fire, like Bigger Pockets, Money Mad Scientist. Choose Fi. Could you display at an event? These types of partnerships that allow you to tap into somebody else's audience are super powerful. And I encourage you to brainstorm a list of your top 10, 2100 potential dream partners and think of how you could be of service to them in some way. We did a full episode on this recently with Dustin lean in episode 465 and specifically on holding partner workshops where you offer some free educational workshop. You showcase your expertise, which is great for consultants and freelancers and in exchange all the partner has to do is invite their audience. It's a win win for everybody really. The biggest main question is where are they already hanging out? Where are they online already? What other brand or, or website or company has a big, like maybe they have a really big budget and they've already spent the money to acquire the customers that you also want to acquire. So maybe it's a software company. When you're filling out that Dream 100 list of who to partner with, think about who has your exact same target audience but is not a competitor. And that brings us back to talking about why niching down is important. Because if you are, or you know, in my case, I'm doing email marketing and SMS marketing for e commerce brands. So now I can go to a another agency even, or someone who's a blogger with a, with a big audience. But they teach about SEO, specifically SEO for E commerce. And now we're not competitors so they don't have to worry about me trying to siphon their audience for my business and I don't have to worry about the same thing from them. So we can actually form a good partnership, do a good workshop and cheer each other on instead of feeling like we have to compete. It's definitely a win for everybody. So let that be your homework for today to think of Some potential partnerships and start laying some of the initial groundwork to go out and make those a reality. Now, these buy buttons, marketplaces and strategic partnerships are great ways to get customers quickly, but they can also be a little bit fragile. As anyone who's ever faced a Google algorithm change or a Facebook update, or getting your social media account mysteriously shut down, those people will tell you, yeah, you gotta go take advantage of these platforms, but you also need to own your audience. And even nine years later, from the side hustle show, the primary way to do that is still through an email list. And that's big idea number seven, build your own email list. It doesn't happen by accident, but it doesn't need to be overly complicated either. The basic formula is still to offer some sort of lead magnet, be it a cheat sheet template, a resource, a guide, a checklist, a free mini course, something of value in exchange for your visitor's email. Here's how Jennifer Maker broke it down, who when we spoke, had an email list of something like 380,000 subscribers. And I'm sure it's grown by leaps and bounds since then. My big goal in everything I do is to get people onto my mailing list. I don't put a lot of faith in social media like I use it, but at any time Facebook or YouTube or whatever could say, hey, no go. So every blog post that I put out is typically it's a how to. If it's not, it's something very similar. And I funnel them to my lead magnet. And my, my lead magnets are very high quality. Typically you can't do the project without having my pattern or whatever it is that I'm giving away totally free. But it is something that another person might actually charge for. So it's, it's something valuable and necessary to do the thing that I am teaching people how to do. So all the teaching is in the blog post or the video, but to actually do exactly what I'm showing you how to do. You want to get onto my mailing list? Yes, there's affiliate links in there. Yes, there's a little bit of advertising. I've been actually decreasing that as I grow. But mostly it's to get into my mailing list. And from my mailing list, then I nurture them. I don't like, like, hey, you wanna buy this stuff? I try to talk to them about me, find out about them. I invite them to email me back. And we build or attempt to build trust between us, right. So that they feel good about me and I offer lots of awesome things free. And when I feel it's appropriate, then I say, hey, I have an ebook that might help you with what you're struggling with. Or I have a course, and that is basically what I do. Another popular strategy is the quiz funnel, where you ask visitors to answer a handful of questions in exchange for personalized recommendations. This can be used very effectively in e commerce, like we heard from Connor Meekin recently, and in content businesses as well. Here's how it works for Tori Dunlap from her first a hundred K. And here's how she drives email signups from TikTok. The caption was, if you want personalized resources, take the free quiz in my bio. So I had created, along with my team, a system where if you come to my website, you can take this free quiz. It asks you questions about your financial experience. You know, like, where are you at in your life? How are you employed? What's your number one financial goal? And when you take the quiz in exchange for your email, you get these results. You get this list of personalized resources. And so by directing people to the link in bio. Right. I was hoping that if this video did well, I could, you know, increase my email list. So the video blew up and within a week we had gained 100,000 email subscribers. Holy crap. Which was insane. So we had already had about 40,000 email subscribers on our general list. And keep in mind, I had been at TikTok for like nine months at this point. So we had increased our following quite a bit. Yeah, but that video, I think, increased my TikTok following by around 300 to 400,000 and converted 100,000 people to my email list. It also got me multiple features on buzzfeed that then blew up. Yeah, features in pretty much every language. A feature on cbs, a feature on NBC. Like, it was insane. And so for me, it's not enough to just go viral. I need you to have systems in place that can support that virality. I need you to have various strategic ways that you can convert those followers into either email list subscribers or paying customers. And so for me, really, how I've driven sales from TikTok is either sales of my own products, my courses, my coaching, my workshops, or affiliate sales. I'll talk about a high yield savings account and link my affiliate partner and, you know, be paid out that way through a conversion. That is big idea number seven, and it's really stood out over the last nine years. Build that email list as a way to weather the storm, as a way to communicate directly with your target audience without relying on some big tech algorithm to show them your stuff. Building a similar quiz funnel is definitely something that's on my project list for this year, really inspired by what Tori's built, and there's lots of other examples of people doing similar stuff. You know, Building this email list is one of the most important metrics for me. So if you're listening to this, if you're not subscribed, come on in. The water is warm. Side hustlenation.com join is an easy way to do that. You'll get my weekly newsletter, My best side Hustle tips straight to your inbox. All that jazz. Sidehustlenation.com join now big idea number eight is actually related to that. If email is an important metric in your business, it makes sense to focus on that. One common trait that you might have noticed from side Hustle show guests is this practice of focusing on what matters. As a business owner and especially as a side hustler, you're going to face distractions all day long, but there are probably only a few core things that really matter and move your business forward. Rosemarie Groner explained it this way in episode 268 you don't have to work 50, 60, 70 hours a week. If you spend your time doing the things that make you the most amount of money consistently, and you eliminate doing the things that make you less amount of money consistently, your income naturally grows. Like it's almost impossible to fail at this point. She went on to explain what that looked like for her blogging business@busybudgeter.com so I eliminated anything that wasn't the most important thing for my growth. So I didn't answer all of those spam emails that you get there that are like, hey, can you put this infographic in in your blog post? Like, no, I didn't even like read them. I didn't answer every blog comment, which is something that pretty much everyone tells you to do. I didn't do all the things that everybody else thought was important. I For me, this practice has a few parts. First, I try and do a daily check in as part of my nightly shutdown routine. I ask myself what I got done that day and compare that to the list that I said the night before were my top priorities. If they match up, great. If they don't, why not? What happened? The next phase in this review process for me are my quarterly progress reports. This is a chance to publicly reflect on what I worked on and the results of those projects. It's a Great excuse to review a few times a year what's working in your business and what's not. Other people will call these, you know, after action reports or monthly or quarterly reviews, but the idea is the same. Stop for a second to ask yourself if the hours you're putting in are making any meaningful impact, because if they're not, that's when it's time to adjust course before you get in any deeper. And finally, I run what I call revenue attribution reports once or twice a year, and this is just a high level analysis of what's driving sales, like, where is the money coming from? That way you can hopefully pour more fuel on the fire for the channels that are working and maybe cut back your hours on the projects that aren't as lucrative. And if you do the important things consistently and move to eliminate, automate, or delegate everything else, you're going to start feeling this sense of positive momentum and the flywheel gets spinning, this sense of positive progress. If I'm feeling a little bit antsy or stressed or whatever, I'm like, have I exercise today? Like, what am I behind on? What. What is troubling right me right now? I think if you ask yourself, like, what's troubling you? Or did today matter? Did I do something that mattered today? Or was it just kind of like a, a normal day where I can't really identify something. I think you want to have like more and more days where you're like, yes, today was. It's not so much like a great day. Like it, it can, it's cool to be, to have a great day, but it's like today actually mattered because I made progress on something and I. That to me is very motivating. That was Chris Guillebeau and that was a nugget that hit home because there are a lot of days or there were a lot of days where I kind of felt like I'm in maintenance mode or I didn't have this, you know, big block of deep work time to make progress on some new project, some new initiative. But this daily check in of did today matter? I think that can be really powerful. My buddy Chad Carson even has T shirts that say, do what matters. I'm still trying to get myself one of those. So hopefully he puts up some merch for sale soon. But that is big idea number eight. It's this habit of reflection, analysis and focus, doubling down on what's working and adjusting course as needed. There's this compound effect of aiming to get a little bit better every day. More big ideas from 12 years of the Side Hustle show coming up right after this. One strategy I didn't fully embrace or maybe wasn't fully aware of when I was starting out was this idea of the piggyback principle. In the startup phase. That means you don't have to start completely from scratch, but instead you can take advantage of existing tools, templates, playbooks, best practices from the people who've gone before you. A perfect example of this is our partner, Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses, from household names to side hustlers on their way to becoming household names. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store and start selling. Plus, Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools to accelerate your workflow. We're talking product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhancing your product photography. You can even easily create email and social media campaigns to reach your target customers wherever they're scrolling or strolling. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com sidehustle Go to shopify.com sidehustlez shopify.com sidehustole Remember data from the Goonies? The guy with all the gadgets? Or data from Star Trek? I think that's why I say data instead. And one thing I love about our sponsor Mint Mobile is I can get all the data I need for one low monthly price. That's right down here. It's our time. Mint Mobile is rescuing people from overpriced wireless and they're jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. All Mint Mobile plans come with high speed data or data I guess, your choice, 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 own phone number along with all your existing contacts. Join me in ditching overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint mobile for just 15 bucks a month. No matter how you say it, don't overpay for it. Shop data plans@mintmobile.com Sidehustle that's mintmobile.com side hustle 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 so you Mint Mobile for details, Big idea number nine. We're on the home stretch here, big idea number nine is growth through mentorship. The idea of mentors and coaches and masterminds and paying for courses, that was all pretty foreign stuff to me nine years ago, but I've benefited tremendously from all of the above since then. I definitely had this sense of maybe ill, ill placed self confidence in that. Yeah, you know what, I can figure everything out on my own and maybe I could given an unlimited time horizon. But there's certainly some value in shortcutting the learning curve. First off, by paying attention to what other people in the space are doing, but also paying for coaching, building your own mastermind group of people working towards similar goals. Now, having been a part of several mastermind groups over the last nine years, it's hard to imagine going at it without them, without some sort of peer accountability. But more than that, it's the camaraderie and the honest feedback and the glimpse into other online businesses. Super helpful to have a group of other business owners to bounce ideas off of and help each other work through challenges. If you're currently going at it alone, I would prioritize creating some sort of mastermind or accountability group. It's an overused quote, but there's some truth to it, right? You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So surround yourself with people on the same path. Just a few weeks ago, Joan Farrell left us with this. That hit home for me. No matter what you choose to do, you should educate yourself, even if you know some about it. The best thing to do is to take a course, go onto YouTube, do your research before you start it, which is what. What we did. And when Jack told me about the flea market Flipper University course, it was the perfect venue because you need education to further yourself no matter what you do. And you can still be considered learning it on your own. But when you have somebody tell you exactly the trials and tribulations you're going to run into and how to perform the business and how it actually works, it's a lot easier than trying to try to do it all all on your own. And education is cheap compared to ignorance. So yes, so you want to just continue to build your knowledge no matter what you choose to do. Education is cheap compared to ignorance. It's the same reason why reading books has a tremendous roi. It's this ability to download somebody else's experience and skills and knowledge and apply it to your situation. And it doesn't have to cost a lot of money. But mentorship and investing in your Own entrepreneurial education is definitely a common theme from side Hustle show guests. And again, it probably sounds like common sense to you, but it wasn't something that was really on my radar when I started the show. And that brings me to big idea number 10, which is to level up, to create systems and to become the business owner more than the business doer. Tyler Gillespie dropped this challenge slash thought exercise on us in episode 430 in what he called the laptop test. If you closed your laptop today, how long would your business survive? And that's really important because if someone's gonna buy your business, it's a huge tell, like how dependent the business is on you. And the more team you can have implemented and built around yourself where you could close your laptop and step away for two weeks a month, which is like kind of the goal I try to set, then the better off your business is gonna be. That's gonna be really attractive for an investor. The laptop test. This is something that I've done okay with in certain areas, but for full disclosure, have completely failed in others. One exercise that I've used in the past is to create a detailed time audit. And I've got a time tracking template that you can download. I'll put it in the show notes for this episode. But the idea is this. You can't manage what you don't measure, so you need to measure what you're actually spending your time on. Do that for a week or two weeks and you're going to start to see some patterns of tasks that you can hopefully eliminate if they're not really that important, that you can automate and or create some recurring system or process around or delegate those. Could you write up the recipe, create the process and have somebody else on your team go and follow that recipe? When is it time for a system? Jeff Diorio from elitechess.net and episode487 he said, as soon as I got something unmanageable to where I'm staying up all night doing something, that's when I think, okay, it's time to get a system to get to that next level and pursue some other fun projects or experiments that I'd like to, I really need to scale back my involvement in certain day to day operational tasks. So this type of laptop test and systemization is kind of a high priority for me this quarter and is a big idea. From nine years on the show to consistently level up, you gotta be working on your business rather than in it. Hey, 2025, Nick here with a couple more big ideas to add in the three years since this episode originally aired, number 11 is what I'm calling the only constant is change. We've seen so many industries interrupted by AI or algorithm changes lately, and it feels new and scary. But we kind of have to take a step back and realize this kind of change and disruption has been going on for centuries. The entrepreneurs and businesses that endure are the ones that can adapt the fastest. The answer may lie in this excellent bit of advice from Jill teetz in episode 5:35. My number one tip is iterate. If something is not working in the way that you want, don't just say, you know, it's. It must be the algorithm or because that person's lucky or you know, everyone's out to get me. Make some changes, try something new. Like a lot of times we'll do the same thing over and over and over and over and it's not working and we don't know why, but then we keep repeating it. So just like I did with my posts, make new iterations, try a new thing and then you'll see, oh, that was even worse. So I should change it back or change this. And like so just be willing to try new things and new versions of what you're doing iterate. And if you've been listening to the show for any length of time, you've probably heard some of those iterations starting out with the voiceover hype guy from Fiverr phasing him out, working in different intros, different formats. The latest is the little music bed at the top of the show to see if that brings a bit more energy, gets people more excited to stick around. That was a tip from Glenn James at fincon, big personal finance podcaster in Australia. Another iteration has been adding the youe Might also Like section to the bottom of my newsletter, which inadvertently unlocked a new revenue stream in the form of newsletter sponsorships. The answer to growing your business or getting that initial traction? It's probably evolution, not revolution. There may be some small incremental tweaks that you can make to your message. You know, a one degree shift in direction versus, you know, a wholesale 180. And those little changes to your marketing, to your message, to your product, those can have a big impact. But doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? That's the definition of insanity. At least a quote attributed to Einstein. Not fact checked that. The 12th big idea I want to share is to remember it's just a game. Yes, you should play to win. That's the whole point. But if you're not having fun, maybe it's time to find a different game. This is a variation of finding the work you love to do that lights you up and figuring out how to remove or delegate the rest. It's about finding a state of flow and excitement and energy around your business and tasks such that you wake up in the morning and you're excited to get to work. In episode 511, Matt Rutenberg gave this advice. It's especially when you're looking for a side hustle, I think using your, your superpower, that whatever that is, whether it's are you analytical, are you kind of a networker, are you like to talk to people? Do you like to connect people? Find something that will always be natural for you and that'll help you be as successful as you can be and be interested in it. Truthfully, I've always found this advice to be a little bit stressful. Like, look, I don't have a superpower. I don't have the ability to knock through walls or predict the future or even edit amazing videos. But I'll give the example of a superpower I've come to embrace the last couple years, which years ago never would have even considered a skill, let alone a superpower. But it's Matt's words were, you know, what comes natural to you. And so the one that came up for me was this natural curiosity. And this comes up again in the Side Hustle Nation surveys or podcast reviews or conversations with listeners like, hey, you seem genuinely curious or you ask the follow up question that was on the tip of my tongue. And I think that curiosity is something that's helped me produce 600 plus episodes of the show. It's fascinating what makes all these businesses tick. How'd you come up with the idea? How'd you find your first customers? How'd you figure out how much to charge? How. When did you feel comfortable leaving your day job? I love all of that stuff and it works or has worked on the written side. Written content side of the business too. Some of my best performing pieces of content started from my own curiosity. Well, how, how does this app work? How do people make money doing, you know, fill in the blank? And so that's a superpower that I've been leaning into lately. And I think the kids are helpful on the curiosity front too because they're naturally curious about how things work and it forces you to stop and look at the leaves and bugs and stuff that you would normally walk on by without even questioning. Actually, on that Note a story from fincon I think is relevant. A tale of two very different networking strategies. First guy comes up and he's like, hey, I had the goal to hand out 50 business cards tonight. I've only got five left. Would you take one? Sure. You know, and then he walks away like, great dude. Second guy, a friend of mine, you know, looking around this crowded networking happy hour, he's like, the way I see it, I'm surrounded by teachers and I just love that quote. I'm surrounded by teachers. I can learn something from everybody. So. So in that scenario, please try to be more like guy number two. So to summarize, we've got 12 big ideas from 12 years and 670 plus episodes of the Side Hustle show. It was a big challenge to narrow these down to just 12 because it's weird. I felt like I was a reasonably well educated and reasonably successful entrepreneur when the show started. Yeah, I have learned so much from my guests over the years. It's incredible the knowledge that rubs off both from individual conversations, but really from the repetition of doing it and the cumulative advice and common themes and traits that start to bubble up to the top over the years. But to recap, we have Number one was to set the vision and figure out why it's important to you From Brian Scudamore. Number two was to piggyback on trends. We've got a recent episode all about the piggyback principle. Number three is to solve problems. People pay to make problems go away. Number four was to just start and stay started. An entrepreneur in motion tends to stay in motion and just start. Remember, choosing what's next doesn't mean choosing what's forever. Just start. One of the most common pieces of advice from entrepreneurs when asked for their number one tip for side isolation. Number five is to go where the cash is already flowing. Go where your audience already is. In the words of Charlie Munger, the first rule of fishing, go fishing where there's fish. Right. Number six is to fast track with partnerships who is already speaking to the people that you want to get in touch with. Fast track with partnerships. Number seven is to build your email list. How are you going to algorithm proof your business? Think of it that way. Something that you own and control and can be proactive about communicating with your people about. Number eight is to do what matters and to do it consistently. Remember that advice from Rosemarie Groner. It's almost impossible to fail if you do what matters, what has roi, and you do it consistently. Number nine is to accept mentorship and education. There's a sense of pride and, well, I figured this out all on my own. But to fast track your learning curve, lean into mentorship and education. Number 10 is to level up, become the business owner more than the business doer. This is the call to create systems. This is Tyler Gillespie's laptop test. This is the automation elimination automation delegation framework. Like leveling up in your life and your business. Number 11. This was the first of the new ones that we added for the 2025 edition was to iterate. The only constant is change. That has never been more true. It seems like the pace of change has absolutely accelerated, but it is a constant that we can almost, you know, set our watch to, we can rely on. And so you have to be prepared to continue to innovate and iterate in your business. And finally, number 12, remember, it's just a game. And if it's not fun, go find a different game. This is the call to follow what seems easy or effortless to you and follow that direction. Swim downstream versus trying to paddle against the current. So I owe a huge, heartfelt thank you to every single guest over the years, over 600 of you, and to you for tuning in. I also owe a big thank you to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. That is it for me. If you found value in this episode or any other over the last 12 years of the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. 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.