← The Side Hustle Show
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- [00:02]
A
Hey, there's profit out there if you know where to look. My guest today found it in used lawnmowers of all places and made over $50,000 reselling them, which helped him graduate debt free. Look, it's a buy low sell high side hustle. That is a great way to recession proof your income, to AI proof your life. The ability to find profitable deals. It doesn't have to be just lawnmowers. That is just the lens we're going to look through. Exploring this today from money coach Dave. Dave Wilson, welcome to the side hustle show.
- [00:35]
B
Thank you. Happy to be here.
- [00:37]
A
Yeah, I'm excited. Stick around in this one. We're deep dive in the lawnmower flipping biz. From sourcing best practices to you know, where to relist them, get them cleaned up, all that stuff. And then after that, Dave's got a business idea, donation for us, a killer marketing tactic and more. But I want to kick this one off with the story of making $900 in one day as a college student, which is going to bound to get anybody hooked on this.
- [01:01]
B
Yeah, it was a mind blowing day for me at 21 years old. I found a deal on Facebook marketplace for a zero turn that was selling for 2,700 bucks. I messaged the guy as soon as possible. I'm sure he got 40 other messages, but thankfully he saw mine and next thing you know, I'm in the car, picked up the mower, stopped to power wash it, listed it, and then same day sold it for 3,600 bucks. $900 in my pocket. I'd say that was a pretty good day's work.
- [01:33]
A
Absolutely no mechanical repairs needed. Just cleaned it up and relisted it.
- [01:39]
B
Cleaned it up, took some nice pictures, did a little SEO on the title, the description, and relisted it. And yeah, very, very minimal work on my part.
- [01:49]
A
Interesting. So why was he letting it go for so much less than it was worth?
- [01:55]
B
A lot of people don't really know the value of the things that they have, so people will list things online. And just like any buy low sell high side hustle, it's just finding value arbitrage. So I don't think he really knew what he had, but he was happy with the transaction. So it was a good deal for both of us.
- [02:18]
A
Is there a, like a Kelley blue book for lawnmowers? Like, how did you figure out, like, I know, I know this is a good deal when I see it.
- [02:25]
B
There's not a Kelley Blue Book. The UI isn't as nice, but There's a website called Tractor House, which is essentially where a lot of the dealerships and other sellers list their used inventory. And that was my source of truth as it relates to pricing outside of just like referencing comps on Facebook, Marketplace and Craigslist.
- [02:46]
A
Got it. Why lawnmowers? What? Attractive. All the things you could flip. Why lawnmowers?
- [02:51]
B
It's not cool. I thought it was cool, but not many people thought it was cool and it was a little weird to share with friends. But I got into it actually because we had a lawnmower that we utilized and I was getting ready to go to college and it was just my mom at the house and she never used the riding lawnmower, so we didn't need it anymore and decided that I would sell it before I left. And after selling that, I realized there may be something here that I could turn into a business and just use that capital to reinvest and start buying more mowers as a way to make money while I was still in school.
- [03:33]
A
Yeah, because it's not the lowest acquisition cost. Even in the example you gave, it's still 2,700 bucks. It's kind of taken a swing with a little bit of inventory cost up front. And I initially I was picturing like the only lawnmower I've ever used is a little, you know, push behind. And sometimes it's like a self propelled or whatever. I don't know, like, like a little Honda, you know, pour in the gas if you're gonna go, you know, zigzag back and forth. Not like a riding lawnmower, you know, never had a yard big enough to justify it. But you're saying like the riding lawnmowers, because of the higher prices, that's where the margin is.
- [04:08]
B
Yeah. And the $2,600 one is actually an outlier. I would say. Most of the deals where I picked up mowers were right around the 500 to $800 range. That's where I was picking mowers up at, so.
- [04:22]
A
Oh, okay. Okay.
- [04:23]
B
Yeah. That was actually a bigger. A bigger fish as. As you might say.
- [04:28]
A
Yeah, totally. We had a guy who was doing, he was like flipping cars and it was kind of the same idea, you know, try and find an under, like in the cash car space, like sub $5,000, know, go clean title, get it cleaned up and relist it sometimes the same day. And it was kind of this quick flip. But then certain states have different regulations, like, well, if you sell more than five cars in a year, all Of a sudden you qualify as a dealer. And now it's like you have all these other, like, regulations surrounding that, but not so much in the lawnmower business.
- [05:00]
B
Yeah, that brings up a couple good points. First, you don't have to register a lawnmower, so you don't have to deal with like all the title transfers that you would with cars, as well as even like side by sides and UTVs that may be registered. And then while you've probably never seen somebody give away a free car besides David Dobrik, lawnmowers for free. Actually not that odd of a thing to come across, especially if you're looking on the Craigslist free section. Most of these mowers aren't working. But I've found a decent amount of riding lawnmowers for free on Facebook that I could then pick up and then, depending on the issue, get them fixed for relatively cheap. So I would say if you find a good candidate, as in a lawnmower that's not running and have to put some money into it, you could get your first flip for less than 200 bucks.
- [05:56]
A
I love this idea of getting stuff for free. And it's kind of like, it's a big, bulky thing, but where I could see people. I just, I need it out. I gotta get rid of it. I don't care. I'm willing to take. I'm willing to take less than it's worth because I just want it gone. And I've been in that same position. It sits around in the garage for a while and it's like, forget it. So somebody will, somebody will come take it up and they do, you know, especially if it's listed for free.
- [06:22]
B
Yeah, that's exactly it. It does take up space. So admittedly, I don't do it as much now because I live in an apartment, I can't really stick lawnmowers through my door. But if you have some extra space, a garage or even a storage unit, that's a good place to house things and work on.
- [06:40]
A
Yeah, this is pretty typical of other resellers that we've talked to, is like, well, we're starting out of the spare bedroom, we're starting out of the garage. And then as the inventory builds, the storage becomes a bottleneck. That's when we invest in the storage unit and sometimes even like a larger warehouse space in certain cases. But you go pick this thing up and you're. It's not, it's not going to fit in the back of a sedan. You probably have to have A little like flatbed pull behind trailer type of thing.
- [07:08]
B
Yeah, that's what I utilize for the most of my flipping. Ironically, the cars that I used to carry, some of the mowers were worth less than the mowers that I was carrying. So I started with like a Ford Escape and then a, that I paid 500 bucks for and then a super tiny trailer that I think I got for $300. And that's all I needed to really get started. But even if you don't have a vehicle and you want to try this to see if it's something you enjoy getting a truck rental, like a mileage based rental from U Haul, Lowe's, whatever for the day, usually you can build into your profit margins as well. So it's not something that you should see as a hurdle for getting started if you want to see if this is a side hustle for you.
- [07:52]
A
Totally. Yeah. We were talking with, with Rob Stevenson from Flea Market Flipper or Flipper U University the other day and he had found me this. I forget the, I forget the name brand of this like oven range, but it was like this big, you know, 48 inch, you know, range, super nice condition where the people were remodeling their house and they're like, we just got to get rid of this thing. It's like a $20,000 range, but we'll sell it for 2,000 bucks or something. Like, I want to go pick this up, but it's not fitting in the back of the crv. He's like, dude, go to, go to Home Depot, get yourself a truck for the day and go make some money out of this. You probably sell it for $8,000 easily. And so I was like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, there's margin enough to play with. It kind of gets your gears turning on what is out there, what is available and what you can do. So if I'm sourcing Facebook Marketplace, you mentioned Craigslist as well, any other places that you like to look for this stuff.
- [08:49]
B
This is giving away the secret sauce. So it pains me a bit to say this, but the best place to find deals on used lawnmowers where you'll find margin is by actually going to lawnmower dealerships and asking them for their trade in inventory. Now, you may have to have some conversations to get them comfortable with you buying from them, but what I found is I would go physically into the dealerships in my local area and I do that rather than a phone call, because you have to understand how most of these people do business like they like the face to face, they like building trust. And I told them what I was doing, very transparent and said I can pay cash, I won't call you if it breaks afterwards. And if you get a deal in, I can be there same day to get it out of your way and then you can sell more of the new inventory that you really want to get moving. So if you have local dealerships in your area, that's where I would go for the really good deals on used.
- [09:52]
A
Mowers because they'll take them in on trade and then they, you know, nobody comes in and wants to buy them.
- [09:57]
B
Like, yeah, it's like a, a John Deere dealer, if they get a simplicity mower as a trade in, they don't really want to put the simplicity mower out front and have them selling that. They'd rather be selling the new green painted John Deere. That is a higher dollar amount. So for them it's a value add where they don't have to put any work or time into it to just sell it to a guy like me and get it out of, for selling more new inventory.
- [10:27]
A
Okay. I wonder what other niche equipment dealers would have similar deals like this. You kind of come in, you take it off their hands, pay cash, no questions asked, and then you can turn around and, and still have margin in it.
- [10:41]
B
Yeah, the side by side UTV market, that's one that I definitely did not dive into a ton, but similar business model because they're dealerships too. So you go to a Polaris dealership that they're not going to want to sell a competitor's piece of equipment on their lot and you can walk into there and do the same thing.
- [11:01]
A
That's really interesting. In the car business, like my, my one and only corporate job, the dealers love to sell used cars. There's more margin in the used car business than there is in the new car business. Like, well, everybody pays the same from the factory, so there's only so low we can go on this price. But on the used car it's like, well, we took it on trade, we put a few hundred bucks into it and now, you know, we can, we can make money on this, we can make money on financing it and. But it's kind of the opposite in the equipment game.
- [11:27]
B
Yeah, it would be interesting to get the inside scoop from an actual dealership owner to understand like the financing and how they own their new inventory because I think that may play into how fast they want to move that versus maybe getting decent margin on a piece of used equipment.
- [11:43]
A
Yeah. Okay. All right. I found a few dealers near me. Are there any brands that I should be on the lookout for that you know, have more demand or have better resale than others?
- [11:55]
B
So brand wise, John Deere people love it. The green paint sells. I'm a big fan of Husqvarna, but where I made most of my money wasn't necessarily selling a specific brand, but a specific type of lawnmower. So with lawnmowers getting a bit nerdy here, there's the tiny tractor ones and then there's zero turn mowers, which these are the ones people love because it's like driving a piece of heavy equipment. But it's a lawnmower because it has the sticks and that's how you do your turning. So I ended up focusing on purchasing just those for most of my profitable years where I was making the most money versus buying the tractors. And the reason being I would churn inventory a lot faster than when I would buy the tractors.
- [12:44]
A
Okay. So I see a few John Deere's near me, some Husqvarnas as well. Like, do any of these stand out to you as potential deals?
- [12:55]
B
Not any yet. So Kubota is a very high end commercial brand. Same with Bad Boy. And I think the Bad Boy is actually from a dealer. But if you're looking and you find like a Ferris, those are ones that I would always buy. And then if you scroll up, I think I saw a Cub Cadet Zero turn. Yeah, the rzt. So when I was buying similar mowers like that, I think I would purchase them for around 800 bucks and then sell them for 1200. It depended on the motor that was in it as well as the deck size. So those are the things that you would look for in a mower is like what size motor does it have in it? How big is the deck? Is the deck a stamp deck or is it welded and commercial grade? And then how many hours on it? Hours in the land of mowers are equivalent to miles on a car. So if you get over like the 500 hour mark, people start getting skeptical. Unless it's a commercial machine. But under 500 hours in my mind, still has a fair amount of life on it.
- [13:55]
A
Okay. And then I'm looking at the tractor house site to try and find comps for it.
- [14:02]
B
Yeah, that's where I would go.
- [14:04]
A
More with Dave in just a moment, including his target profit per flip and the other unrelated reselling niche that helped him make money.
- [14:12]
C
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- [16:35]
A
Is there a target margin that you're shooting for? You Say, okay, some of the, the best acquisitions are kind of in this 3 to 7, $800 range. And then if I can make 3, 4, or 500 bucks on top of that.
- [16:49]
B
Yeah, $300 was my bare minimum. And the reason why it was $300 is because I assumed I'd be putting around three hours of work into each of these mowers, including drive time. So it's like o mower is an hour away, and then I have to go pick it up, meet with the person, take it back, power wash it, take pictures. That's another hour. And I had two hours drive time. So I'm shooting for 100 bucks an hour. That was how I measured deals, significantly more than the $10 an hour I was making, like, during my summer job. That's why this was so lucrative compared to what I was doing as a W2 job at that time.
- [17:28]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good way to frame. It is. Not necessarily because you're probably not going to find a deal every day, but if I do find a deal, I want to make 100 bucks an hour on it in exchange for my, my time involved. Because it's not like it's passive income. It's like there's, you know, I got to do go pick it up, I got to clean it up, I got to list it, I got to deal with the tire kickers, I got to sell the thing.
- [17:47]
B
But yeah, it gives you enough cushion too, if something big goes wrong with the mower. I can't think of any large losses. Like, there may be times where I broke even, but rarely did it ever get to a point where I was losing a significant amount of money by purchasing a mower.
- [18:04]
A
Yeah, that was kind of the next thing. It's like, well, in, in contrast to the ten dollar an hour, you know, punch the clock job, like there's some capital risk involved here where, you know, I've got some inventory costs and now I've got this big physical thing that hopefully works and hopefully I can turn. But you know, if it doesn't, now I'm out to $500. And that was 50 hours worth of work at the day job.
- [18:28]
B
Yeah, there was some risk, but I don't think people realize how simple lawnmowers are mechanically. Like, if you can figure out the sumif formula in Excel, you can figure out how to make a lawnmower tick and pretty much resolve any issue. Because at the end of the day, you need fuel, you need spark, you need air, and that's what makes a Mower run. If you have to troubleshoot, you just start with one of those three things and work your way down the chain. And it's pretty easy compared to like working on a car, figuring out which one of those things might be missing to actually make the mower run. And then once you do identify the issue, the parts are just so darn cheap, especially if you order them off Amazon. Like a fuel pump for your car, maybe $1,000 repair. But a fuel pump for a mower takes five minutes, depending on the mower and costs you 20 bucks to replace.
- [19:20]
A
Did you have a mechanical background or was this just like, Well, I gotta YouTube this and figure this out.
- [19:26]
B
I had some just from like tinkering on stuff with my dad with small engines and 4H, which is like a youth organization where you do like projects and stuff for the county fair. But I did not have an advanced understanding of mechanics. It was a lot of YouTube videos and looking at different forms, especially on popular brands like John Deere, Ferris, whatever. There's forms where people would input their issues and then typically resolve them from someone else responding. So a lot of the things that went wrong I could identify with a quick Google search and then figure out how to fix it on my own.
- [20:05]
A
Yeah, one of my favorite series on the show is Matt Boknock, who started his. His original side hustle was doing motorcycle repairs in his garage. Like hey, don't pay and just add on Craigslist. Don't pay dealership prices. I know how to fix stuff. Bring it to me and I'll do it. And it was hours for dollars, like turning wrenches in the garage. But Matt sets up the camera in the corner of the garage and starts talking through how to do these repairs. And over the course of 10 years now he's got 100,000 plus YouTube subscribers following along for these tutorial type of videos. He starts selling the full engine rebuild streaming videos or digital downloads. And kind of a really cool progression to see, you know, from a service based business to a more time leveraged business. And then insurance companies started reaching out like, hey, could you do some sponsored content for us? And it was like boom, boom, boom. And last we spoke he had made his own, you know, something pressure blaster type of product. I don't know, it's like, okay, selling physical products to this audience now too. So really cool evolution of that. That sounds like in this case, hey, we're just focused on quick flip, recycle the money, multiply the money, put it into the next thing and off to the Races.
- [21:15]
B
Yeah. I definitely think there is opportunity, if you have that creative itch, to document this type of flip in the same way, like for short form content, I think that would perform quite well. But if we're looking at it through the lens that you highlighted of how easy it is to fix, honestly, the equipment that you need too is quite minimal. Like you can get a harbor freight toolkit that costs 100 bucks and then some other supplies. And you have everything you need to work on a mower, which makes it a pretty low barrier to entry to get into, even if you have to fix things on them.
- [21:50]
A
Yeah. Did you ever branch out into. Well, I have this skill set of finding undervalued inventory. Value Arbitrage, you called it. You say, well, I could apply this across other products. They catch your eye. Or it's like, I'm staying in my lane. Look, I know lawnmowers. I know it's a winner. I'm going to stick here.
- [22:10]
B
I certainly did not stay in my lane and that was because I was in school. So I did the lawnmowers during the summer when I would pack my mother's yard, bless her heart, full of a ton of lawnmowers. And then I would leave and all the lawnmowers would be gone and couldn't keep that up at college. But I did expand that.
- [22:30]
A
Yeah, that's kind of. That was the other piece of like, well, how much? You know, they're taking up a non zero amount of square footage. Like, where are you keeping these things? But okay, so you have some space to store them.
- [22:37]
B
Yeah, just the backyard. There were like six of them at a time. And this is like a half acre lot. So it was really over akill on the mower. And of course I had to test them. So I was mowing grass like every day just to go.
- [22:49]
A
Yeah, best looking lawn in the neighborhood.
- [22:51]
B
Amen to that. Yeah, it was. But when I was at school, I applied the same mindset to cell phones. So I did it with iPhones. And One of the W2 jobs that I worked as an internship during the summer of college was at a cell phone authorized agent. And they had worked out a deal where they would take trade ins and then send them off to this company. And while I was there, I said, what margin are you getting on these phones? And they weren't getting a great margin. So I said, okay, I can $50 plus whatever they offer you as long as you let me sell them. So I just took all that iPhone inventory that I was getting from Them and then ended up listing it online and was shipping it out of my dorm room room in college. And I think the year that I did that it was like an extra six grand. That was pretty passive, but a lot of mailing and the college mail office not liking me the most. But we got through it.
- [23:48]
A
Wait, wait, wait. So the store you're working for, they're taking phones in on trade. You say how much are you making on these? And it wasn't that much. You say, well I'll buy them from you for 50 bucks. And is that how this went?
- [23:59]
B
$50 plus their margin. So they got a value add. So I would give them $50 over the asking price that they were getting from the other company.
- [24:06]
A
Okay, got it, got it. So you're, they're better off and now you have something to resell and there was still enough margin in there for you.
- [24:14]
B
Yeah, they were not getting a great trade in. And this wasn't like the trade ins where you know, trade in your whatever generation device to get the newest device. This was you trade in your old device to get X amount of dollars store credit. So.
- [24:31]
A
Oh, like a, like a GameStop type of thing.
- [24:33]
B
Yeah. Or like those vending machines that you see in whatever big box store to trade in your device. It was a similar model to that. So those devices.
- [24:41]
A
Yeah. What's so like Gazelle? Is Gazelle still around? Like there's some online ones that do something similar.
- [24:46]
B
That may be one. And I can't remember the vending machine's name, but they're always there in the stores where you can just sell your.
- [24:52]
A
Device, they don't give you a great offer. So if you want to go through the effort of selling it, reselling it yourself, you're going to be able to get more.
- [24:59]
B
Yeah. And it's pretty low lift. That's why I did it. I didn't want to deal with ebay and I didn't want to deal with Facebook in person meetups because it was hard to commute with college and I actually got robbed one time when I was selling a phone in person, so.
- [25:15]
C
Oh dang.
- [25:16]
B
I decided to do mail only and I ended up using Swappa. That was the website where I sold all the electronics because they didn't have absorbitant fees and they made the process quite easy.
- [25:28]
A
Yeah, I bought several phones from Swappa and probably sold a couple on there too. Just clean marketplace. Look, this is, this is what we, we're going to specialize in and yeah, they make it easy.
- [25:37]
B
Yeah, very simple. Which was Nice. One thing that allowed me to sell a lot of lawnmowers was Swappa has like your marketplace reputation. Same with Facebook. Yeah, that was a huge key for me being able to sell a lot of lawnmowers. Like, I treated it very much like a business in that I was trying to get good reviews to serve people well. And because of that, have a very high ranked marketplace profile that allowed me to stand out and sell more mowers.
- [26:06]
A
Yeah. Did you ask customers to like leave you a review?
- [26:09]
B
Yeah, I did, I did. I was very persistent about that. And I honestly think the customer service that you provide on Facebook Marketplace is what will allow you to sell more than the average person. So like when you're listing a lawnmower, it's not just saying like Husqvarna lawnmower, it's saying husqvarna riding lawnmower. 24 horsepower Briggs and Stratton engine with 54 inch deck. That's all in the title. And then you put that in the description. And then you throw tags on that that coincide with that title. You take good pictures. And then when the messaging starts happening after they ask if it's available, don't continue a text conversation. At least I never did. I would say, yes, it is. If you're interested, please call me. Because you can't put your number in the listing, but you can send it via message. And then you get on the phone right away, you start developing trust quickly. And then I would close deals a lot faster because of that because there's no going back and forth. Same with the buying. That's how I was able to snag a lot of deals before other people because they would do the messaging back and forth. And I kind of hate the Facebook messenger, like back and forth. Is it available? Yes. When can I pick it up? Yada yada.
- [27:28]
A
It's like, yeah, when can you come by? And then they, you know, it goes radio silence and just.
- [27:33]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's like, call me at this number. I have cash, I'm ready to buy. Yeah, that's the way to do it. So that plus the reviews that I would ask for made it a pretty substantial advantage that I had compared to others selling on, on the platform.
- [27:50]
A
Yeah, it allows you to command more respect and maybe higher prices too. So like, look, I took these nicely staged photos. It's really clean. And look, I've got dozens of positive five star reviews here. So like, yeah, this guy knows what he's doing. Yeah.
- [28:05]
B
And you can use that to like sniff out Other mowers. Because typically, if someone's buying a mower, they probably have a mower that they don't want. So it's calling them and saying, oh, do you have another mower that you're looking to replace, too? And sometimes you could go get one and then take one back. And they're happy because you took care of their old mower and gave them, like, some trade.
- [28:27]
A
Yeah, yeah. If they're buying a new one, it's like, well, maybe this is replacing the old one. That is, you know, they're upgrading or. Okay, yeah. So you're keeping the inventory flowing.
- [28:36]
B
Yeah, exactly. Or just like other misquoted lawn things that they want to get rid of. I don't know why people are afraid of Facebook Marketplace, but there's. There's a subset of the population that is. So it's those people that just want to get rid of stuff and not sell it that I would really lean into. Like, they're satisfied because they got rid of their thing. They're happy, and I'm satisfied because I got a free thing that I can sell them.
- [29:00]
A
One of the things that is standing out to me in both the lawnmowers and the cell phones is building repeatable systems around the inventory sourcing. This is always the hard part about building a flipping business where it's like, you know, I'm only as good as my last find. You know, I got to constantly be sourcing inventory. But on the cell phone example, it's like, there's a steady stream coming through this store. And same thing on the lawnmowers. Hey, there's a steady stream coming through these dealerships. Like, I want to be the first person you call when you get something in on trade. And everyone that I sell, like, hey, do you have an old lawnmower you're trying to get rid of? So it's a kind of a way to keep the wheel spinning.
- [29:36]
B
Yeah. And if you really want to go, like, expert level for sourcing, especially with AI. When I was doing this, I didn't really have access to AI yet, or it had just come out and wasn't heavily used. But I worked with one of my roommates who was a computer science major to develop a scraper of Facebook Marketplace, which may be against their terms of service. So double check this. If you do that to flag when someone would listen, zero turn in their just like title, and then it would automatically text me a link to the listing. Every 15 minutes, it would scrape. So then I would typically be the first to respond So I didn't even have to refresh because I had something in the background refreshing for me and could just go about my day doing whatever.
- [30:19]
A
Yeah, that's interesting. I have set up, like, alerts, like, when something comes on that matches what you're looking for, that's too slow.
- [30:26]
B
Too slow, in my opinion. I don't trust them. Yeah, maybe it's snake oil and it's not. The AI Thing didn't help, but I. I personally think it did, so.
- [30:35]
A
All right, fair enough. Anything left on the lawnmower side or the flipping side of business, the key.
- [30:42]
B
Call out for actually selling things is making them look clean. So the best investment that you can make in your business if you purchase additional tools to do this is a power washer. The power washer made me so much money because I could just clean things quickly in my backyard. And even if you don't have a power washer, take the five minutes and spend the $5 in quarters at the car wash bay to power wash the engine because it makes such a big difference. So it's a weird call out, but I promise you, the power washer made me the most money out of any of the tools that I had, more so than I could replace a battery, change the oil, replace the fuel filter. But if I didn't power wash it, which was the cheapest thing out of all those things to do, it wouldn't sell.
- [31:28]
A
So. Yeah, then it still looks used and dirty. You know, it's like, make it look.
- [31:32]
B
Nice, make it pretty.
- [31:33]
A
You know, a staged house sells better than one with some other random family furniture in there.
- [31:37]
B
Yeah, that and seats. Rip seats. I don't know. That was another thing that turned people off to mowers. So if you have to throw a seat cover on or buy a replacement seat, but for whatever reason, if it had a ripped seat, you could get it cheap and then just replace the seat and then sell it for, like, 200 bucks more.
- [31:57]
A
Yeah. How funny. It's like, this is purely cosmetic. It has nothing to do with the function of the thing. But it's like, hey, I'm gonna judge a book by its cover. If this is ripped, I don't want to touch it.
- [32:05]
B
Yeah. Matters to somebody, but.
- [32:07]
A
All right, we'll be right back with money coach Dave for his business idea donation for side Hustle show listeners coming up right after this. As a business owner, you worked hard to make that phone ring.
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C
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A
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- [33:29]
A
All right, we're back with Dave Wilson, money coach. Dave for round two, which is Donate a business idea. This is something that you might start yourself if you had more time. This is something, an opportunity that you see that listeners might be able to run with.
- [33:44]
B
I wish I had the time to start this because I do think it could be quite lucrative. But my business idea to donate is a LinkedIn video marketing agency focused on personal brands. So what you may not know about LinkedIn and behind the scenes of CEOs of high earning individuals, they're typically not the one writing their content. It's ghostwriters that they actually hire to write their posts. And while that market I would say is fairly saturated, I haven't seen a lot of CEOs or whatever really dive in on LinkedIn video. And LinkedIn video is being pushed substantially right now just by the platform. For personal example, I've had 75 million impressions on LinkedIn videos just in the last 365 days. Because they've been pushing it so much, I see that space exploding. And those high earning individuals aren't going to want to do it themselves. So they're going to hire a ghostwriter equivalent in the video space and ghostwriters aren't going to be equipped to do it. If I was to do this, the easiest lift, I would partner with a ghostwriter who already has clients say that they can add to their package four videos a month, so one a week and then they can charge whatever for that add on. But you just Charge a flat rate per video or for the month rather that you would need to provide that service on their behalf.
- [35:22]
A
Okay, so kind of a white label strategy. They already have the clients and you're kind of going to be behind the scenes delivering the service underneath them as kind of like a foot in the door marketing strategy.
- [35:33]
B
Yeah, that I think is the easiest way to acquire business. You could go direct to higher earning individuals. So if you focus on like salespeople, executives, VPs, whatever and do cold outreach to them via LinkedIn, that may be a path. But partnering with ghostwriters for your initial clients I think is the easiest path. In.
- [35:54]
A
Do you see the CEOs and thought leaders of have, you know, do they have to be on camera to produce this content? Like it seems like this is maybe harder to do than ghost. Yeah, sure. We can ghostwrite in your voice and you know, we know your industry expertise and you'll feed us some of the speeches that you've given and all your company blah, blah, blah information and we'll, we'll make it sound like you. The video is a little bit harder to do that with.
- [36:18]
B
I would argue that it's not. Yes, it will take some time, but if you can package it up in a way that's easy for them to participate, I think it's a barrier that could be overcome. And you see this happen in the Instagram space. There's a lot of similar agencies that provide this service to coaches, to other individuals that do video on their behalf. And essentially what they do is they pre script content that they then have the person record just quickly like they read the script. They can use a teleprompter so you can record a full like one minute short form video in ideally one minute if you can do it in one take. So if you can script out four videos, send that to them 15 minutes, they could film the four for the month and then you can do all the editing to make it engaging, throw on captions and make the audio good. And perhaps hop on a call for the first one to provide some basic coaching to make sure that their video quality is up to snuff. But other than that should be pretty straightforward.
- [37:20]
A
Got it. And you're thinking $1,000 a month or so for this?
- [37:24]
B
Yeah, I would say it's pretty on par, 1,000 bucks a month. So 250 a video and it's not outrageous budget for those people. I know ghostwriters that are get pain just for two getting paid just for text content on average like 5,000amonth. From high earning individuals. So an extra thousand dollar add on.
- [37:44]
A
He'S like, maybe, maybe that's a business idea. It'd be a ghostwriter for LinkedIn people.
- [37:48]
B
It certainly is. Yeah. That's another thing. They do very well in their market, but they've been doing it for a while. The person that's earning that level of.
- [37:57]
A
Income and is that now are they turning around and like, I don't know how much you know about this industry. This is fascinating to me. It's like, how much of that is like, well, now we'll just feed it into AI and come up with limitless posts. Or is it like, no, it's still, it still needs to be human.
- [38:11]
B
So I wouldn't say it's necessarily AI recycling, but I do think people underestimate how much content is recycled just by we as humans. So, meaning if a ghostwriter figures out a certain post format works really well for this individual, they will repeat that same post format every single month until it stops performing. So I can think of a couple individuals where you see like Elon Musk made a quote about LinkedIn being a terrible place or something like that.
- [38:44]
A
And yeah, yeah, so I've seen it too, like only losers hang out on LinkedIn or something.
- [38:48]
B
Yeah, that image has been reused by individuals in LinkedIn posts that I know are using ghostwriters to create their content so many times it's ridiculous. So they find stuff like that and just repeat it. But AI can certainly be used for this if you're not comfortable like creating the content for the person that you're making videos for. And this is something that I've done before, but I will find somebody in that space that is doing really well at what I'm trying to do and then use that to prompt AI. So if I know that Nick is very good at side hustle content for video, I will say create a script in the style of Nick and then it spits out that script and then it makes sure it's relevant to their industry and their audience.
- [39:42]
A
I think you're onto something here because yeah, you could use some AI assistance on the script writing side. And then you could probably at $250 a video, there's probably really well qualified editors who are like, dude, for 50 bucks a video, like I'm happy to make a one minute video for you. And it's like, and you can play in that margin meanwhile and maybe you throw a little bit of a percentage to the, to the white labeling initial ghostwriter who made the introduction to the client but yeah, it seems like there's, there's margin to play with for sure.
- [40:15]
B
Yeah, that's where you could look to fiverr for an editor. That pretty common to find short form editors there. I would say get comfortable with it yourself for the first couple because it's a skill that pays. I would say video editing at this point has made me more money than my college degree just because I learned how to figure out and create content.
- [40:33]
A
More than the pressure washer though.
- [40:35]
B
I don't know the pressure washer, that's definitely a close second.
- [40:38]
A
Okay, okay. Well, very good. That was round two. The LinkedIn Video Marketing Agency focused on, you know, high earning individuals, thought leaders, CEOs, personal brand people on LinkedIn there. We're gonna move on to round three, which the triple threat. And we're going to start off with a marketing tactic that's working for you right now.
- [40:59]
B
As I mentioned in the donate a business idea section, like LinkedIn is super popular, but I'll actually go a different route. Do remember LinkedIn though, that's a huge area of opportunity right now. But for me, and this is going to sound very archaic, but just sheer volume has been working for me. So I post 120 videos a month. So I'm posting a singular video every single day. And then I cross post that across platform so it's more like 30 original videos and then just posting it on all the various platforms. But that has allowed me over the past six months to get over a hundred million views outside of LinkedIn. So just like on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube.
- [41:46]
A
Those are the four that you focus on. The four platforms?
- [41:49]
B
Yeah, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and then Facebook. But that automatically cross posts with the.
- [41:55]
A
Okay, got it.
- [41:56]
B
Yeah, I was able to figure out a formula with that sheer volume that works for me. And now because I'm also experimenting with other formulas, content formulas, because I have so many at bats, it makes it very easy to experiment. And even if like six of my videos flop in a week, as long as I have one pop off, it's a good enough week for me. So I'm just able to experiment and learn so much faster than the average person by posting so much.
- [42:25]
A
We had a recent guest who said something similar. She's like, you know, usually I go about one for 15, you know, every 15 videos, something pops. And so it's like I could do that over the course of two weeks or I could do that over the course of three or four days. And like by increasing the output, I increase My surface area or my odds of one hit or my speed of having one hit. It sounds similar in this case. Tell me about your creative or ideation process. Because the volume to come up with a compelling hook and a story and how am I going to structure this thing and make it such a to even give yourself the chance of hitting that viral wave.
- [43:03]
B
Some days it comes easy, other days hard. I take a lot of showers because those were my best ideas come. I don't know why it's like those and long walks. That's where my best ideas come. But for me, from a content ideation process. The book Steal like an Artist, which I'm sure has been mentioned on your podcast before, that's my playbook for creating a lot of content. And the whole idea is like there's really not anything new that you're creating. You're just taking a different take on an idea. So I'll look to other creators who've had styles perform well or specific narratives perform well. And then in many cases I'll do what I said with the donate a business idea. I will download their transcript of a video and then use that as a starting point by inputting it into AI and asking it to like spit out different ways that I could spin the narrative. And then I'll go in and do my edits and then create my own style. But there's that side of it and then there's a lot of reuse. Like I know four or five topics every time I post those videos. Pretty much the exact same video, but just filmed another time. I'm getting at least a quarter of a million views on those videos and I will post them every single month.
- [44:21]
A
So rather than copy and paste the old one, it's like, no, I'm going to refilm it. It's going to be new, new content. Even though it's pretty much the same as what worked well before.
- [44:30]
B
Yeah, platforms are getting pretty good at catching like re uploads as content that you've pushed before and then not pushing the reach on that as much. But if you truly film a new video, edit a new video, then they don't care about that. So that's what I'm doing. I may change the hook slightly, I may change where I'm filming it or like how the narrative is structured, but the core message is the same.
- [44:55]
A
Are you batching at all? Are you able to batch or it's like not every day. Every, like wake up, grab the coffee, and now at 9 o', clock, it's time to time to shoot my video for the day.
- [45:05]
B
Oh, there was a time where I was really good at batching and that was when my style was a lot simpler. So ironically, the style that took off for me was sitting like this, holding a book and then reading off stats. And those videos I could turn around in 30 minutes so I could write the script because it was just stats, film it and then edit it so those I could batch like three weeks out. But now as I've had to, you know, transform as a content creator and figure out new things that work, and I'm really looking for that next viral formula. The video edits have taken a lot longer and take a lot more creative energy. So this time of year is hard because I have to batch content for travel, but I'm not doing a great job of it. I made it through Thanksgiving, but I don't know, the, the Christmas season. I might miss an upload, but actually I won't. I know I won't.
- [46:02]
A
It's a year on record of saying you're not going to miss it, but I get people asking me the same question, like when we go on trips, like, what do you. Or. Or during the summer, it's like taking time off with the kids, like, oh, what do you. What do you do? It's like, well, we're not live. Like, you know, we just pre record it or, you know, pre batch it. You know, record five episodes in a week and then drip them out over the next month. But it's sometimes challenging for those for that time period. But I was going to ask, is there a consistent call to action in the videos, like to drive email signups or kind of like invite people to take the next step with you?
- [46:33]
B
Not that I've done well at this point. I will say what drives a lot of my engagement is I really prompt for conversation in the comments. I bring the viewer to be a part of the narrative, a part of the video by getting their take on the data that's being presented to hopefully have a productive conversation in the comments. And I think that's what's happening, allowed me to have a lot of videos pop off per se, because when someone comments, I reply as quickly as possible and like I'm texting my best friend. That's the best advice I've ever been given as it relates to engagement is when someone comments something, I will find a way to ask them another question that they then have to reply to or ideally would reply to to keep driving that engagement. And I've done that over and over in a lot of my videos.
- [47:23]
A
Got it. And so they. The algorithm then sees that like, oh, this person is really engaged and people are having in depth conversations are more than just kind of surface level, like nice post or cool video and you're getting sending nice signals back to the machine.
- [47:38]
B
Yeah, exactly. And there are videos where I've had more comments than likes. Just to give you an idea of how much volume I'm pushing in the comments.
- [47:47]
A
Yeah, I see a few of these examples here where it's like, here are the highest paying blue collar jobs or here's the median 401k balance by age. And it's exactly what you described. You kind of fake reading out of this book and just listing off the stats.
- [48:03]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And when I'm presenting the data, I don't really give any of my opinions or thoughts on it. So I really do look for people to craft a narrative around what they may think about the video.
- [48:17]
A
Yeah. Median salary by age. Yeah, this is.
- [48:19]
B
Comes up again.
- [48:21]
A
Is that a recycled one?
- [48:23]
B
That's a recycled one. I think I've done that one like six times and one of them I think got 2.2 million views. And then there's a couple like monthly investing to become a millionaire. That one continues to always pop off. So that blue background one is me experimenting with a different style that took way too many hours and then ended up flopping.
- [48:41]
A
So isn't that the worst? You're like, I spent so much time on this.
- [48:46]
B
Yeah. Compared to a 20 minute video.
- [48:49]
A
Yeah, I see what you. Yeah, this is a really common format for you and yeah, this makes sense.
- [48:55]
B
Yeah. And then as you see time has progressed, I'm experimenting right now with a kitchen style, I call it, where I'm sit down, very teaching, informative. And then man on the street where I'm actually going out and doing like live interviews with people, asking them financial questions or doing challenges.
- [49:12]
A
Yeah, this. I saw the Bourbon guy the other day. I wonder if Bourbon thinks about me. I just remember seeing his shirt the other day.
- [49:18]
B
Yeah, that guy was a character. Very fun.
- [49:21]
A
Nice. Let's move on to the new or new to you tool that you're 11 right now.
- [49:31]
B
So as a creator, there's a ton of tools that we get access to or advertised to that we should be using and I could come up with something really unique. But honestly it's boring. But it's been super helpful as of late. TikTok has just gotten next level in its ability to help you create content. And you had asked earlier about how do I source ideas? Well, TikTok has a function that's called Creator Search Insights, where you can see trending searches and topics related to your niche. And within that you can actually utilize their AI to generate hooks and then it'll outline your script as well. So you can really just pull the full structure. And then if after you make the video, you go back and post it under that term, you'll start ranking under search for that which historically search videos have not been paid. So like the only time you get paid on TikTok is if it goes through the for you page. But that just changed in December where video traffic from searches are now paid. And you can rank if you create a video based on that creator Search insights topic. And if you follow their outline to a T, I mean, you're just playing into the platform. Personally, I think you have to be careful because you lose some creativity. But if your goal is to rank and get views, that's a pretty easy way to do it by just utilizing their tools that they have natively on the app.
- [50:57]
A
Yeah. And even if you're not getting paid directly through their creator program, it's still potential views and followers and next steps and email subscribers and clients. Like, there's a lot of benefits that come to ranking in search too, especially if you can answer somebody's question and like, oh, I really trust this guy now and I would like to continue paying attention to his work.
- [51:18]
B
Yeah, totally. It helps. And then you can figure out how to tie those like search terms to affiliate offerings if you're a creator. So like, for me, in the finance space, a lot of people ask about high yield savings accounts. So for me it's like trying to rank for the search like top high Yield Savings Accounts, December 2025. Like that's a video that I just posted.
- [51:39]
A
So now how interesting, because this would be a killer competitive keyword in Google with NerdWallet and Bank Rate and all these like, you know, 20 year old plus domain age and you know, big, big companies with big, big SEO budgets.
- [51:53]
B
Yeah. And not a lot of people know this, but I'm sure you do. Instagram actually lists to Google. So like there's some search terms that you can come up for if you have an Instagram video that's keyworded similarly. So people may find you that way and then you can maybe get traffic.
- [52:13]
A
This is like me showing my age. But like people are using TikTok as a search engine, like looking for specific and question and answer content.
- [52:19]
B
Oh yeah, it's ridiculous. I Forget the exact numbers. But yeah, search is a very popular feature of, of TikTok.
- [52:26]
A
Okay. Yeah, I've never, I just, you know, I get my little, I guess the for you feed and you know.
- [52:32]
B
Okay, no, it's very prevalent. I can even think of times where I know friends would search for a specific recipe like how do you make steak? And it's like they don't, they don't search it on Google, they search it on TikTok and then they get the one minute clip of Gordon Ramsay or someone that mirrors him cooking a steak. So they get the directions in the way that they prefer.
- [52:55]
A
Well, this sounds really cool. TikTok creator search insights because they want to feed their content, especially like this search intent content. Right. If they don't do a good job of answering those questions, people are not going to search on their platform anymore. So they want to make it easier for you to create that kind of content. Use, use their AI to generate the hook and the script that will serve that query well. Really interesting. I'll take a look at that. The last round or last section of the Triple threat is your favorite book from the last 12 months.
- [53:26]
B
Yeah, favorite book and one that has been crucial to me as I've stepped into being a full time entrepreneur. Content creator is the Obstacle is the Way, which is written by the gentleman that does the daily stoic Ryan Holiday. So the Obstacle is the Way is the favorite book as of late and me as a person very anxious or always have been. But it gave me perspective on how to view problems and then how to take on those problems just with the obstacles that I have and then also just continuing to persist and lean into those problems because it's typically the path forward. So it helped me shift my mindset to a point where I was ready to step into full time entrepreneurship with relatively decent level of confidence. I would dare to say hi, but I don't want to jinx myself. But it's, it's been good thus far.
- [54:18]
A
And this is, this is very recent. Like you just took the leap.
- [54:21]
B
Yeah, I'm just about two months in.
- [54:24]
A
Oh, congratulations. I'm excited for you.
- [54:27]
B
Yeah, it's exciting, but hard to tell. Parents, aunts and uncles, like, hey, I left a very good job to make TikTok videos. But here we are.
- [54:38]
A
But here we are. You know, I've got a plan, I've got a system and hey, I've got this. You know, you've been doing it for a few years. Like I got a track record here, you know, I know what I'm doing. It's not like I'm jumping off the cliff without a parachute here.
- [54:48]
B
Exactly. Not starting from nothing.
- [54:50]
A
Well, very good. So as your first year as a full time creator at Money Coach Dave, what's next for you? What's got you excited?
- [54:58]
B
I am very excited and intimidated by the year ahead. The the main goal will be finding a way to fully replace my W2 income. I forecasted out what it would take to actually replace, you know, like the insurance that was paid for for me and all the additional benefits of corporate America. And that requires me to make quite a bit more. So I will be working on solving that problem and the way that I'll actually be doing that is just building out additional systems. So in the first two months here I've developed a full guide, developed the email funnel that plays into my manychat funnel. So that's all automated and working. And now looking forward content wise and what you had seen when you're looking at my profile is I'm trying to find that next formula for my content that may be more brand friendly than just the holding a book and reading stats. So that'll be the main goal is finding is it street interviews, Is it this talking head kitchen style video that I'm doing or is it something that I haven't even thought of yet?
- [56:07]
A
Got it. Got it. Well, again, follow along at Money Coach Dave. I mean worst case, you always go back to flipping lawnmowers. It sounds like there's a repeatable skill there if this all doesn't work out. But I'm excited for you. I hope you keep us posted. Make sure to download your free listener bonus for this episode. It's my list of the 20 other best items to flip for a profit. I'll have to add lawnmowers to that. Once again, that's a big list of stuff you can flip for a profit. Sidehustlenation.com lawnmowers or just follow the show notes link in the episode description. It'll get you right over there. Dave, thank you so much for stopping by. I want to say thank you to our sponsors as well for helping make this content free for everyone. IT side hustlenation.com deals is where to go to find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. 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 the.