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- [00:01]
Nick Loper
The 10 best side hustles of the year. What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show. It's the entrepreneurship podcast. You can actually apply. And the end of the year is upon us, which means it's time to reflect back on the side hustles that stood out, the ones that got people talking, the ones I was most excited to share, the ones I was most inspired to try myself. Now, the mark of a good episode for me is when I hang up the call thinking, like, dang, I gotta drop what I'm doing and go do that whatever it was that we just talked about. Now, I try and exercise some level of restraint, some level of discipline, because the shiny object syndrome is real when you're sitting in my chair as the host. But when the shiny object shines for me, that's when I know it's going to be a hit episode. So I've selected my top 10 for the year. If you're new to the show, I will do my best to reference the episode numbers so you can go back and check out the ones that you're interested in. I've also put those, all of them, into a Spotify playlist that I will link up in the description for you. And if you're a longtime listener, you know, just check out and see if your favorites made the list. These are in chronological and numerical order, starting from the beginning of the year. Not from best to worst or anything like that, but from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. And I'm going to try and highlight a mix of online and offline businesses. And we're actually going to start with an offline one in vending machines. This was episode 662. In March, we met Anthony Koloje, and we learned how in just 16 months, he took his Chicago area vending machine business from zero to over $50,000 a month. And now by the end of the year, he's already over a hundred thousand dollars a month. Just over two years into the business now. So this guy is moving a lot of snacks and drinks and actually other products as well. He's creating an income. He's serving the community and obviously filling a big hole in the market with modern vending amenities. And it's kind of funny because people in the business, apparently you. You really don't want to say vending machines anymore. You know, every. It's AI eating everything, right? So they're not vending machines anymore. They're AI smart markets. But the end Result is the same. Finding the right locations, buying the products in bolt in bulk, and then selling them at a markup. And, you know, the more volume, the merrier. Now that whole episode number 662 with Anthony, he's super open. He's really transparent about his margins and his mistakes. And honestly, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt that he's taken on in financing the machines. And so if that doesn't sit well with you, then maybe this is not the business for you. But essentially getting those machines for free because the sales that they make cover the debt service. And then some really fascinating operation ended up hiring a driver to go and stock the machines to, you know, play sales, business development instead of delivery driver ended up securing a warehouse space. But here's how he described getting a foot in the door with the property managers at his target locations.
- [03:01]
Anthony Koloje
What I have found out in this business is extremely archaic. All these property managers, majority of them had operators in there, but they just couldn't get a hold of them or they weren't stocking it. So what I do is when I go into an appointment, I tell them, hey, I'm local, you could call me. You're going to call this cell phone number, you're going to get me, okay? And I'm going to get back to you right away. When you're dealing with these property managers, these people that have decisions they have to make, they don't want another headache of chasing you down as a vendor, you know, and that because they're already doing that and dealing it with all these other fires that they're dealing with through the building. They're dealing with the painter, the scaffold or the window company, the, you know, all these other different trades that they're dealing with. If you just call and you give them a nice experience of customer service back, it's refreshing to them. So when I go look at a property, I put a proposal together, I send it, I take pictures and video, I send it over to my mock up guy, he gets it over to me within 24 hours and I send them a proposal within 24 hours. And every single time when I do that, they are floored away of how quickly they got that proposal. So get back to people quickly, you know, set expectations from the beginning. A lot of these, like I said, a lot of property managers, they are there, they're worried about when is it going to be stocked, because it hasn't been regularly stocked. So I go on that first meeting and I set up the expectation, I tell them I Go here. When I'm, when we sign up, I'm going to let you know what day your property is going to be stocked on. So then that way if you're getting down to like four Cokes or three Snickers, I, I'm, I don't, I don't need to have 30 property managers texting me, hey, it's getting low. I've already set the expectation up knowing that, hey, your machine is going to be filled up on Tuesdays. So if it's Monday or Sunday and it's low, I mean, we're going to be refilling it shortly. So they know I'm coming, setting that expectation. And I let them know after the first month if I feel like your machine needs to be stocked twice a week or three times a week. Yeah, we'll make the adjustments in our route schedule. We'll make sure that it's going to be filled.
- [04:49]
Nick Loper
Okay. So you find a lot of time you're conquesting market share from some legacy providers.
- [04:55]
Anthony Koloje
I do.
- [04:55]
Nick Loper
That have gotten, you gotten complacent or, you know, they're not answering the phone, they're not performing the way that you would like. For somebody who's new to the business, who's young and hungry, who wants to go out and get it with a, with a more modern experience or more modern machine.
- [05:11]
Anthony Koloje
100%.
- [05:12]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [05:12]
Anthony Koloje
Because a lot of the locations that I go into, some of them had the same machines that I had in, but the other half, you know, they had maybe the old school coil machines that maybe when me and you were growing up that we would see.
- [05:21]
Nick Loper
Yeah, I remember, you know, banging on. Come on. Exactly.
- [05:25]
Anthony Koloje
You know, it was like, so now I go in, I show. Exactly. Now this new machine, these new machines that I have and you know, they're blown away.
- [05:34]
Nick Loper
Super inspiring episode again, number 662. So much. So we actually did a follow up with Anthony later in the year. That was episode 703. And in that episode he drops this line about waking up in the morning and showing his wife his phone and showing her, hey, we literally just made $25 in our sleep or whatever it was. And they share this aha. Moment of gratitude and excitement and start to think, well, what if we had 10 of these machines? What if we had a hundred? And it was off to the races after that. So Anthony's vending machine business is first on my list of the top 10 side hustles of the year. One that very much turned into a full time focus and a full time income pretty Quickly. Number two is definitely more of a traditional side hustle. One that can be done completely online and that's Cody Berman's printables business, which we featured in episode 665. So Cody's been doing printables for years, but the story in this one goes in response to some skeptical comments on the Internet. Tell you what, I'm going to start a brand new Etsy shop. No sales proof, no outside traffic, and prove to you that it still works. And he gets it to $1,000 a month in four months. So what kind of products can you sell? Here's how Cody recommended getting started.
- [06:46]
Cody Berman
If you're already a side hustler, look at what you already have and what you're already using. So some easy examples. If you're someone who's in the personal finance niche and you already have this amazing debt pay down tracker, or you already have this amazing net worth tracker, or maybe you have a tracker for your side hustles, you can very easily just kind of white label it, templatize it and flip that. And now instead of just a product that you're using for yourself, like a random Google sheet, now you can actually go and sell this thing on Marketplace places like Etsy. And I've seen this work so many times over. We're both podcasters, Nick. I'm sure you have a media kit or something that you can send to potential sponsors like, hey, here's my downloads, here's my stats. So a couple years ago for the financial independent show, my podcast, we put together like this really extensive media kit and I'm like, well, I just spent all this time on Canva making this like awesome media kit. What if I just white label it and resell it as an editable media kit? And you. It sold a bunch of times. So there's so many examples that side hustlers like us, people who are already doing something entrepreneurial, you might have resources in your own life that you're using that you can just easily repurpose, turn into a template and then sell to other people. I mean, there's been six and seven figure businesses built off this stuff. I was actually on a real estate show a couple weeks ago talking about digital products and printables, and you look at a company like bigger pockets, and they're selling all these different calculators and spreadsheets and things like that. I mean that's probably adding six or seven figures to their bottom line, just basically taking one template for a thing that they're already doing and then White labeling it and then reselling it to, you know, hundreds of thousands of people in their case.
- [08:19]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it's an interesting selling your sawdust type of example where it's like, I already created this thing and the ideas I've kicked around, like a habit tracker or a podcast production checklist planner or sponsorship tracker, there's all sorts of these different tools that you may already be using. It may be an incremental revenue stream to the business that you already have, the side hustle that you already have. Or it could be a completely new thing that is kind of a standalone entity. So it sounds like the new shop was more of that standalone type of variety.
- [08:51]
Cody Berman
Yeah, the new shop was more of a standalone. I just wanted to mention the Use what you already have because that's often the easiest place to start. Now, if you're someone who's listening, you're like, well, I don't already have a side hustle. I don't have any awesome spreadsheets or any cool tools that I'm using myself for this new shop. Here was my basic strategy. So I would just, just brainstorm a giant list of potential ideas. This would be from my own head. I would also use ChatGPT to come up with ideas, although it's hit or miss. And then once I would have like a massive list of product ideas. And these could be anything from. I should probably define what printables are. Digital downloads, just so people aren't just thinking abstractly about this. So printables and digital downloads is basically a digital file that you create in a program like canva. You then upload that digital file into your Etsy shop. When someone buys it, the digital file would automatically be delivered to the buyer. So I already mentioned some of them, like a media kit template, for example, but other ones like checklists, planners, calendars, games, invitations. There's thousands of different types of printables. So just wanted to set the stage what printables are. So I create this massive list, like literally 250 different printable ideas. Again, these are just things that I think maybe could make good printables or things that ChatGPT thinks could make good printables.
- [09:59]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [09:59]
Cody Berman
And then once I have that monster list, that's when I start to plug them into like a keyword research tool. So for Etsy, specifically ones I use Erank and ever be, if you aren't as familiar with Etsy or even if you want to sell outside, like let's say you want to open up Shopify store or WooCommerce you can use other keyword research tools. Maybe you already have ahrefs, or maybe you already use ubersuggest, or maybe you're using some of these other tools like you can use any keyword research tool is what I'm trying to say. I will plug those 250 different ideas into the keyword research tools to see one if there's search demand, are people actually searching for this thing that I want to create? And two, is there a ton of competition? Because the last thing I want to do is compete with everyone and their mother on some generic digital products that I'm probably not going to stand out with because again, everybody is selling it. So that was kind of my general strategy, my 10,000 foot view of my strategy for this new Etsy shop.
- [10:51]
Nick Loper
Again, that's Cody Berman from Gold City ventures in episode 665 of the side Hustle show this year. The other line that stood out from that interview with Cody was where he talked about going after these, you know, relatively low volume search terms, sometimes as low as 50 searches a month. But the ones where there was almost no competition. He said, look, if I can scoop up 10 sales a month for a $5 product, that's $50 a month in passive income. And if I can start to stack up an army of these little mini digital evergreen assets, it can start to be a pretty serious operation and one that's time leveraged. Create it once, sell it over and over again. That is a business model that I like. And so that's number two on this list. The digital product business through the lens of selling printable files on Etsy. I believe Cody's course is closed for enrollment at the moment. Don't quote me on that, but if you hit the show notes, I will make sure to put an opt in so you can get notified about that. Number three was a brand new to me side hustle in 2025 and that is UGC user Generated content. Now here's the interesting part. This isn't about being an influencer. This isn't about having hundreds of thousands of followers. This is about brands hiring individual creators like you and me to help them fill their own social feeds with authentic looking content and maybe even using your videos to create as ads or to run ads to. So in that sense, the UGC side hustle is a rebrand of freelance content creation just with a specific short form video first spin and creators like you are earning hundreds of dollars per video that are usually less than a minute long. This is Megan Collier from episode 666 on how she got her start.
- [12:35]
Megan Collier
The portfolio was the main thing that I sent to brands, though, when I was reaching out, and I was reaching out to brands two ways. One is Instagram dm. I would like, literally just scroll Instagram, look at the ads that I was seeing on Instagram, and then go and follow the brand if I wasn't already following them. And then I would DM them and say, hey, I'm Megan. I'm a UGC creator. I've been seeing your ads. Your product looks like something I could totally use myself, and I'd love to be connected with the person in charge of handling partnerships. And I got several responses from that. That's how I landed my second UGC deal. The first one, though, that you mentioned, the $750 deal, was like, 10 days into my UGC journey, and that was with an app company that I just ended up emailing. Cold pitching via email. And, yeah, they ended up hiring me for three videos initially. And then I wanted to make more money and prove that I could actually do this and make a, you know, good chunk of money for my first UGC deal. And so I ended up. I didn't tell them, but I made five total videos for them. And I was like, hey, I ended up having a ton of, like, ideas for you guys. And I have five videos if you want to buy the other two. And they were like, oh, my gosh, yes, 100%. We need all the videos that we can get.
- [13:51]
Nick Loper
Oh, okay. Okay.
- [13:52]
Megan Collier
So then it ended up being about $750 for those five videos.
- [13:56]
Nick Loper
Okay, so step one, create the portfolio. Step two, start doing the brand outreach. And it sounds like I'm just going to scroll my feed and show who's showing up in the ads. Like, I know they're investing in user acquisition and growth marketing, so they might be more receptive to this. Because my approach would have been like, well, what are the top 25, 50 brands that I already know like and trust, and I use? And I'm going to start there. That sounds like, you know, maybe that. Maybe that comes down the road.
- [14:22]
Megan Collier
Honestly, I think that what works, the only way to land the deal is literally by connecting with brands. So it doesn't matter if you're gonna dm, if you're gonna email, if you're just gonna start with the brands that you already like, because that also is super powerful because you're coming to the brand saying, hey, I've been using this product for X amount of months or X amount of years. They've already got that. Like it's, it's a bonus for them because they have a real customer that's gonna be willing to make some really authentic, genuine content. So yeah, 100%. You can start with already know you already. Like you can quite literally. This is what I tell people if they're kind of having a block on who to reach out to is take a pen and piece of paper or take your notes app on your phone, go walk around your house and look at all the products that you have that you've purchased that you use on a consistent basis. I can almost guarantee most of those brands are posting consistently on, on social media and probably a lot of them are also working already with UGC creators.
- [15:25]
Jeff Rose
Yeah.
- [15:25]
Nick Loper
And it's not just, you know, I'm thinking of like the closet and shoes and clothes, but also food and snacks and toys and games, like all sorts of stuff.
- [15:34]
Megan Collier
So much.
- [15:35]
Nick Loper
And even, and even software, like you said, the first deal was an app company.
- [15:38]
Megan Collier
Yeah, I've worked with so many apps, software companies that I've used for years and just, you know, they just hired me to do ugc. So whenever people ask me like what kind of brands are using UGC creators, it's truly a mix. It's across the board. I've worked with fashion, like clothing companies, software tech companies like you as a, you doing podcasts, like I'm looking at your, your headphones, right. Your mic, like whatever you're using as a podcaster. So many brands are using, you know, user generated content in their marketing strategies.
- [16:11]
Nick Loper
Okay. That's what they're getting out of the deal is we're going to hire Megan or a hundred people like Megan to fill out our own content feed. Like there's always another day coming around. There's always going to be needing more stuff to post. And so this is a way to kind of crowdsource that in an authentic looking way or you know, from actual users of the thing. And so that's their benefit. Benefit to you is obviously you're getting paid to do it. And so it sounds like from your Instagram DMs, it's like, could you connect me with the. You said the person handling content partnerships or is like some. Is that an official job title that I want to like be on the lookout for?
- [16:50]
Megan Collier
Yeah, it's, it's going to be different for every brand. Right. So what I like to tell people is, you know, typically when you're reaching out to medium, you know, from medium to large sized brands, the person that's looking at the DMs of the brand. Like on the brand's Instagram account is not typically a decision maker, right? It's going to be a customer service person that just wants to answer questions quickly. So that's why I say always ask to be connected with the brand partnerships. Or it could be an influencer manager, it could be a partnerships director, it could be a creative director. So you could ask it in a specific way. More like could I be connected with the person in charge of handling partnerships so you don't have to say a specific title.
- [17:36]
Nick Loper
Got it.
- [17:36]
Megan Collier
But just whoever's in charge of, you know, working with content creators.
- [17:40]
Nick Loper
I've heard from a few listeners who took action after hearing that episode with Megan and if you did as well, be sure to let me know again. Episode 666 on making money as a content creator, even if you don't have a following. Pretty cool stuff. Although I wonder what the impact of AI video is going to be on that space as brands can crank out short form videos with AI influencers probably quite a bit less. But I know not all brands want to go that route. So so far we've covered vending machines, we've covered printables and ugc, but we're just getting started. The rest of the best side hustles of the year are coming up right after this. 2026 is going to be your year. I can feel it with our partner Shopify. 2026 is when you finally make it happen. Time to go from ideas and inspiration to action and results. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person. In fact, millions of entrepreneurs have already made the leap from household names to dozens of side hustle show guests. You've heard their stories. Now it's time to write your own. Shopify gives you all the tools you need to easily build your dream store. Choose from hundreds of beautiful, customizable and proven to convert templates so you can launch fast. Plus, you can use Shopify's built in AI tools to help you write product descriptions and headlines and even edit your product photos. Marketing is built in too. You can easily create email and social campaigns that reach your customers wherever they're scrolling. In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.comsidehustle go to shopify.comsidehustlE that's shopify.comsidehustLLE and here your first this new year with Shopify by your side. As a business owner you worked hard to make that phone ring. But missing a business call, it's like watching money fly right out the window. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo. Spelled Q U O. It's the smarter way to run your business communications. Quo is the number one business phone system built for 2025, not 1995. In fact, it's rated the top choice for customer satisfaction with over 3,000 reviews. On G2, Quo works right from an app on your phone or computer. And it means your team can share one number and collaborate on calls and texts, just like a shared inbox. And here is what is really cool. Because if you can't answer the phone, Quo's AI agent can. It can qualify leads. It can route calls to the right person. And it's going to make sure no customer is ever left hanging. Think of it like having 24. 7 support without the 24. 7 payroll. More than 90,000 businesses are already running on Quo, from solo operators to growing teams. Try it free when you go to quo.comsidehustle that's Q-U-O.comsidehustle. you can even keep your existing number quo. No missed calls, no missed customers. We're back, and we're working our way through the top 10 side hustles of the year. And we're shifting back offline for number four. And that was Tim Carstensen's mobile foam party business. When we connected, Tim was still working full time as a PE teacher, but running this business nights and weekends and over the summer. And he had hired helpers as well after the demand grew to the point where he, you know, couldn't be two places at once to host two different parties. But one of the reasons it made the list was the creative and relatively low risk way Tim started the business, pre booking the parties months in advance and using the save the date deposits that the customers give him gave him to fund his equipment.
- [21:16]
Tim Carstensen
So I found pretty much any daycare, summer camp, park district library, elementary school within about 35 or 40 miles. I made a list and I sent the same postcard to all of them. Now I kind of break it up with individual marketing for the different types. So I might. I would send a different postcard to schools than I would to churches or libraries and things like that. But back then it was just the one postcard. Vistaprint, send it all. Hope we get some responses. And definitely worked to get the first few responses.
- [21:54]
Nick Loper
Yeah. How many did you send out?
- [21:56]
Tim Carstensen
I want to say maybe 700 total.
- [22:00]
Nick Loper
Okay. Okay.
- [22:02]
Tim Carstensen
So you know, you're putting a little bit of money into it at that point.
- [22:05]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Casting a wide enough net to kind of know if you are shooting completely blank after 700. Maybe, maybe the messaging needs some tweaking.
- [22:12]
Tim Carstensen
Might be time to turn it around. Right. Yeah.
- [22:14]
Jeff Rose
So.
- [22:15]
Tim Carstensen
And at that point I thought, well, if I needed to, if it wasn't going to work, I could sell the equipment back and I wouldn't really be all that much of a loss.
- [22:23]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Relatively low risk. What did the equipment cost?
- [22:26]
Tim Carstensen
The foam Canon itself, I use a professional grade model that cost at the time about $2,500 for the canon. And then I would say for other things that are in the foam party setup, we have these barriers like PVC and some vinyl with our, our marketing on there, barriers to keep the foam from coming back at the person shooting the foam.
- [22:49]
Nick Loper
And okay, I'm picturing like a medieval like shield.
- [22:52]
Chris Gray
Yeah.
- [22:53]
Tim Carstensen
In case the wind shifts. So it's, it's kind of like a little wall about 4ft high, maybe with our marketing on the front that they see. And then it keeps the foam from blowing back at us and getting on our equipment. And then just little things like, well, we have a 5x5 tent with our branding on it that just kind of makes it look professional. And then a lot of little things like tools that you might need and hoses and electrical cords and speakers.
- [23:21]
Nick Loper
Yes. You just need a water source and, you know, byo bubbles basically. And then in this, this professional Canon, at a bare minimum.
- [23:31]
Jeff Rose
Right.
- [23:31]
Garrett Brown
Yeah.
- [23:32]
Tim Carstensen
So we, we do need a water source. Just a regular hose hookup works. And then an electrical outlet. A regular outlet works if it's just for one foam cannon. If it's multiple foam cannons or if you're not close enough to an outlet, then we bring a generator. In that situation, for most of, like the smaller events, daycares, summer camps and stuff like that, it's just one, one foam cannon. And so, yeah, I started off with one, got a few bookings before I even did any foam parties. Even though I had some booked, I bought a second setup and it just kind of kept on rolling.
- [24:07]
Nick Loper
What did the postcard say? Was there pricing on there was just like, but, you know, booking now for, you know, summer 2023 or whatever it.
- [24:14]
Tim Carstensen
Was, it said like, we bring a foam party to you. And then it said like, foam parties are great for. And then I tried to hit summer camps, daycares, school events, church events, library, summer reading kickoffs, block parties, birthday part. And then it says like foam party packages Include, you know, foam cannon, a.
- [24:35]
Nick Loper
Foam party leader, which is you showing up and leading the thing.
- [24:39]
Tim Carstensen
Right. Which at that point is just me. I'm the only guy that's.
- [24:42]
Jeff Rose
That's available.
- [24:43]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [24:43]
Tim Carstensen
And then, you know, book now at our website. We did have pricing on our website for. For basic, like, you know, one hour, one Canon, or we also do something called glow foam, which is. Looks like the foam is glowing in the dark for night events. So we had pricing for that on the website, not on the postc.
- [25:01]
Nick Loper
Okay. What's it cost to get you to.
- [25:02]
Tim Carstensen
Come out for a one hour, like a birthday party? It's 375.
- [25:06]
Nick Loper
375 bucks an hour, not including your setup and takedown and travel and all that. But it was a really interesting business. Tim struck me as a very methodical guy. He said he was originally looking at party inflatables as a side business, but got turned off by the high insurance costs. It was during that research, though, that he stumbled onto the foam party idea and found almost no competition in his area for it. So kind of a little bit of a blue ocean there. So just an illustration that sometimes ideas and inspiration strike once you're already in motion. So that's number four. The foam party rental service, episode 676 in your archives. For number five, we're going into the e commerce world with Chris Gray's Bald Buck barbecue seasoning business, which was reported to be doing around $300,000 a year in sales on the side from his day job. But the interesting thing is, while Chris enjoyed smoking meat as much as the next guy and definitely enjoyed eating it, he wasn't a professional chef. He didn't even invent this seasoning as his own personal recipe. Instead, he found a product that he knew already tasted great, already knew people liked it, and then just applied his own marketing to it.
- [26:15]
Chris Gray
I just saw an opportunity, right? I, like most entrepreneurs, I probably suffer from chasing too many things, okay? But I saw here was an opportunity for something that I'm passionate about, which is smoking food, barbecue, and then I'm also passionate about marketing. And so I chose to go sell the seasoning itself as opposed to opening a restaurant, because the overhead was going to be lower and I could work more digitally than having to commit a bunch of money to buying a space and getting staff and having rent and all the overhead that would come with having a barbecue joint.
- [26:49]
Nick Loper
Okay, so step one, delicious chicken, maybe step zero. Step two is, I assume, going to your brother and say, well, where did you get this Stuff. How can I build a distribution channel here? What's going on there?
- [27:02]
Chris Gray
So this is what I love. I tell people I sell this barbecue seasoning, and they're like, oh, man, did you come up with your own special blend? And how long did it take? And did you have a lab? And none of that, man. I just found out who made it, and then I called them up and I'm like, hey, I like your seasoning. Do you white label it? Meaning do they give you the rub and allow you to put your own brand on it?
- [27:22]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [27:23]
Chris Gray
And white labeling happens all the time. If you go to, like, Costco has Kirkland's, which is a white label of something else, Walmart has great value. A white label is something else. And so Amazon does it. Everybody does it.
- [27:33]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [27:33]
Chris Gray
And so I called them up and said, hey, can I just white label your season? They're like, yeah, we have a program for that. And I was like, great. So then I had to go and create my own brand, my own coloring, my own. All that stuff, which was easy to do. I was lucky because my business partner. I have a business partner in several businesses. He's a graphic design guy. And we were going over all these different names on, you know, what we wanted the seasoning to be. I had a list of 20 different names. 1 was Bald Buck. We chose Bald Buck because it was funny. Plus, I'm bald. My nickname of my friends is Buck. They would call me Bald Buck. So I found. I thought this would be a way of, like, getting back at them. Like, hey, you made fun of me. Now I have a brand. And so we did that. We came up. He drew the. He made the logo. We came up with the name. We gave it to the company. They label it, they can it, and they just ship it to us. So all I gotta do now is push it. Which is kind of scary, Nick, because when you get sold or when you get shipped 5,000 units of seasoning, you better. You better figure out how to move it, or you better cook a lot of chicken.
- [28:33]
Nick Loper
Okay? So the seasoning company had this system already in place, and they say, hey, you can totally do that. Just send us your graphics, send us your seasoning, send us your branding package, and we'll put it on the bottles for you. You don't even have to do that yourself.
- [28:46]
Chris Gray
Yeah, they. They can it. They put it on. Now if I want to save money, I gotta do that myself eventually. But they do it all. And a lot of places do this, Nick, and a lot of different things. It could Be microphones. It could be art, it could be shirts. Like a lot of people do most of the work for you, all you have to do is go push it. And that's something I wish I would have understood a long time ago. I don't have to create everything. A lot of the work can be done. I just need to find something that works and then find a way to sell it. So in this case, we had this seasoning worked. My family loved it, friends loved it. It was already popular in a different state. I just had to take it, bring it and wrap a different story around it. And that's what I did.
- [29:24]
Nick Loper
I think that's a really great line. I don't have to create everything from scratch. A lot of the work can already be done. If you can find something that's already working, find a different way to position it, different way to sell it. Really powerful episode. And then to get his initial sales, Chris turned to influencer marketing, targeting big barbecue channels on YouTube, barbecue influencers and then offering to send them the seasoning and even to run some giveaways for their audience. So that drove quite a bit of business. And then Chris turned to kind of a unique storytelling and content marketing and retargeting strategy on social media to sell the other interesting thing, you know what to sell what might be considered a commodity product. Right. You can go get barbecue seasoning for probably a tenth of the price at the grocery store, but then to sell Bald Buck at a premium price online. So that is episode 678, number five on our list. We'll call it white labeling E commerce. Number six is one that definitely had me looking for acreage nearby. And that was Garrett Brown's glamping business from episode 686. So here's what struck me. He did such a good job of building up the experience surrounding staying at his property an hour outside of Houston, kind of middle of nowhere, that he was able to command four star hotel prices like 400 bucks a night without the four star amenities or even without the expectation of four star amenities. It's a tiny house in the woods or it's a geodome out in the middle of nowhere. But people came for that Instagram worthy shot to get away from the city, to have that kind of unique, memorable experience. And it costs a whole lot less to set up than trying to run a four season hotel or something like that. So his return on investment math was really strong. Now here was his advice on what to look for in starting a potential glamping site or Potential short term rental business near you.
- [31:13]
Garrett Brown
I'm in Houston, Texas and I was looking for something within the vicinity of Houston, Texas that was a little more rural. I have something I like to call a 60, 30, 10 rule. Now I've coined it that. But at the time I knew that I needed to be 60 minutes from, you know, a major city. And so I found some land. I didn't want to go three or four hours out from a major city because I figured people would, people wouldn't want to drive that far. Yeah, I thought of the 30 portion was 30 minutes from some type of national, regional or state attraction. The land I ended up finding was about 10 or 15 minutes from a lake. It's called Lake Livingston, which is the second biggest lake in Texas. But it was also near a state park. It was also near a national forest. And so there was a few like attractions. And then the, the 10 of the 60, 30 rule is you want to be 10 minutes from some type of civilization. You know, a Dollar General, gas station, Walmart, anything like that. Because I knew that if I was, you know, in a beautiful place but 30 or 40 minutes away from civilization, I was like, how am I going to get people to come out there and clean for me? How am I going to get people to come out and you know, operate the facilities for me when I'm not there?
- [32:25]
Nick Loper
There's such thing as too remote.
- [32:27]
Garrett Brown
Yeah, exactly. And I was, and I see people, they'll see really cheap land in like a really, you know, remote area. And I'm like, well there's that land is extremely cheap because you're, you know, you're going to have a hard time turning that into anything for, you know, a million different reasons. So I ended up, you know, researching a lot of places. I found a house, oh, that was on a little over 10 acres. And so I knew that having that house on the property, it's very hard to get a loan for land.
- [32:55]
Nick Loper
Just, just raw land.
- [32:56]
Garrett Brown
Yeah, a lot of people have to buy it with cash. You can, you can probably get a loan for like 50% down, which, you know, a lot of people. 50% down. Even if you're buying a piece of land, it's still going to be, you know, maybe a hundred thousand dollars or something that's really expensive. And then you, then you have to spend the money to actually develop the site. So I found this house on about 10 acres in a, in a unrestricted area. It wasn't in, you know, it wasn't in a neighborhood or an HOA or Anything. And so I sold my townhouse that was in Houston, took a little bit of the money I made off that, and put this into this new house, which I only had to put 5% down on. On which it's. It was a $500,000 house. $550,000 house, to be exact.
- [33:38]
Nick Loper
Okay. On 10 acres.
- [33:40]
Garrett Brown
On 10 acres. It. It came in appraised at 600,000. So I already had some instant equity when I went into it. But the cool thing, I had the 5% down, but I also was able to negotiate a 3% seller concession into my offer. And so what that did is I almost went into the property for about 2% down because I had a 5% down payment that I needed to put down my offer. And my negotiations, that seller agreed to pay back 3% of the price. There's even opportunities out there that you could get a. It was called an FHA loan, which could be 3.5% down. You could even possibly get a USDA loan, which is a government loan, and getting into it that wants to develop rural areas. So with all the money that I was able to save up front, I only ended up having to put about. I think it was about $12,000 down. That money, the money I saved, I ended up building my first tin cabin on the property.
- [34:40]
Nick Loper
So looking for 5 plus acres, following Garrett's 60, 30, 10 rule, that already has a house on it, that's going to make your life a little bit easier in financing and making improvements to the property. Now, the other interesting thing about Garrett's project, the first thing that really surprised me was that the majority of his bookings came direct, as in not through Airbnb, not through vrbo. I would have assumed the opposite, but that was a test of testament to the strength of his social media presence. And he did a really good job documenting the journey of building out the property. Got enough people following along that people wanted specifically to stay there, and in some cases, they were willing to pay a premium to do it. So he wasn't just, you know, competing against every other Airbnb that might pop up in that area. The second interesting thing was that he was able to negotiate kind of a unique financing deal on this mirror house, cool looking, tiny home on the property, where, if I remember, he essentially got it for free and just paid, you know, paid it off with the proceeds from renting it out, which I guess is similar to Anthony's vending machine financing. Oh, I'm going to pay for it with the sales that it generates. In any case, super inspiring episode kind of at the intersection of real estate investing, hospitality and online marketing. Episode 686, six in your archives for that one. Number seven is one of those plug and play side hustles that continues to get outsized feedback and support from listeners. And that's Sharetown. This is the return reselling side hustle. If you're not familiar, Sharetown is the quote unquote reverse logistics arm for a lot of online retailers in the direct to consumer furniture, mattress, exercise equipment space. It's basically big, bulky style stuff that's difficult to return. Sharetown in turn, then partners with local reps, often side hustlers like you and me, to facilitate these pickup requests. When a customer says no, on second thought, I want to return this item. But the companies can't really take the items back and they would prefer that it stay out of the landfill and they want to try and recoup some of their costs. So this is where Sharetown comes in. The reps pick them up and list them for sale on Facebook, Marketplace place, and then once they sell, send a portion of the proceeds back to the company, back to Sharetown. And the reason it makes the list is just for its simplicity. Yes, it's labor. Yes, you need a way to transport and store the items, but you got super low overhead. It's one of these side hustles where you don't need to build an audience, you don't need to create a product, you don't even need to do any sort of exercise on. Well, what are you an expert in? What are you passionate about? You just need to do the work. And that sentiment was echoed by Matt and Hannah in episode 687. Look, it's not that we're particularly passionate about this business, but if we're targeting $200 per flip, it's been a meaningful chapter in our lives. It's been a meaningful extra income stream at a time we really needed it.
- [37:33]
Megan Collier
The biggest surprise was, and I think that that can be true for a lot of side hustles, is just that you don't ever know what it could evolve to. You know, we thought that it was a side hustle and it was something that, I mean, Matt worked 9 to 5 and even traveled for work and then in the evenings drove into San Francisco. And I just feel like we were willing to do something different because we had some goals. And it's not that I'm like crazy passionate about selling mattresses. I have learned, like, ever since you.
- [38:00]
Nick Loper
Were a little girl, you wanted to sell Mattresses.
- [38:03]
Cheyenne Bullock
No, it's not that.
- [38:04]
Megan Collier
I'm crazy passionate about selling mattresses. I have learned to really enjoy the interactions and those sales and get a lot of satisfaction out of helping people that way. And it makes it hard to ever consider working for somebody again because we work together and we have flexibility. And I think that that can be the beauty of a side hustle is it helps you to achieve your goals and it gives you the flexibility to kind of live life on your own terms, you know, the way an extra source of income does.
- [38:32]
Nick Loper
Yeah, that's really powerful, that line of. We were willing to do something different to get out of this situation.
- [38:38]
Megan Collier
People that are willing to do something different and work at it even when it's hard or even when it's not yielding results. Unfortunately, Sharetown, I feel like is a pretty results driven gig. It's hard to fail at, I feel like, but I feel like it's that willing to work hard and willing to.
- [38:53]
Cody Berman
Fail, you know, willing to try, willing.
- [38:55]
Nick Loper
For things to not work out and then willing to pick yourself back up.
- [38:58]
Frey Chu
And keep trying until it does.
- [38:59]
Megan Collier
And that's what we found with your. Yep. You know, business too is just trial. A lot of trial and error and not giving up.
- [39:06]
Nick Loper
So number seven was the return reselling side Hustle highlighted by Matt and Hannah. As you heard in episode 687, side hustlenation.com Sharetown is my direct referral link if you want to learn more and maybe give it a try yourself. But stick around. We're rounding out our top 10 side hustles of the year. Coming up. Right after this, we're heading back online for side Hustle number eight, a business model model that I've got some level of experience in and one that's proven to be a bit more AI resistant than some other online businesses and that's informational directories. So in episode 692 we met Frey Chu, who specializes in what we called near me directories. Helping people solve problems and find information about businesses near them. Kind of a local directory model. We gave the example of thrift stores, RV parks, splash pads, stuff like that. And then layering on some value added information that maybe Google Maps doesn't have or couldn't find for the breadth of different services that they offer. Like something, you know, answering a specific question that would be relevant to that specific thing. You know, they're not going to include it as a data field for. For every little thing, but you can become the go to expert in that space and I think you can get rewarded in the search results when you build it out. And so what makes a good topic to create a directory about? So here's Frey on his initial niche research process.
- [40:31]
Frey Chu
When I choose a good niche for a directory, I typically try my best to have that be 70% data based. So the keyword research is good. There's high search volume, low competition, there's clear bounty, like a website directory that's already successful, that that probably isn't the most optimized or kind of old and clunky. And then 30% of it will be more passion based, interest based, kind of like what you mentioned. I've tried directories where it's a hundred percent kind of interest based, hobby or passion based. And for me personally it didn't work out. So I think the way I landed on the thrifting idea was I just audited my life and where I like to go and where people like to go. And I combine that with a framework where I'm like, like, okay, what saves people time, earns people money or saves people money? And those are kind of like the three umbrella frameworks that I tried to combine when I was socially observing where people were going in the world. And that's when I landed on this very specific thrift store that I built my entire directory around. And people love it because it's so cheap. It's like a warehouse style thrifting experience where everything's by the pound so you don't get markups from regular thrift stores.
- [41:44]
Nick Loper
Interesting. Okay, I've never heard of that. Yeah. Okay, so I like this. So 70%, we're gonna, we're gonna let the data kind of steer where we want to go. And bonus points, 30% of this decision is gonna be based on, well, if I'm gonna work on this, I at least gotta care something about it. Otherwise you know what's gonna separate me from everybody else trying to do the same thing. You mentioned having a clear bounty. This is somebody else who has paved the way for you. This is a site that is maybe a little bit, little outdated, maybe a little clunky looking. Maybe the data isn't as cleanly presented as it could be. But they're doing okay. You can tell that they're ranking, they're getting traffic. You say I can do better than that. And that's how we're going to try and stair step above that site. They've already proven out the concept and now we, instead of reinventing the wheel, we're going to go after what they did, just do it. Better.
- [42:32]
Frey Chu
A hundred percent. I think it tells you so much, especially with a lot of concern around SERPs changing. Right. There's so many more forums and social media websites and it just really depends if you, whatever you type into Google, you can get a completely different looking search engine results page. So if you see a bounty someone that's successful and yeah, I mean it's basically proof that you can take the structure of their website and just improve it. Like clearly Google has chosen that and has left that there on page one rank one for some time because it finds it trustworthy. It matches user intent and search intent to some extent. Yeah, it's like one of the most important factors that I actually look for when I'm building a new directory is a successful one that's come before me.
- [43:15]
Nick Loper
And what's interesting is you seem to prefer location based queries or location based directories. And not to put words in your mouth, but we had, we did an episode with John Rush late last year and it was almost, it was like online service providers, it was best like all GPTs or I think was the one that he mentioned was like a directory of software tools. It was like kind of the opposite approach.
- [43:38]
Frey Chu
I just personally think that local queries, local SEO is way more protective kind of going just talking about certain keywords and informational blogs that were destroyed. Local SEO is a totally different beast. And if you go on ChatGPT or any LLM and you look up a local query or local keyword like barbers near me, it's arguably worse than Google Maps right now. So yeah, and the serps looks the same, which is great. So that's really all an SEO can ask for anyone building one of these directories, relying on SEO as distribution is. I don't want any surprises. I think this challenge is still not entirely solved, even if LLMs can catch up because there are certain niches like daycare or anything legal or finance where the consequence of choosing the wrong vendor or local business service is too high. Like with the daycare, you're handing your child to some random people. I'm not just gonna one prompt chatgpt and ask hey, where are the nearest daycares? And be like okay, cool, that's awesome. There's also price sensitivity. There's so reasons why someone would go beyond just a simple one shot chatgpt prompt and look elsewhere on the Internet for more information around things that they need. Things that, where trust is inherent.
- [44:54]
Nick Loper
Again, that's episode 692 with Freya Chu. Really cool episode one of the Businesses I would be most interested in starting if I had to start over. We talked monetization in that episode, which in his case was priority primarily display ads, but it could be affiliate partnerships, it could be selling featured listings in the directory, or it could be selling your own products. Actually, I think Frey was selling a digital product related to the thrifting niche to some of the visitors on on his site there. So that's number eight, the directory business or online directory side hustle. Number nine is a brand new income stream for me, one that I've been spending admittedly a lot of time and attention on trying to get off the ground. And that's the Facebook content monetization program. Like YouTube, Facebook is paying creators who can post engaging content, get people to stay on the platform longer. The downside is they don't really have any clear guidelines like YouTube does on what it takes to get invited into the monetization program. And as of press time, it is invite only, unfortunately not something that you can apply for. However, if you've had your page for a while, while even a somewhat dormant and neglected page like mine was, you might find that you have an invite waiting for you where it was just a toggle or you know, check the box and turn on monetization. But after months of seeing Jeff Rose's good financial sense at the top of my feed every time I logged in, I finally had to call him up to learn more about, well, how does this all work? There's no way he's posting this much stuff and not getting paid for it. And enough he was making like a thousand dollars a day posting memes, posting screenshots of tweets, stock charts, all loosely related to his niche of personal finance. And one of the strategies for sourcing content, he explained, was to look at what's performing well on other social platforms and then try and repurpose it to Facebook. So here's how Jeff explained it in episode 706.
- [46:47]
Jeff Rose
It's been fun to test. You know, like obviously I'm looking at other pages. I'm looking at, at even going like to X or threads and seeing what is going viral over there doesn't necessarily mean it's going to translate over to Facebook, but there definitely have been times where it has and I've tested, you know, what's really worked. Actually I was just looking at this. They now share with you like in the analytics when you post something, how many new followers did you gain from that post? Which is a very interesting metric. And what I discovered actually this Past week was anytime that I took like a screenshot of gold or bitcoin or the S&P 500 or a certain stock and had some caption to go along with that. It definitely seems like my audience resonated with that. But the weird thing too is like, I've done like parenting stuff, you know, I've done marriage stuff. Like, I've done marriage humor. And that's also done well, not always right. Like, not everything hits. I've had stuff where I thought, man, this is going to take off. And it just completely flies. Some that are really disappointing too because, like, I really spent some time, you know, crafting the message, obviously using ChatGPT to kind of help write the story.
- [47:53]
Nick Loper
You should know that this is very much a volume game, very much a game of throwing a lot of digital spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. I'm currently posting like 8 to 10 times a day and trying to increase that volume, but do it in a. In a sustainable way because the more you post, the more chances you have to have a winner on your hands to have something take off.
- [48:13]
Jeff Rose
I think it takes time. I think the most common question I get is like, how many times should you post? And I don't think that there's a set number, but you definitely have to be consistent. And I did not get any serious traction until I started committing. I think it was like I doing eight posts per day. So when I started scheduling eight per day, like, that's when I noticed one, the income and also the views and everything just started trending upwards from there. I just started increasing it, you know, from 8 a day to 12 a day, 12 a day to 16 a day, 16 to 20 a day, 20 to 24 a day. I did get up to 31 a day. And I was. It was too many.
- [48:46]
Nick Loper
It was too much.
- [48:46]
Jeff Rose
So I'm now I kind of scale back a little bit. But basically like that 20 a day is kind of been at least a sweet spot for me. Do you have to do 20 a day?
- [48:54]
Chris Gray
Heck no.
- [48:54]
Jeff Rose
Absolutely not. Especially if I get a brand new page. But I would definitely commit to doing like five to eight a day. And this combination could be just text posts, it could be images, it could be a reel, you know, whatever. You enjoy doing a little variety to do that. But I've had text posts, which is just funny to me, right? Like just a text post. It's just text, no images. You know, you could add the color background behind it that have done really well. So it's just a matter of just testing out.
- [49:20]
Nick Loper
That's number nine, the Facebook content monetization program, one that I'm actively testing myself and trying to build some sustainable systems around and getting some help from my team on. Can I get it to a hundred dollars a day? Could I get it to five or ten grand a month? We'll see what happens in the coming year and potentially some ancillary benefits in my case. And maybe this is wishful thinking thinking, but the side Hustle Nation Facebook page does highlight the side Hustle Nation Facebook group as like a connected entity, which may or may not help lead people back to the podcast, back to the email list. So there's a case to be made, an argument to be made if the impressions are big enough that Facebook becomes a point of discovery for the broader brand ecosystem. If I can attract people who are interested in earning more money and have a proactive spirit about it. So that remains to be seen, but be sure to check out the full interview with Jeff to learn more. Number 706 in your feed. Number 10 is arguably the most creative side Hustle that we featured this year. And this was Cheyenne Bullock's public domain radio repurposing business. I don't even know how to describe it. So the raw material is these old free, available to everyone radio shows from the 1950s. She gave the example example of Dragnet. If if you remember that 10 cost of goods sold great then what she does and the branding is amazing. If you check out domestic daydreams on social is her handle is she sprinkles in her homemaking advice and these cleaning routines into the audio and then charges 25 bucks a month or 45 a quarter for a subscription that gets you six new episodes a week. Turns keeping your house clean into this pleasant entertaining routine with some familiarity to it. Now, such a unique business model to address the problem of a dirty house. It's an example I've given about the different ways to solve that same problem. You could solve it with a product, right? You could sell cleaning products, new Swiffer mops, stuff like that. You could sell a cleaning service. We've done episodes on starting cleaning services, domestic or commercial or otherwise. And then the third category is creating content to solve that problem. And I think Cheyenne Business falls under this content category. When we recorded she had over 500 paying members and those members all had the same pain point, right? I've got a dirty, disorganized house. It really bothers me. Now. My guess is they probably didn't know that old school radio programs could help them solve it until they discovered Cheyenne on social media. So here's how she described her Instagram to a lead magnet to offer strategy.
- [51:50]
Cheyenne Bullock
In episode seven, every single post on Instagram needs to go to the lead magnet which captures their email. And that has grown my email list to around 30,000 subscribers in two years. And like in the last month, 8,000 of those. And I've cleaned out my email list so it's been more than that. But I make sure that every single Instagram post it says, you know, comment homemaker and I will send you some free episodes of the cleaning routine to try so that you can get started tackling that mess. You know, I make a pain point oriented Instagram caption that calls out their pain, tells how these episodes are the solution. You can try some free episodes. It takes them to the opt in, they put in their email address and information and it redirects them to a page with the free episodes on top and then tell them, hey, if you want new episodes six days a week, then join the membership and has like a sales pitch below that.
- [52:47]
Nick Loper
Okay, so it's really, really tightly aligned with the core offer. It's like, in fact, in fact it's like it's a free sample of the core offer. Like I'm going to send you some sample episodes if you like this. Hey, there's more where that came from. Come on in. So that makes a lot of sense. I think that's really smart. And this is a mini chat automation to reply to the homemaker comments.
- [53:06]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yes, exactly. And ManyChat was such an incredible game changer because when I was doing my first business, I started doing the comment if you want the link thing. Before was anything like manychat out there and I would sit there and I would have reels go viral and I would manually be sending these and I'd get blocked by Instagram. Have to wait a little while.
- [53:29]
Nick Loper
Like you've sent 100 messages. Yeah, you're blocked.
- [53:31]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yes, exactly. And so Manychat has been amazing to be able to use that over the last couple of years. And luckily that was in place by the time that I started this business. So it just directs them through ManyChat. I know people build out their ManyChat chat with like follow ups and stuff. I haven't done that and I've still seen great results. Just keeping it simple.
- [53:51]
Nick Loper
Okay, so they, they get the sample episodes and then there's a follow up sequence that goes out, you know, a week later. It says if you like that there's More. Once you join the membership, talk to me about the sales cycle or the sales funnel, so to speak.
- [54:05]
Cheyenne Bullock
After that, I follow up via email because I want to train them to really connect with my brand on the email side, going through Instagram or any social media plat, building your business on rented land. So I learned the hard way through my first business that you need to make sure that you have them somewhere you kind of control like an email list, but also that you make sure that you train them and teach them that there's value there so that they will actually look for you in their inbox. So I have an automatic email flow that will send them an email like every four days or so. Originally I followed a book that said, okay, this is what your welcome sequence should, should have in your email flow. And then over time, as I was sending out consistent weekly newsletters to my audience as well that were outside of that welcome email flow, I was able to get data on which ones converted highest for sales and I turned those into my welcome sequence. Okay, so it basically just, it's heavy on the email side. Following up with people, I give them some more free episodes via a one week challenge. Usually by then people are pretty warm to up. But now I do run ads as well, retargeting ads. And that's been what the huge game.
- [55:17]
Nick Loper
Changer is, retargeting people on the email list or people who have clicked. I mean, I guess it's all through the meta ecosystem. You could target followers on Instagram or people who've seen your post probably and saying, hey, remember me? Do you still have this problem of the dirty house? And here I'm, I'm still here to help you.
- [55:35]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yes, exactly. And so when I first got into ads, because I did pay a coach to teach me, they always recommend you do what they call top of funnel ads. And those are the ones that go out to strangers. And then you do retargeting ads and those are ones that go out to basically the people that found you through those top ads. But was was different with my business that actually kind of blew their minds a little bit and we had to adjust that strategy is I get so much at the top, so much attention, so many new people knowing about my brand through my Instagram, through my Facebook, I get millions of views every single month through my blog. Blog. I basically do organic content marketing at the top and that's what gets new people in. And I only do retargeting ads and I retarget anyone who has interacted with my website at all my blog at all, my Facebook at all and my Instagram at all. And it retargets them with the membership offer.
- [56:32]
Nick Loper
Just a really well done, really creative online membership business episode 708 with Cheyenne and that rounds out our top 10 side hustles of the year. Did your favorites make the list? Did I make a glaring omission? You gotta let me know. Hit reply, reply, email, let me know. And of course I owe a big thank you to all of our amazing guests this year. Without them the show wouldn't exist. A couple honorable mentions that I think are worth mentioning. One is Eric Dingler who we did this episode about local SEO and he gave this line and I'm probably going to butcher the quote but he said the fastest path to $20,000 a month is with a local marketing service. And then he laid out kind of step by step how he would go about getting there. And that was episode six 84, 684 with Eric Dingler. You know, hey, can I charge $500 a month for this service? Okay. Stack up this client, this client, this client and ultimately you know, hire some other people to deliver the work and you got yourself this kind of location, independent, an agency, pretty cool business. The other honorable mention that is were thrown out there was Harrison Knott who holds the title as the youngest side hustle show guest ever. 15 year old e commerce mogul, you know, mastering short form video to sell these cooling towels. I think it was cool, cool towel.co.uk or something. We'll link up his his website. But really cool episode on influencer marketing. Perhaps more inspiring. Harrison at 15 told me, well this is like my eighth business. It's not my first time, it's not my first rodeo. I was like dang, you're you know, a serial entrepreneur as a teenager but doing a lot of TikTok shop and really transparent about some of the expensive mistakes that can befall a new entrepreneur. So I will link those up as well as honorable mentions. Really cool, inspiring stories. So to recap, we had vending machines through the lens of Anthony and really scaling up that business and financing the machines with the proceeds from what they're moving and finding the right locations. We did an episode on printables selling digital products. Create something once, sell it over and over again. Target these really low competition keywords, stack up an army of evergreen digital assets. Going out into the world and doing, doing your bidding and you have this little passive income army working for you. Number three was ugc. Really interesting business where you can get paid to create content even if you're not an influencer. You had a local foam party rental business which I thought sounded like a lot of fun going out and doing kids parties and kind of a low risk way to validate that business that Tim shared. Number five was Chris Gray's white label e commerce business. Look, I don't have to create the thing. I can just find something that's already popular, that's already working and put my own marketing and branding to it. Kind of an interesting angle. Number six was Garrett's glass glamping business. Four star hotel prices without the four star hotel and without the four star hotel startup costs. Really interesting business and one that definitely had me looking for nearby acreage. Although I don't know, it's still a hospitality game that you're going to have to play there. Number seven was return reselling through our partner Sharetown side hustlenation.com Sharetown is my direct referral link for that. Of course we'll link up some of the interviews that we've done with various Sharetown rooms reps over the years. Number eight was free choose directory style websites, information and kind of value added layer. Can you create for these near me style directories and compete in in an SEO world there. Number nine was Facebook content Monetization program, my newest income stream for the year and one that I'm looking to scale going in to the new year. And number 10 was Cheyenne's we'll call it Repurposing Public Domain Content. We talked through the lens of doing it with audio content, but there's a lot of different public domain content out there and could you use that as a building block or as some, you know, primary ingredients to building a business around? I thought she had a really creative way of doing that. But if you want to learn more about any of these individual businesses, I of course encourage you to check out those specific episodes. For the sake of convenience, I put them all into a Spotify playlist for you which is linked up in the show notes. Just follow the link in the episode description. It'll get you right over there or side hustlenation.com Best of 25 will also work and appreciate you. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Happy New Year. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. So fire off that text message, let them know you're thinking about them and sending some positive financial vibes their way. Until next time, let's grow out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle show, where we're talking about how to have your best year yet. I'll see you then. Hustle on.