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- [00:00]
Nick Loper
The side Hustle show is designed to help you make more money. But do you have a firm grasp on your overall financial picture? I was stuck in spreadsheets and logging into a dozen different accounts for far too long, which is why I'm excited to partner with Monarch for this episode. Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything. Your accounts, your investments, your saving goals, and your spending. And does it all in one place. Plus, you can get your first year of Monarch Core for half off. That's just 50 bucks with promo code sidehustle. Now, I probably check the Monarch app more often than I should should, but it's helped my wife and I celebrate certain net worth milestones. It's helped us visualize our spending and get honest about where it all goes. It's helped us reallocate funds in an intentional way and just be less stressed about little expenses when they pop up. Use promo code Sidehustle@monator.com to get your first year of Monarch Core for half off. At just $50, that's 50% off your first year@monator.com with code Sidehustle. What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the side Hustle show. Because your 9 to 5 may make you a living, but your 5 to 9 makes you alive. Last month I put the call out for listeners to share the most random ways they've made extra money. And I think me getting paid to drink beer is probably at the top of my list. A woman approached me in the parking garage of my building in Atlanta, and that was her opening line. You want to get paid to drink beer? I'm like, well, I'm listening. What's the catch here? So it turns out she worked for a market research company that was trying to recruit taste testers for this upcoming product launch. And she told me, hey, we need more people. So I invited a couple friends to join as well. And we all got paid like 75 bucks to sample and give our feedback on what became Miller Chill before it came out. So that was pretty cool. And actually later we lived near a place called the National Food Lab in California, so went over there and did a few more paid taste testings over the years. Always like a good market research gig. They're a lot of fun. But our first caller sounds like they didn't do any research before signing up for his weird side Hustle.
- [02:13]
Joe Salsehi
Hey, Nick. And side Hustle Nation. It's Joe Salsehi from Stacking Benjamin's the Greatest Money show on Earth, where people like Nick tell some great Stories about ways that they've not just made money, but the way they save money, the way they earn, invest, make more money at work, all the above. My weird side hustle was actually when I was a teenager. I often had many, many jobs as a teenager. We didn't have any type of allowance. I think if you're not in the country, you couldn't do this one because here's what happened. I help load chicken trucks, this side hustle. I don't remember how much I was getting paid, but I got hired to go to a farm and load a truck with chickens. And they were in these coops. And my job was to the chicken out of its coop and shove it into the travel coop where it would go get loaded on the truck and be taken to slaughter. And I know this sounds horrible, but this is, you know, Midwest, right? Middle America. So I go out there, they give me these gloves, they show us how to do it. The guy makes it look really easy. You just reach in, you grab the chicken, you put it into the. Into the travel coop. How hard can that be? Well, here's what happens in real life. I opened up the chicken coop. I reach my hand in, the chicken freaks out. You can't. You can't hesitate because the chicken will freak out. The chicken freaks out. I go to grab it, I can't grab it. I finally grab it. I start to get it out of the coop, it panics even more. I let it go. Chicken goes running away. The dude that owns the place is running after the chicken and I'm apologizing profusely. And then it happens again. And then it happens again. Finally the guy goes, listen, you've. Here's how you do it. You reach in, you swipe, you grab both legs, you pull as hard as you can. My brother did this with me and we, we make it to the first break and my brother and I just look at each other and we're like, do you hate this? And he's like, yeah, I hate it. And we left. We didn't tell anybody. Probably should have told him, the guy. Later on, my dad made us call and apologize. But that is the weirdest and the worst side hustle I ever had. I would not recommend to anyone doing the side hustle where you load chicken trucks that goes nowhere very fast. Nick, fantastic, hilarious episode idea.
- [04:26]
Nick Loper
Thanks for including me, Joe from stacking Benjamin's everybody. I don't know if anybody's going to top chicken grabbing for the randomness factor there. My one day teenage side hustle was Helping cut out dog biscuits. A friend of a friend's mom had some organic dog biscuit bakery. So we went to this commercial kitchen and I want to say I got paid like 10 bucks an hour to cookie cutter the dough. The work was not particularly hard, it was just tedious and didn't smell great. But also didn't have to manhandle any chickens. So trade offs there.
- [04:58]
Cody Berman
This is Cody Berman, author of retire by 30 and host of the Financial Independence show. And my side Hustle story starts in Australia. I moved over there for six months. My wife was studying abroad, I was living abroad and I needed a job. So I applied to probably over 15 different places, got rejected from all of them and decided to sign up as an Uber Eats delivery driver. But I didn't have my license so I couldn't drive. So I decided to do Uber Eats bicycle. I also didn't have a bicycle, so I went on a website called Gumtree. It's basically the Australian Craigslist. Spent $25 and got a pink bike that only worked in one gear. And it was a bit too small. Mind you. The suburb I was delivering in was super hilly. I remember the end of that first shift. My legs felt like they were on fire. I wasn't making crazy money, but I told myself, hey, I'm getting paid to work out. The worst part though, after a couple of weeks, I had accumulated a couple one star reviews. Why? Because I was sweating on people's food while I was delivering it to them. Today, my brand is all about passive income. And this is probably the least passive side hustle in history. So here are my pro tips if you want to learn from my mistakes. If you're going to do Uber Eats on a bike, get a bike that works. If you're in a hilly area, consider something electric. Or just choose a different side Hustle.
- [06:14]
Nick Loper
I like the tenacity here, Cody. And maybe this was the spark to develop some more time leveraged income streams. If you want more Cody in your life, be sure to check out. Check out the FI show, but also his episode here on the path to an extra thousand dollars a month with simple digital products. That's episode 665 in your archives now. Side note on getting paid to work out. I love that mental shift. I read this study somewhere. Maybe it was atomic habits or somewhere else about hotel cleaning staff, making beds, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms. All of that movement basically constituted a workout. So these researchers. Researchers told cleaners that their job counted as a workout and the other half they didn't tell Anything. The half that they told that they were basically getting paid to work out ended up burning more calories than before and decidedly more than the control group. So that subtle mindset shift when you're doing any kind of manual labor, definitely worthwhile.
- [07:12]
Chandler Bolt
My name is chandler bolt. Self publishing.com. the most random way that I ever earned side hustle money is selling snacks during lunch in school. And so it all kind of started when my mom sent me to scout camp and she sent me with a bunch of snacks and I came out back with a wad of cash and a switchblade knife. And I think that was my first iteration of, hey, I can just sell this extra stuff for money. And then we turned it into a business. In my entrepreneurship class in high school, we sold snacks during lunch. And so we would go to Sam's club once every two weeks. We would basically load up my buddy's Prius till the wheels were about to scrub. And then we would go work the lunches and we would sell drinks, snacks, all that stuff. We ended up making a $8,000 in profit in about two and a half months. I got to keep $2,000 of that profit, and so I got paid to go to school. I always thought that was the coolest thing ever. And it was so successful that the next year that they shut it down and they wouldn't let anybody run that kind of business. But two grand to go to high
- [08:14]
Nick Loper
school, Chandler, I love this because I did pretty much the exact same thing at scout camp. Load up from Costco before the trip with as much candy and junk food as I could pack in, undercut the camp, run trading post, or just offer the convenience of not to make the trek over there Easy money. It was great, but limited by how much you could carry in since it was a few miles of a hike. But now our youngest just had his first taste of this where together with a friend, they sold shave ice on the side of the road here in the neighborhood. Hot day, $3 shave ice. The friend's mom supplied the machine and they reimbursed her for the syrup. I think they made like 25 bucks each for an hour or an hour and a half worth of selling. Pretty good gig for an eight year old. And of course now he just wants to do that like every day.
- [08:57]
Jason Butler
What's going on, everybody? My name is Jason Butler and I run my Money Chronicles, which is a website that talks about personal finance and side hustles. I like to think of myself as a serial entrepreneur. I've done all types of Things such as doing focus groups, selling things online, surveys, and even running the website. My interesting random way to make money, extra money has to do with flipping things. And of course I flipped like your normal items such as clothes, toys, board games, and that type of stuff. Something that surprisingly sold were empty telephone boxes, like iPhone boxes or Samsung phone boxes. I read a while ago that somebody online was selling them, so I figured that I should go out and try it as well. I listed a couple Samsung boxes and they sell within a week. So, yeah, that was my weird, surprising way to make some extra money. Y' all have a good day.
- [09:56]
Ariana Johnson
Thanks.
- [09:57]
Nick Loper
Now Jason's onto something a little bit bigger than just empty smartphone boxes. By the way, I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole after hearing his clip. And it turns out there's this whole mini invisible economy built around stuff that should technically be worthless. So here's the logic. If you're selling a used iPhone, or even a used pair of sneakers, a pair of Jordans or something, or even a sought after, like, Lego set, having the original box could potentially double, maybe even triple the price that you can get for it. So the resellers are happy to pay 20, 25 bucks for a box that is empty, has got nothing in it. So same thing with vintage tech manuals. Like, nobody really needs the paper instruction book for their 1980s VCR, but it has value for collectors. And if you're like me and you send all those boxes straight to the recycle bin as soon as you get them, you can also check your snack drawer because there was apparently a Cheeto shaped like Charizard. The Pokemon Cheetozard they called it, sold for $350 originally on eBay, but then resold at auction for $87,000. So I gotta make sure to check those Cheetos before the kids eat them all.
- [11:07]
Various Callers (Donna Westercamp, Marie Frey, Trish, Monica, Valie Kisou)
Hi, this is Donna Westercamp@donnawesterkamp.com I walked into a yarn shop that was going out of business. And when I was done purchasing my great deals of yarn, I asked them what they were going to do with the rest of their inventory. And she said, well, just put your name here on this list and maybe the owner will call you. And I said, okay. And so the next day I got a phone call from the owner and she said, you were interested in the store? And I said, yes, and how much do you want? And she didn't know. And so I threw out a really low price and she said, okay, you can have it and come pick it all up tomorrow. And So I ended up picking up a fairly good size yarn shop and sold it all on ebay. And then when I I was tired of it and didn't want to do it anymore because I got sick and so I turned around and sold the rest of it on Craigslist and I sold it for as much as I paid for it. Originally. The inventory was atrocious and very difficult to handle, but I did it and I made a ton of money.
- [12:29]
Nick Loper
Donna, this is awesome. Way to take a swing and make some money. Now Donna did mention she was in the crafting niche already, so the this wasn't completely out of left field and that's actually where Shannon Jean recommended people start with liquidation and clearance auctions. This kind of simple to understand buy low, sell high type of model. Start with what you know versus going into a product category that you've never really dealt with. Our episode with Shannon from earlier in the year is one of my favorites. It's a great one to check out the video version for because he's neck deep in screen sharing all the different auction sites and showing you where to click to see what's in the lot, the actual product manifest, and how to do your due diligence on that stuff. What's it actually worth? But definitely a fan of these simple buy low, sell high types of side hustles. That one with Shannon is episode 731. If you want to go back and check that out about the clearance and liquidation and pallets and stuff like that, we've got more awesome random listener side hustles, including renting out your backyard as an impromptu dog park coming up right after this. You know that feeling when you finally finish a cleanup project you've been putting off? That's what's switching to our partner. Gusto feels like payroll, hr, benefits, all that admin chaos that's been piling up, finally organized in one place. Gusto is the online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly and incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire, onboard and support your team from anywhere. If you're like me and on a mission to simplify and automate as much as you can in your life and business, you're going to love Gusto because that's what it does for your payroll, payroll, tax filings, direct deposits, onboarding docs, and more. Making the switch is quick and simple. Just transfer your existing data to get up and running fast. Plus you don't pay a cent until you run your first payroll. Try gusto today@gusto.com sidehustle and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com sidehustle one more time it's gustogusto.com sidehustleen you work hard for your money. Let's make sure it works just as hard for you. With Wealthfront you earn more on every dollar with sophisticated easy to use products. Their cash account provides up to 4.3% variable APY with instant no fee withdrawals. And when you're ready, you can easily transfer your cash into an expert built Wealthfront Investing account on top of the 3.3% base APY from program banks. You also get a side hustle show exclusive three month 0.75% APY boost on up to $150,000 as a new cash account client. Then add another 0.25% APY increase by direct depositing $1,000 a month and maintaining a funded investing account. Claim your boost today@wealthfront.com Hustle terms and conditions apply. This is a paid Wealthfront non client endorsement creating a conflict of interest client experiences vary. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a Bank Base APY as of January 30, 2026 and subject to change please in the episode
- [15:36]
Bill Fortenberry
Description Hey Nick, this is Bill Fortenberry with Fortenberry Marketing. I developed my company based off of a strategy that I created for my dad's business. He had no marketing budget and he had a Facebook page. So I thought why don't we try to use Facebook to market his business? And I came up with a strategy I call the 11010 strategy and it's simply one post a week. You put at least 10 pictures in the post and you share it in at least 10 local groups. And and so that worked great for my dad's business. And that's not really my point that I want to make in this, but it worked great for my dad's business and I thought why don't I turn that into my own business and just running that strategy for people. And so I started to do that and I needed some test cases. And at the same time my wife and I were downsizing and moving. We were also planning to take a missions trip to Ukraine to help out with a youth camp for kids that had been suffering from the war. And we needed to raise the funds to pay for that trip. And so we decided to have a yard sale and sell everything that we were getting rid of and downsizing the house. And I thought why don't I try my marketing strategy for this yard sale? And so I did. So I used my 11010 strategy for the yard sale. I did a single post. I ended up taking like 30 or 40 pictures, threw them into that one post and then I shared it in all the local what's happening type of groups and community groups around our area and just said we're having this yard sale to raise money for sending us to Ukraine to help kids in the war. Here's some pictures of what we have for sale. And we ended up making more than $5,000 off of that yard sale just from that single post on Facebook. And so that's the most random way that I've made extra money. Wasn't really random since I already knew the strategy, but it provided me with a really good case study that I could then present to business owners when I was talking about my new business.
- [17:38]
Nick Loper
One post, ten pictures, ten local groups. Bill, I like it. Both the $5,000 yard sale and that cool free Facebook marketing strategy. Thanks for sharing that. We've got a few episodes on making money on Facebook with or without physical products. I'm happy to link those up in the show notes for this episode. Just hit the link in the episode description and it'll get you right over there. Most recently we had Jeff Rose on late last year about the Facebook content monetization program. In Jeff's case, making something crazy like a thousand dollars a day. And we've had other episodes related to building an organic audience and marketing funnels as well. Actually tried out Jeff's strategy for a few months and did make some money with it. But the daily grind of having to source and create the curate the content, it was just that. It was. It was a grind. Now our next callers have found that some side hust may or may not be at the same scale, but they do have sort of an elegant efficiency to them, the kind where you can get paid for the same asset over and over again.
- [18:41]
Brian Sather
Hey Nick, this is Brian Sather from Wisconsin. I thought I'd share my latest side hustle. I'm doing E bike rentals. I've got a couple state trails near me and a lot of campers, private campgrounds, state park campgrounds and also water park resort area. And I thought after hearing their La Scooters podcast, I actually reached out to that person that you had on and spoke to him a little bit and I tried out the method that he did of building a website before investing in any kind of E bikes and really learned a lot from doing that. And the other thing I did was I actually borrowed a neighbor's E bike that happened to be the same brand that I was looking at trying to use and actually toured around to several campgrounds and took photos and got to know some of the owners whether through email or in person. And they all loved the idea because they thought it was a great thing that they could offer their guests. Also, going into my second summer it's been picking up a little bit more and really learned a lot and it's been kind of a neat experience so far. Now I'm already thinking how do I get this a little more self sustaining and maybe step back from the actual deliveries and just focus more on growing it a little bit. But having someone that's a little more flexible that can maybe do half day rentals or hourly rentals. Just something that I'm not willing to offer now because of my normal day jobs. So thanks for your podcast and take care.
- [20:12]
Nick Loper
Thanks for that Brian. The marketing lesson I'm hearing is go where your target customers already are. In Brian's case, these state parks, private campgrounds, water resort areas where people might want to rent an E bike. It's a big, bulky, heavy, expensive item. They probably didn't bring them with them, but it would be fun to ride around while they're there. Not sure if Brian is doing any rev share with those venues, but it might make sense to make it a win for them to promote the bikes on site. And for reference, that mobility scooter rental episode is number 564 in your archives. It was a really fun one where Lenny Tim, my guest, didn't buy any scooters until he'd proven there was consistent demand for them, which actually sounded like it took a couple years of this low overhead, local SEO effort built out the site, followed the best practices and then event started to get booking requests and only then did he go out and buy the first scooters and begin fulfilling those those booking requests. Sounds like Brian's business is more of an impulse rental rather than a book in advance type of thing like the mobility scooters would be. Probably needs to have more inventory on the ground that people can see and say oh yeah, I want to go do that this afternoon. But still, I love an unconventional rental business. It's this game of acquisition cost versus rental rates versus depreciation versus resale. And we've seen guest doing it with everything from portable hot tubs to bridesmaid dresses. Unconventional cash flowing assets. Now here's another example you might already be sitting on.
- [21:44]
Various Callers (Donna Westercamp, Marie Frey, Trish, Monica, Valie Kisou)
Hi, I'm Marie Frey from Nova Scotia, Canada. Over the last few years I've been really interested in creating new streams of income for our family outside of our day jobs, especially passive income as we have three young kids, four and under, including twins, so obviously not a lot of spare time. So passive has really been the key. I will say the most random way we have made money over the past couple years has been through an app called Sniff Spot, essentially an Airbnb for dogs. Conceptually, dog owners book our backyard on an hourly basis. It's very simple, very easy to set up. We just had to take a couple pictures and set the hourly price. All bookings are automatically accepted, so there's really no management whatsoever. We can however, block off. Sometimes it is particular days of particular hours where we want to keep use of our yard, but for the most part between work and day to day life, we don't actually use it the whole time. So it's very easy to have some movable spots without affecting our enjoyment of our yard. So it's been a really, really easy way to make extra money. We made about $500 in the first year, we made a little less in the second year. But to be honest, on the basis that this is super passive, literally hard to imagine it could be any more passive. Any extra money made is a win for us. So really it has been a really great option.
- [23:16]
Nick Loper
Thanks for sharing that Marie. Sniffspot.com was that private dog park rental site doesn't require a ton of acreage, but I have to imagine the more space or the more uni the space that you have, probably the better rates you might be able to command. And hopefully the owners are picking up after the pets and not leaving you with any surprises back there. And what's cool here is there's no labor involved on Marie's part. Sure you can come and play. No dog walking, no dog boarding involved. A couple other similar marketplaces that might be worth a swimply is Airbnb for pools. If you have an underutilized backyard pool, I've seen stories of hosts making $5,000 a year or more on there. And like other peer to peer marketplaces, swimpli the insurance in place to protect you as the homeowner. And the other one that comes to mind is Neighbor, which is like Airbnb for storage. Think parking spaces, garage storage, backyard sheds, side yards, maybe even your attic. If you have extra unused space, you can list it on Neighbor. I've heard from side hustlers making thousands of dollars a year on that platform as well, and I have to imagine it's pretty passive. Once somebody parks their boat or RV in your side yard, probably not a lot of upkeep or time required on your part. Now, what if the asset that you have doesn't have an established marketplace yet? Well, one option is to build it yourself, like our next caller is doing.
- [24:39]
Various Callers (Donna Westercamp, Marie Frey, Trish, Monica, Valie Kisou)
Hi, I'm Trish and I'm here in Kitsap County, Washington State, which is Seattle adjacent. My side Hustle is a board game rental business. I rent out board games like their DVDs from 2004. I run the business through my Kitsap Daylight Society board game Geek Guild, and I rent via the Libbib app. I'm building a subscription service where people pay $20 a month to borrow four games. I now have over 300 games, all labeled, scanned and organized like a tiny blockbuster. But for board games, My side Hustle takeaways, your weird hobby might be someone else's missing puzzle piece. Random ideas become real businesses the moment you put them in motion. Thanks for having me. And if anyone needs a board game, I know a guy.
- [25:24]
Nick Loper
Trish, way to take action and scratch your own itch. And also try to monetize some of the inventory related to your hobby. I like the line on the Board Game Geek site, your profile there, that says you have a collection that long ago crossed the this is fine threshold and now is somewhere in the this is a lifestyle zone. And the truth is you're not alone in board games being a lifestyle. Joe, who we heard from at the top of the show, is part of that lifestyle. My brother's part of that lifestyle. There's definitely a market for this, and I like the subscription model as opposed to paying per rental. There are obviously a lot of challenges to address as well, like how is shipping going to work? How do you account for missing pieces? These games are a lot bigger and more complicated than Netflix slipping DVDs in the mail. But we're rooting for you because this feels like a great niche audience to build a service for. And some of these games can be pretty expensive, so it makes sense to play test it first to see if you like it, see if it's worth adding to your collection. Now, so far we've heard from listeners sweating it out, delivering takeout orders on a bike, buying low and selling high, and renting out a wide variety of different assets. And actually our next caller started out in that same category, but then found the side Hustle adage of opportunities opening up once you're in Motion to definitely be true. Let's get Ariana on the line.
- [26:50]
Ariana Johnson
Hello, my name is Ariana Johnson. I'm based in El Salvador. One of the most random ways I've made extra money has been as the first baby quip quality provider in El Salvador. For anyone that's unfamiliar with babyquip, it's basically like Airbnb for baby gear. So I rent out things like car seats, cribs, strollers, pack n plays and toys to families traveling to El Salvador. It started as a way to just earn extra income and then ended up leading to another business idea actually. So as I was delivering this baby gear to visiting families, I started talking to them and I realized there really wasn't a lot of information available for parents traveling with young kids about where to go and what to do here with these young ones. So I decided to start creating some Instagram reels and eventually I launched my blog, El SalvadorKidsGuide.com to share family friendly activities and travel tips. I've already gotten a couple sponsored reels and a lot of free entry to kid play areas for my family. But more recently I've also started to offer trip planning consultations for family who are getting ready to come and visit El Salvador with their kids. So the funny thing is that really this one side hustle ended up kind of feeding the other. So sometimes families will find me through my travel guide and then rent baby gear and then sometimes they'll first rent gear and then come back later for travel advice. But the biggest takeaway for me has been that you don't always know where a side hustle will lead you. Sometimes the opportunity you start with isn't the opportunity you end up building. And just solving a problem for people can open so many doors that you never expected. Thanks for all your inspiration on the podcast. Looking forward to hearing more episodes.
- [28:46]
Nick Loper
This is super cool Arianna. Thanks for sharing that multiple income streams already. Definitely curious to learn more about the state of travel blogging post HCU and with everything else that's going on in the SEO world. But that's awesome that families are reaching out for trip planning consultations and just and that you're already getting sponsorships now. Hopefully El Salvador is an up and coming destination, maybe less competitive than elsewhere and you can really become the go to person in the family travel niche there. Great example of getting to know your target customers through direct conversations through the babyquip rental business first and then building out an array of products and services to help them after the fact. And actually if you are the Go to Travel Planner. In your circle, that's a skill you can monetize as a travel advisor. We did an episode last year with Bailey Richard. It was episode 670 if you want to go back and check it out. It was about setting up your travel advising side Hustle. Kind of the path to a thousand bucks a month, very part time. The requirements there, how to get your first customer and how the money flow works. You basically earn commission on the hotels and experiences that you book for your clients and maybe the rental cars as well. But episode 670, if you want to learn more about becoming a side hustling travel advisor now next up is a longtime listener who took his unique skill set and network and turned it into a fun and lucrative IRL business. And that's coming up right after this. Starting a business is a big deal, but our partner Shopify makes it simpler with all the tools you need to launch included and ready from day one. When you're setting up your site, you don't need to start from scratch or reinvent the wheel here. Just use Shopify's proven templates and AI tools to get a great looking site up and running fast with no coding needed. Plus Shopify's best in class checkout means more customers actually convert and buy and returning ones can do it in a single click. And every side Hustle hero needs a sidekick, right? Well with Shopify, yours is built right. Their AI assistant sidekick is ready to help you build, troubleshoot and keep moving your business forward. Shopify already powers millions of businesses worldwide, including brand name powerhouses like Mattel and Gymshark. But also dozens of guests you've heard on the side Hustle show. I'd love for you to be next. And you can get started for free@shopify.com Sidehustle. All you need is the idea. Shopify handles the rest. Start your free trial@shopify.com Sidehustle Once again, start your free trial today at Shopify Sidehustle. Hear that? That's the sound of your marketing working. And as an entrepreneur, you know that every call is an opportunity. But if you miss it, potential customers don't wait. They'll just call the next business on their list. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q U O. It's the business phone system built so you never miss a call. You can set it up in minutes on any device, you can keep your existing phone number and you can add teammates as you grow. No it no hassle. Once you do all your Calls, texts and voicemails live in one place so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history and respond fast. Plus, Quo integrates with the tools you're already using. HubSpot, Zapier, Claude and tons more so you can save time and stay organized. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com hustle that's quoquo.com hustle hey, Nick Loper, it's Danny here.
- [32:29]
Danny
So here's my random side hustle story. I've been traveling for many years as kind of a digital nomad doing marketing online. I had a partnership with Appsumo where I was selling a lot of courses and training online. And I arrived in Greece a few years back, made a bunch of local friends there and one of them invited me to stay out at his place out in the countryside. He had a big villa out there and I started to organize co living retreats just kind of as a side hustle. I began in Greece, in the west of Greece, in Pilos. It's a beautiful villa that my friend invited me to. We had about five, six bedrooms. And then the next year I expanded to Nepal and the business continued to grow. I chose Nepal because it's really magical. No other country really left such an impression on me. And for the first co living retreat that we hosted in Greece, we had three people, so four including myself. And then two years later we grew to roughly 35, 36 that spring between February and March at our co living in Pokhara, Nepal. And then some people noticed what we were up to. They suggested organizing a summit for digital nomads. So we held the first and largest digital nomads summit ever in Nepal with more than 120 participants last year. And we had the Nepali government and tourism board attend as well. And so this was just a little side hustle where I found this beautiful location and wanted to invite people to come and work from paradise with me. And it suddenly became a big deal and now I have a whole country behind what I'm doing. And we're coming back again in September for the co Living and also the second edition of our digital nomad summit in Nepal Nepal. It's digitalnomadsnepal.com we have about 40 speakers that we've invited. We have yoga workshops, sound healing, all kinds of other fun stuff. So I went from making a living to creating a vision. And it's quite exciting learning a lot along the way and it's taught me more than any MBA ever could. And it was very easy to, you know, just kind of create this business. You can use AI to help you to kind of put together a mvp, put together some photos, some posts. Some of the first posts I made were just on Reddit, like digital nomad. I just posted some photos and said, hey, anybody want to join this co living in Nepal. And then once I had the stuff that I created for Greece, I was able to easily replicate that for Nepal. And if I wanted to do this same model, I could easily replicate it for other locations if I find the right place. And I think it really comes down to finding a great location, you know, that's not too saturated. You don't do this during high season. And so there's all kinds of these locations all over the place. If you travel a little bit and you find a place that really captures your heart, it's very easy to set up a retreat. You can create pretty much any format you want. You want to choose a good niche. In my case I chose remote workers and digital nomads and photos really do a great job of selling. And then it just becomes a matter of building these relationships, inviting people and you got to do a lot of follow up, a lot of, you know, people management. But it's fun and there's a lot of rewards to it. It and it actually reminds me of some advice I received several years ago in Hong Kong from basically a billionaire and he said, go where you're invited. And so now I've created a place where I'm inviting the best and the brightest to come to me and create something special. So quite an interesting story and thank you for the opportunity.
- [35:47]
Nick Loper
Go where you're invited or make some invitations for your dream customers to come and do business with you. I like Danny's business for the well defined niche of digital nomads, the unique destination and taking online relationships and bringing them offline. With all our screen time and social media and AI, it's hard to beat an in person connection. We've had a few event based episodes that might be worth checking out if that kind of model appeals to you. One recent one was in person art classes. She was doing pretty well. Episode 634 with Chloe Winn Stanley. And then a while back we had Hung pham in episode 297 about doing a more corporate style event called the Culture Summit. He talked about the challenges in selling tickets, in securing sponsorships, finding the right venue, all that stuff. I think it's A difficult business, but a really rewarding one to be able to bring a group of people together with common interests and common goals. It can be really powerful and rewarding to put yourself at the center of that community. Now, our next caller has also done a great job of fostering community and showing up consistently for her audience.
- [36:57]
Various Callers (Donna Westercamp, Marie Frey, Trish, Monica, Valie Kisou)
Hey, Nick, My name is Monica and I'm the founder of English With Monica. I'm such a fan of yours. I've been following you forever. When I went into creating my account in TikTok, I had about 524. I even remember this until this day, members or followers for the longest time. And just this past year, I probably now have about 70,000 followers on TikTok. And that's because I'm really engaging with them. Four times a week I go on live, and it's so much fun to get to meet people from all over the world. And that has allowed me to create bootcamps, challenges, digital products, memberships. But let me tell you, it has been a tremendous experience. I absolutely love what I'm doing now. It's just too much fun. I want to say that the takeaways from all of this is just keep showing up. There's always someone out there that's going to just resonate with everything that you're talking about and just show
- [37:59]
Nick Loper
you can follow along over there. Thanks for sharing that. So here's the thing. There are dozens of sites where you can teach English online or get paid to have conversations with language learners all over the world. It's often one on one. And because there's a lot of people who speak English and want to make money online, your typical rates might be 10 to maybe 25 bucks an hour. But if you go through the effort like Monica did to make a name for yourself, to build, build trust, build your own audience, you kind of become a market of one. And in doing so, you can dramatically increase your earning power from the same basic skill. And I think that's pretty cool. And sometimes it's the skills you don't even know you have that end up making money. Here's Cyril.
- [38:41]
Cyril
Hey, it's Cyril here from DareToCloud.com I do website maintenance and SEO for B2B companies in Europe and abroad. The most random way I've ever made extra money. It started with a guitar. I've been playing guitar for years, and at 16, I started giving lessons to make some pocket money. Pretty normal style also. But until one day, the mom of one of my students, she works in the medical industry. It's fairly senior and she asked me totally out of nowhere if I can help her with her cv. And I'm thinking, ma', am, I'm here to teach your kid power chords. But sure, let's do it. I'll help you with your resume. So it turns out that I was really good at it. We reworked the messaging on her cv, make it speak to the exact role she wanted and I even helped her get up to speed with a modern CRM because that was definitely like part of the job requirements. So now I'm a guitar teacher slash career slash CRM coach for €20 an hour. It was like for one or two, two hours a week for some time. And here's the part that actually stuck with me. I realized that real skill wasn't the CV making, it was figuring out how to communicate something clearly to a very specific person or Persona, I should say, because a CV is basically a landing PA for a human being when you think about it. And that's exactly what I do now, writing content and positioning for websites. And oh, and the mom. She landed her dream job at Cardiology association in France. So that worked out pretty good. Probably the only time a guitar lesson turned into a career in digital marketing. But honestly, I'd take that gig again. Anyway, just wanted also to say congrats for your content following your website content podcast. Keep up the good work. It's really nice to see that. Very inspirational, inspiring. Take care. Bye bye.
- [40:22]
Nick Loper
And I was pretty surprised to get a second voicemail about a very similar service started similarly by request, not from any proactive marketing. I mean, talk about perceived expertise. That's a great sign if people are asking for your help without you even trying.
- [40:38]
Various Callers (Donna Westercamp, Marie Frey, Trish, Monica, Valie Kisou)
Hi, I'm Valie kisou from Kisoo CV's collection. One of the most random ways I had made extra money with was by helping people to create a professional CV and cover letters. It started when a friend needed our help applying for a job, so I
- [41:00]
Nick Loper
assisted with the cv.
- [41:03]
Various Callers (Donna Westercamp, Marie Frey, Trish, Monica, Valie Kisou)
Later that same month, that friend referred
- [41:07]
Ariana Johnson
someone else and before I knew it,
- [41:09]
Various Callers (Donna Westercamp, Marie Frey, Trish, Monica, Valie Kisou)
people were paying me to write and improve their CVs. What makes it random is that I never planned to turn it into a source of income. Rather, it was just simply helping people present themselves better for job opportunities. Thank you.
- [41:29]
Nick Loper
So years ago, Austin Church told us to pay attention to what wants to happen. There's a lot of talk about embracing the resistance and eating the frog and all of that, and that has some merit. But there's also the Tim Ferriss line that comes to mind here. What would this look like if it were easy? Instead of grinding and forcing, is there a way to let the water roll downhill? I think about that in the context of projects that sit on the back burner for months or sometimes years. Maybe it's a sign that it doesn't want to happen and that's okay. Now next up is an interesting example of kind of learning and sharing in public, not needing to be an expert at the beginning, and making money introducing people to the products or services that might be most helpful to them.
- [42:15]
Jason Butler
Hey Anthony here and One of the most unexpected ways I've found to make money has been reselling digital marketing product and resources. When I first got started, I thought I needed a huge audience and advanced marketing skill. But what surprised me was that some of my first sales came from simply sharing valuable information with people who are already looking for ways to make money online and improve their business. Instead of creating my own products, I was able to recommend digital products and marketing resources that I believe could help others. The random part was realizing that everyday conversations, social media posts, and even answering questions online could lead to opportunities. I wasn't using complicated funnels or paid ads at the beginning, just sharing what I was learning and being consistent. One of the biggest takeaways for me is that people respond to authenticity. You don't have to be an expert, you just need to be willing to learn, provide value, and help solve problems. Another lesson is that consistency matters more than perfection. Small actions repeated over time can create results that you don't see immediately. Thanks for listening. I hope my experiences encourage you to explore new opportunities and stay consistent with your goals.
- [43:38]
Nick Loper
Big thanks to Anthony for sharing that. I mean, that's sales 101, right? It's being a listener first and a problem solver second. Big thanks to everyone who submitted clips. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to air them all. If you have a fun, random creative side hustle to share, I'd love to hear it and possibly feature you in an upcoming episode. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up Sidehustlenation.com deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. If you're wondering what to listen to next, we mentioned tons of archive episodes in this one. Those are all be linked up in the show notes for you. If you want a more customized personalized approach, be sure to check out our free quiz at Hustle Show. Answer a few short multiple choice questions and it'll build you an 8 to 10 to 10 episode playlist. Some of our greatest hits that you can add to your device, learn what works and go make some more money. Again. That's at Hustle Show. 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.