BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 28: How Anyone Can Easily Make Extra Money Using Side Hustles with Nick Loper

Episode Date: July 9, 2018

Side hustle is a huge buzzword in the FI community. Make extra money on the side doing something fun, something you love, or even just something that pays really well. Today we bring in Nick Loper, Founder of Side Hustle Nation, to share his expertise... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 28. How many taco places are, you know, are in your town? And I was like, I don't know, you know, 15, 20. How many of those have been in business longer than a year? Probably all of them. He's like, there's a good sign if they've been in business longer than a year, that they're profitable, you know, they're making money. And they have the same business model.

Each one has the same business model. They're serving tacos. You know, it's not anything crazy, innovative. And, you know, maybe they have their own secret recipe or their own unique spin on it. But don't overcomplicate things. It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in a cubicle for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you're looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth creation. You're in the right place.

This show is for anyone who has money or wants more. This is the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. How's it going, everybody? I'm Scott Trench. I'm here with my co-host, Miss Mindy Jensen. How are you doing today, Mindy? I am doing fantastic today, Scott. The sun is shining.

I keep talking about how awesome the Colorado weather is, but the sun is shiningly crazy for the last, I don't know, six days. And it's just amazing to be alive. My husband and I are getting ready to go on a cruise next week to Key West and Cuba. And I'm really looking forward to that. That sounds like fun, but it sounds like going to be missing work. Yeah, I am going to totally ditch you from work. I am not going to call in.

I am not going to check my email after Monday because I will. be on a boat. And I don't know if you've ever taken a cruise, but they have zero internet. They actually do have internet, but it's like 14-4 dial-up from before you were born. How are things over in your neck of the woods? They're going good. I'm going to play some pickup basketball tonight and do a barbecue with some friends. So I'm looking forward to that. Thanks for the invite. That sounds like fun. So switching gears, another thing that I am excited about is today's guest. We have talked a lot on the show about cutting expenses and frugality, but we haven't really touched too much on increasing

your income yet. Today we talked to Nick Loper, chief side hustler at side hustle nation.com, and I did not just want to bring in any old schmuck to come in and talk about some side hustle they heard this one time. I wanted an expert, and Nick certainly delivered. He drops a lot of names and links and websites in the show today, and you can find all of those at the show notes, which are located at biggerpockets.com slash money show 28. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening.

That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going and more importantly, where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward, it's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop.

Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code Pockes. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves in Edle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code pockets at monarch.com for half off your first year.

That's 50% off at monarch.com code pockets. I love Matt, said no one ever. Nobody starts a business thinking, you know what would make this more fun? Calculating quarterly estimated taxes. But somehow every small business owner ends up doing it. Your dreams of creating, selling, and growing get replaced by late nights chasing receipts, juggling invoices, and wondering if that bad sushi lunch with Scott counts as a write-off. Change all that with Found.

Found is a business banking platform built to take the pain out of managing money. It automatically tracks expenses, organizes invoices, and even preps you for tax season without you doing the heavy lifting. You can set aside money for business goals, control spending with virtual cards, and find tax write-offs you didn't even know existed. It saves time, money, and probably a few years of life expectancy. Found has over 30,000 five-star reviews from owners who say, found makes everything easier, expenses, income, profits, taxes, invoices even. So reclaim your time and your sanity. Open a found account for free at found.com. That's F-O-U-N-D-com.

Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by lead bank, member FDIC. Don't put this one off. Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Found. Audible has been a core part of my routine for more than a decade. I started listening years ago to make better use of drive time and workouts, and it stuck. At this point, I've logged over 229 audio book completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest impact titles.

Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Leaner Stronger for Fitness, the Anxious Generation for parenting perspective and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful as its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible Originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more, all accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years.

Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. Nick, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How's it going today? Doing great. How are you guys? Fantastic. Today is an awesome day. I don't know about California. I don't know if you guys get sun out there, but Colorado kind of invented sun. And we've just got this beautiful, beautiful day today. No, it always rains in California. They never talk about the stuff. Yeah, they don't have good weather there.

But yeah, so today we're going to be talking about side hustles and how, you know, kind of ordinary people can earn extra income to advance, you know, their position for a number of goals. But in this case, specifically to help them move towards financial freedom. So can you kind of give us like, I guess, a little intro into what a side hustle is. So we can maybe start there. Well, you nailed it. Side hustle would just be anything you're doing outside of your day job to earn extra money. Awesome. So what maybe can you give us a little background about how maybe you started your first side hustle and your journey and how you began.

became an expert in this area. Man, my first side hustle was a comparison shopping site for footwear. It earned a commission from Zappos, from Amazon, from all these other online footwear retailers when people would buy shoes through the site. And it actually was inspired by an internship that I had in college where, you know, this company, a brick and mortar shoe store in Seattle had this radical idea back in like 1996 to put some of their inventory online. And by the time I came along, of course, the online side of their business.

said grown by leaps and bounds. That was really my first exposure to SEO, to, you know, Google AdWords, to affiliate marketing, to e-commerce, to a lot of stuff. And so I was, after that internship ended, was when I was like, maybe I could do the same sort of thing as an affiliate for these guys. Awesome. So did you put up the site yourself? Like, can you walk us through like how you went about doing it? You just kind of get a thing on WordPress and start writing about shoes or what was it? So unfortunately, this was pre-wordpress or at least pre-me-finding out about WordPress. So this was not cheap to develop. I actually spent 10 grand on developing the site. But before I did that, I did a really important thing to kind of validate it. And that was just,

you know, text ads on Google with my affiliate link as the destination URL. And so I was actually still in college at the time. So I started out with a budget of like a dollar a day, which was the minimum budget you could have on AdWords. And so I was like, that was, I don't know if you guys are, you know, good to great fans, but that was my way of kind of firing bullets. before firing cannonballs and investing in the site development was the cannonball and say, okay, this is this is working and here seems, this seems to be the logical next step to scale it up. So you literally took an affiliate like advertiser on Google and sent traffic right to Zappos or whatever and validate your concept with that.

Yeah, which I don't even know if that's like allowed on Google anymore, but or maybe you have to have special permission from the advertiser to do it. But yeah, that was it. Hey, I'm going to find the best price for, you know, Nike model. X, Y, Z, or New Balance, model X, Y, Z, New Balance was a good one for me because they had, like, very specific model numbers that people would type in and went to town with it.

So where did that go after you, you said you first tested it with the text ads? Then where did you go after that? You wanted to, you built the site pre-W WordPress. WordPress, for those of you listening and don't know what it is, it is the best way to build a website because you don't have to know anything and you can still have a really amazing looking site.

Yeah, I'm definitely a WordPress fanboy. point. But yeah, I found a developer on a site called guru.com, which is kind of a global outsourcing or freelancing site. One of the bids that I got back was a guy who was just half an hour away from me in northern Virginia at the time. And so I went over to his apartment and we kind of like hashed out this deal. And I think once he learned that it was just this one 22 year old dude, he kind of cut me some slack, but it was just him and the rest of his development team was in India, but, you know, he ended up building the site and like any software project took way longer than they said it was going to, but thankfully they stuck to their fixed price bid and got it built.

You know, that was, I should add, like, that was during my like, you know, stint in corporate, too. So that was right after graduation where I didn't have a thing that I thought could be a full-time business. And so I was trying to build that on the side as hopefully my escape path. And how successful were you? It had a good run. So it took, it took three. years of nights and weekends before, you know, I felt comfortable quitting my job and turning the side hustle into a full-time thing. And then ran it, you know, for several more years after that with all of the entrepreneurial ups and downs. I think I had a naive vision of,

you know, four-hour work week type of stuff in my head when I quit. And it was anything but that. But, you know, ran the site actually until 2014 when it was kind of on a long, slow decline. And that was actually around the same time when the side hustle nation stuff. was ramping up. And so they kind of traded places in terms of mine share for me. Okay. So you ran it until 2014. Are you now completely done with it? Did you sell it or just close it down? Yeah, just shut it down. I wish I'd had the hindsight to sell it a few years earlier. What was your corporate job that you were doing during this whole period? I was working for Ford as a kind of a territory manager on the service and parts side of their business, like interfacing with

their dealerships. Oh, awesome. I take it that that wasn't your dream job that you wanted to do forever, which is why you were starting all these side hustles. I mean, I love the car business. It's like it's a fascinating business, but it's also, you know, this 100-year-old industry that it wasn't the best cultural fit. I put it that way. I love the people that I work with, but it was, you know, had no desire to climb the ladder and do that for the next 30 years. So while you're building up this shoe comparison website and then you're, you know, it sounds like, the one I'm gathering is you graduate college, you start up this shoe comparison site, maybe starting it a little bit in college, ramp it up. You begin then shifting away towards the side hustle nation stuff that you're still currently working with at that time.

Was there anything else going on with your personal financial position during this period that you were kind of moving you towards financial freedom? Or was it really all the side hustle stuff that was replacing your income? Yeah, really, I don't know if the, I don't even know if the shoe business had fully replaced my salary at the time that I, at the time, I, you know, turned in the keys to my company car and called it quits. But it had been, you know, earning enough to cover my expenses, which thankfully was, you know, we were living below our means and had a track record of that. So I felt comfortable giving my notice. The, I don't know, and we had, you know, a buffer of probably several

months or maybe even a year worth of savings, too. So I kind of felt comfortable taking the leap. You know, you may have heard the definition. Oh, an entrepreneur is somebody who jumps off cliff and you know figures out how to build their parachute on the way down like that sounds that sounds awful to me like that's not the brand of entrepreneurship that i advocate and especially on side hustle nation you know start something small start something low risk and and build that up as you can definitely a really good point so you're you're sort of covering your expenses with your side hustle and you have this built year or two of financial one way set you know i i think that's such an important point to make for a lot of people who are thinking about taking the leap from their their

their job to maybe pursue something about on their own is you weren't doing this from position of risk. And I presume, correct me if I'm wrong, that you might have been able to go back to similar type of work prior to, or if this thing didn't work out, your next venture. Is that correct? It's possible. This was summer of 2008. So everything was kind of imploding, especially in the auto industry. So it probably would have been a career change a little bit. And the scary thing was, on my first day of, you know, retirement, I'll call it, Google decides to crawl my ads account for, you know, their quality metrics. And all of a sudden they say, you know, your site no longer meets our guidelines. You know, we're shutting you down. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. You know, you've had two years of track record with no issues at this point. Like, I literally just quit my job to do this. And 80% of the traffic is gone in an instant. It's like, what? You know, as you go through all. all the, you know, the seven stages of anger and denial and all this stuff. And three months, it was a really stressful summer. I had hair that summer. I think it was gone after. And then finally,

they come back after, you know, a couple months of development because they don't tell you what you did wrong to offend them. They say, oh, it looks like we made an error. You know, you're good to go. And the floodgates open again. But that was a wake up call that was like, man, you got to diversify your income streams. I thought in kind of what I'll advocate on side hustle nation is, you know, if you're relying on one source of income, and for most people, that's your job. That's an inherently risky position to be in. But I found myself on day one as an entrepreneur in the exact same boat, and it was pretty uncomfortable. I love what you just said there, how risky it is to just rely on one source of income, particularly a job, because if you're relying on that job, and you're in big

trouble. In your case, you were starting to rely, you just left your job and were reliant on your your side hustle. Now I guess you're a primary hustle. I don't know what the definition of side hustle turned main hustle is, maybe business. But like at least you had that and you probably had the option to sell your time for money in some capacity, if not in that same industry as well. So it's a much less risky position for you than for other people because you had that

built up. And I don't know. I just, I love the fact that these side hustles are such a great way to kind of break into that additional income stream space. Right. A friend of mine is a photographer. And, you know, he quit his job as like a photojournalist for the newspaper.

And his coworkers were like, oh, my gosh, you know, what are you going to do? Isn't that so risky? And he's like, look, we got 30, you know, wedding clients lined up. If one person fires me, it's not a big deal. If one person fires you, you know, you're out to the curb. That's really, really, really important to just continue to go over. the said that as soon as you stopped working Google comes in they're like sorry I actually know somebody else that happened to as well it wasn't it wasn't Google it was their affiliate company they had one website and said I'm going to go website and then they took a website similar but different and their affiliates said I'm sorry we're not giving you any money to us like he was making something like $3,500 a month a month from this affiliate that just all of a sudden shrug right out of him.

And, you know, he's fine. He was fine. He pivoted. And, you know, but they wouldn't even listen to his appeal. I'm really surprised that Google said, oh, sorry, we made a mistake because they're Google. Right. I don't, I don't mean to trivialize your contributions to their bottom line, but they're Google. I mean, they're like, they're really big.

That was the most shocking thing. It's like, you know, as a Google shareholder, like, Like, do you know what's going on? They're just turning off these accounts that are spending hundreds of dollars a day. It's like it just, it boggled my mind. And I don't know. But thankfully, you got to end up getting a result. Yeah.

I'm really surprised that they changed their mind, though. That's really amazing that they did. Okay. So you have said a couple of times, you said we. Does this mean that you were married? Or have a significant other in your life. I shouldn't say married. I don't want to label.

Yes. I'm happily married to my high school sweetheart, actually. Oh, nice. Okay, so does she have a job? Did she have a way to generate income during this time? She does, and she did, which probably lessened the financial burden, financial stress. Because it's like, okay, well, you know, at least we have one income coming in and we had our savings, which I used to, you know, I use kind of the previous months profits from the business to invest in the development expense that we went through that summer. But yeah, she's a mechanical engineer and is the, the steady earner of the family.

So I'd like to talk about some side hustle ideas that anyone can do. There's a lot of things that I have heard about side hustling that people can do that take very little money or very little startup time or very little commitment. And I think one of the big things is the commitment that people are like, oh, I don't want to get a second job. So let's talk about, first of all, is a side hustle a second job? Does it have to be a second job? and then let's talk about some things that other people can do.

Well, it doesn't have to be a second job, although I probably would consider a second job under the broader side hustle umbrella. But to me, the side hustle has a connotation of being more entrepreneurial, with more upside, maybe a little bit more time leveraged. Although, you know, you could consider, you know, babysitting or dog watching or even like driving for Lyft. Like those all count as side hustles, totally. Yeah, with the with the babysitting, dog watching, driving for Uber or Lyft, those types of things I think are great. And I've done those in the past, particularly when I was like kind of first getting started on my financial journey. But I think it's important to understand that a lot of these are very low dollar per hour activities that are, you know, in that second job category. And so what I like to think of if you're going to go down that path is have an exit plan.

I'm trying to save up an extra two, three, grand, maybe five over the course of a couple of months or a year for this particular. investment, this particular financial milestone, and then I'm going to transition to something that maybe fits more of what we here think of as a side hustle, which is something that has the potential to scale and produce a life-changing and more passive impact. Is that a kind of a fair statement there, in your opinion? Yeah, I like that because, you know, if it's a skill that pretty much everybody has, like driving a car, there's naturally a lot of downward pressure on, you know, how much you can earn. Yeah, it just seems, it just seems, it just seems like it's not living you to your fullest potential. It's probably not what you're

kind of envisioning. You don't want to replace your middle income, median income job, I assume, with a minimum wage job. Right. Although interestingly, what's exciting about that stuff is like it's so low barrier to entry, so easy to get started. I had a driver in Chicago. It was just like, when I want to make money, I turn on the app. And for him, you know, he was in between jobs. And that was enough to kind of support him while he was, you know, on the job search. And I'm met some of the most interesting lift drivers are the ones that have like the side side hustle. They're like, well, I'm really like an audio producer engineer guy. And I'm just, you know, he's starting conversations. And some, he told me the story of like some client who was a music

producer and like flew him out to Nashville for some event gig. And it's just like, you know, you're starting 50 different conversations a day. And something good is going to come at that too. Yeah, I love that. Whenever I get an Uber, I always talk with the driver. And I get a lot of those things too. Like, oh, I'm trying to become a real estate agent. I'm trying to do this or that. The other thing, they're always, they've always got an interesting story about what they're trying to do to move forward. I think it's very entrepreneurial. And for many of them, it is kind of that bridge for, between gigs. So is there a frequent, like a most frequent or a really common side hustle or, you know, I asked a question and then I asked like 12 other questions too.

I'd like to get back to the whole side hustles that anybody can do, something that's really easy or something that's not, most importantly, not expensive to jump in with. Yeah. So I think the sharing economy that we kind of been talking about, like these different peer-to-peer apps are a great place to start, the Airbnbs of the world, the lift drivers of the world, the rover.com, like pet sitting gigs of the world, Uber Eats and Instacart deliveries and stuff. Like, super easy to get started with.

No barrier to entry, but a ceiling on how much you can earn. Although, like with the dog watching stuff, a friend of mine sent me. a note, they're like, dude, we're on pace to make 20 grand on a rover this year. I was like, that is nuts, you know, but they had a couple dogs. It's always no big deal. You know, let's just add a couple more to the mix. So the sums can be significant. So I will say that, like, but there's some time investment too. So tier two would be kind of like the freelancing realm, freelancing, consulting realm. So if you, if you've had a job, you've ever had a job, right? That was by definition, some skill that somebody thought was worth paying for. And so

maybe you could take those skills to, you know, freelance on the open market. And maybe the third tier that you might consider is what I'll call like the buy low, sell high hustle. This is, I mean, the same business model of Amazon and Walmart and every store in the country, basically. Where I've seen and where I've had some fun with this myself, it's like, while you're out shopping, you can download the Amazon seller app, which is free and you can create a free Amazon seller account and just stop by the clearance aisle while you're out. I had some things. success at Walmart at Babies R Us. We have a couple kids two and two months. So, you know, spend some time at Babies R Us and most recently there. You know, I have a clearance. It's like,

everybody's going out of business. But you can see what those items are selling for on Amazon. And if there's a big enough spread and the app will kind of estimate, okay, what are your, what are your fees? And so what is your estimated profit on this? You can package that stuff up, send it into Amazon and they'll sell it on your behalf and send it out to customers. So not a ton of extra time. If you already, out running errands anyways like make a point to stop by the the clearance section at home depot wherever you may be this is something i've never heard of before in the sense that you can actually just buy merchandise at a at a major store and then sell it on amazon for a profit and

you're saying that you're able to do this consistently at a at a significant volume to make it worthwhile well for me it wasn't significant enough volume to continue to pursue it but some people have built significant businesses doing that. It was a little side, a little side experiment for me. I ended up making, you know, six, seven hundred bucks over the course of a year doing that very part-time. So if you dedicated more hours to it, I could see how you would definitely turn into something. What's the app that you were using to estimate these costs again? It's just the Amazon seller app. Awesome. So we'll link to, I mean, I guess you don't need to link to that in the show notes. I'm sure you can find it in the app store on your phone, but that's great.

You've seen other people doing this with, you know, just even on Craigslist. I met a guy who makes a full-time living, just buying and selling stuff on Craigslist. He was specializing in like washers and dryers. I was like, can you imagine like a bulkier thing to try and be moving back and forth? But, you know, that was his model. And I think he had some expertise in like, you know, fixing these things up and cleaning them. And he had a garage full of them.

And I met another guy. Actually, he was at FinCon, the flea market flipper, Rob Stevenson, who I just love his story. makes a full-time income and supports his family of five, I want to say, just looking for weird stuff, you know, locally at the flea market and flipping it usually on eBay. And he told me the story of like finding a prosthetic leg at one day for 30 or 40 bucks and turning around and selling it next day for a grand on eBay. I was like, that's an incredible return on investment. I didn't know he was at FinCon. Yeah, he and his wife are there. Oh, man. FinConn's getting so big, it's hard to talk to every single person. So I have had very, very moderate success because

I don't know what's cool because I'm not cool. But I have had very moderate success going to garage sales and thrift stores, finding things, listing them on eBay and selling them for more than I paid. But if you know what's hip and cool, if you know what's trending, if you can just, you know, sometimes if you can just spot something really cool, like I lived in Chicago for a while, there's a ton of thrift stores and there's a lot of super cool stuff there. Yeah. Longmont, Colorado, not really so much. Yeah, I have a friend who does this with bicycles where he'll look on Craigslist and look at bicycles for sale and a bicycle that's missing parts or that hasn't been used in a couple years but might have a very expensive frame. We'll sell for less than the cost of the parts. So he'll buy them, he'll either sell the parts at a profit or he'll reconstruct new bikes and sell those at a hefty profit.

And so like this is just, I think this tier three area is something where if you have an interest in or just a synergy, in your life for some of these types of things. You can come in and potentially make a profit at a significant degree depending on depending on what you're willing to put into it and where your interest is, it sounds like. I met another guy in Birmingham whose business was like pallet flipping. So he had built over the course of 20 years this kind of database. And I think for him it was just like in Excel of industrial companies byproducts. It's like, oh, these people need pallets.

These people get stuff in on pallets and don't know what to do. with them. And so he would drive them, you know, and oftentimes get his inventory for free, you know, drive them around the corner to the next industrial park and flip them for a profit. So I just work a couple hours in the morning and, you know, service these customers. It's like there's a million ways to get it done. But I thought that was kind of an interesting one. That's really awesome. And yeah, we work in a, the industrial part of Denver. It's turning residential, but there's pallets everywhere and they always say free on them. And there's like, they're huge and they're bulky and they're heavy and nobody wants them and there's only so much Pinterest stuff

you can do with a palette and then somebody somebody wants them somebody wants them that's a great job and yeah what do you need i mean you need a good pair of gloves so you don't get splinters and a trailer and a truck and that's kind of it yeah i see them like all the time after talking to him i see them all the time and i'm like pallet money so you know i think we listed three tiers of side hustle so far. Tier one being that kind of like lower wage, kind of easy one-off at your own discretion type of thing, babysitting, dog walking, driving for Lyft, Uber, handyman tasks, all these different apps, right? So it's pretty easy to break into that. We talked about tier three here, skipping one, where you buy low and sell high and, you know, wall maybe a little trickier to break into

a little bit more research to kind of learn about. I think that's a pretty clear concept that we can understand there. When you talk about tier two with freelancing and consulting, I get that concept. let's say I'm a financial analyst and a company needs financial analyst consulting services. I could go and do some consulting or freelance work for them on a case-by-case basis. But how exactly would I go about marketing my services in that area? It seems like it would be a little bit more difficult to find business in this area than just posting an item for sale on Craigslist or putting your information into an app. Yeah, so this is kind of the marketing 101, right?

Like how to get in front of target customers in their native habitat. How can I go where they already are? And so people may be looking for this stuff on sites like Upwork, sites like Fiverr, sites like FreeUp, which I think is based in Denver. So there might be some ways. But even in certain Facebook groups amongst entrepreneurs, the cool hack that somebody shared with me is like using the search bar in certain Facebook groups for keywords like help or question or recommendation, right?

Like people might be searching for the exact skills that you have and you can chime in on the comments on those threads. So lots of different ways to get it done. And of course, the other method that lots of online entrepreneurs have gone down the path of is creating content around that topic, answering common questions. If there's a specific software tool that people use or, you know, here are the 21 skills you need to know about X, Y, and Z. You can't position yourself as an authority that way. Those are some awesome tips that I've ever thought of before with the, you know, looking for things on Facebook and, you know, and writing content there and that kind of thing.

How could you give us an example of some people who have creatively been able to start freelancing while working a full-time job and what their story looked like? Sure. So I'll give you the example from, you know, my own recent past was I started a freelancing service for book editing. I had a couple books that I'd written under my, under my belt at that time. And, you know, it's like, hey, maybe I could throw this out as a service as an experiment to see, you know, what's going to happen. So I actually got my first clients on Fiverr. I said, I will proofread your, I think I said, I'll proofread your business book or your nonfiction book for five bucks.

And the fine print was like, that'll get you 500 words worth because it's like, you know, every book is a lot longer than that. So I ended up actually generating, you know, some decent sized orders through that. And it was pigeonholing myself and saying like, I don't want to read your vampire romance. Like that's not in my wheelhouse. But if you have a business book, a nonfiction book, like that's what I like to read anyways and you know I think I can help you with that. You know, over the over the couple years of doing that. So I got my first clients on Fiverr, you know, a marketplace of buyers, right? You're very easy to put your buy button up for sale there. We've got clients through certain Facebook groups of authors. Similarly, you know, word of mouth,

starts to spread. Do you know a guy? Hey, Nick does editing. And then also through a friend of mine who teaches self-publishing just contacted him and said, hey, would you mind or would you have a preferred vendor list. You add me to your Rolodex, basically. And so got some referrals through him as well. Actually, my wife's side hustle is as a wedding photographer and said they've done the same strategy with certain venues that they've shot at. Hey, do you guys have a preferred vendor list? What does it take to get on there? So that's one way to kind of reach target customers in their native environment, get in front of them where they're already doing business. That's awesome. I'm going to type that out. So does it cost anything to list on Fiverr? I know I have

looked at Fiverr, I think I may have even hired somebody one time, but what is it, like, what's the process to say, hey, I want to try out this, you know, I'm a great proofreader. I'm going to put it up on fiber. One time, yeah, I've hired tons of stuff on Fiverr. So no cost to put a gig up there. And actually, they've graduated, you know, well beyond, you know, the $5 thing. You could do pricing packages and, you know, different tiers of service and all these upsells and do custom quotes, I think, up to $10,000.

but the platform takes a 20% cut. So that's the cost to you as the freelancer. Okay. For those, for that book editing gig, for example, what do you estimate your dollar per hour wage was on that editing contract? It was probably between 20 and 35 bucks an hour. And then did that increase as you kind of developed a reputation, maybe started getting some referrals?

Yeah, I was able to up my rates over time. from, you know, around a penny a word, like for that initial Fiver gig, or really 80 cents a word after their cut to, you know, 1.5 cents, maybe two cents award, you know, for certain clients. And truthfully, some books are easier to read than others. You know, some people have already gone through a round of internal edits and others. It's like, okay, this is very clearly, you know, an audio transcription that you tried to turn into a book and you're like, this is a pain in the butt to edit. Gotcha. I like fun at all.

Do you have any other stories about other people who maybe have gone on a similar path with this, with the kind of editing, or not editing, but like freelance skills, like a marketing specialist or a financial analyst or an operations person or someone that has kind of a kind of more, I guess, a quote unquote, normal corporate job being able to freelance their skills? Well, I met a guy. This is just a recent episode from the show. so I don't think this aligned with his corporate job. He was like selling shoes for minimum wage.

But he ended up being a freelance writer. And the way he got business, the first thing that he tried to get business flopped horribly. You know, he approached local companies that didn't have a blog and tried to convince them to, you know, start one. Hey, here's why you need to start one. And here's why you need to hire me to run it. Like that flopped horribly. Where he found some success was targeting the companies that did have a blog, but were kind of struggling to keep up with it. They already understood the importance of content marketing, of investing in this stuff, but

you know, just didn't have the manpower to do it. And so they hired him to do that. He actually found some interesting clients through guest posting. And, you know, he would write these really in-depth articles and hey, to have his byline. Hey, this was written by so-and-so. He's available for hire and click here to contact him, right? And so because those posts, you know, got shared thousands of times on these pretty prolific sites. He'd have people reaching out specifically, hey, I don't need a generic freelance writer.

I'm not going to Upwork. I'm not going to Fiverr. I'm going after this guy specifically because I like his work. Awesome. Yeah, I think that's great. Do you have any tips for someone who knows that they want to generate more income, but they aren't exactly sure what they should be looking at? I was bit as a child by a dog, so I'm not looking to walk any dogs. And I'm allergic to cats, so I'm not looking to pets it at all. But, you know, I'd like to bring in more income. what's another really easy thing? Maybe I don't like kids. I do like kids, but I don't want to babysit.

You know, what are some... You're scarred for life from the dog thing. Actually, I am. It's right here. Well, let's go through some different kind of like business idea generating frameworks because this is a really common. Like every year, you know, I survey the side hustle nation audience. And without fail, 40% of the people say,

I'm still looking for my side hustle idea. I'm still looking for my business idea. And I want to be like, there's 200, something episode. Just go, just go pick something. It doesn't matter. But we can go through a couple ways to kind of get that done. And maybe the first myth I want to dispel is that your side hustle idea, your business idea, needs to be some innovative curve jumping technology, like never been done before a thing. It was actually Noah Kagan from OK Dork and Absumo, who asked me this question. He's like, you know, it's always tacos with Noah. How many taco places are, you know, are in your town? And I was

like, I don't know, 15, 20. How many? those have been in business longer than a year, probably all of them. He's like, there's a good sign if they've been in business longer than a year that they're profitable, you know, they're making money. And they have the same business model. Each one has the same business model. They're serving tacos. It's not anything crazy, innovative. And, you know, maybe they have their own secret recipe or their own unique spin on it. But don't, don't overcomplicate things, right? So that's the point I want to make before we get started. But we can talk about some different frameworks. So the first one that I have is called the intersection method. And for this method, you have three columns on a sheet of paper.

And I think my editing business is a good example of kind of an outcome of the intersection method. So column one is a list of your skills, you know, stuff that you've, you know, skills that you've developed, whether or not you've gotten paid for them in the past. For me, it's like, I was a decent English student in school. And you're like, this guy can barely form a sentence. I wouldn't trust him with anything. But, you know, okay. I'd written a couple books. self. So I had that kind of skill. And then, you know, a bunch of other random stuff that wasn't really applicable to that business. Column two is your interests, hobbies outside of work, stuff that you like to do, you know, for me, skiing, softball, but also, hey, I like reading self-development,

self-improvement, nonfiction, business books, that kind of thing. Column three is your network, you know, who you know. And the point of column three is like, where could you get a foot in the door. And for me, it was like, well, because I'd written those books in column one is a part of these different author communities on Facebook and stuff. And then also you could, you can bypass column three through marketplaces like fiber, like upwork if you want to go down that path too. But then once you have those three, it's like trying to find the intersection. Where could, you know, a potential service or even a potential product fit in within those columns? So for me, it was, it was the editing business for other people. It might, the other business that I started or I thought,

about starting after my old job at Ford was like, you know, something to help service advisors sell more. Because like I had a network in the dealership community, had experience working with those people in the past and, you know, was interested in the car business. It's interested in software and sales and optimization and all that stuff. So that never, never ended up acting on that. But I think that'll help get the gears turning. You never ended up acting on that yet. Yet. That's the key. I love how you started this commentary, you know, where you said, hey, don't overcomplicate things. Don't try to necessarily reinvent the wheel. Financial freedom is something that's been repeated over and over and over again.

And yes, you can have the same business idea as somebody else and you can go and compete and effectively generate income with that. We have the same problem here on bigger pockets with people that are trying to buy real estate, right? They're like, oh, I need the best deal in town and I need all this other stuff. Well, no, lots of investment properties exist. and because people are holding them for a long time, there's a good chance they're making money too. So I just love that that mentality of just, hey, don't know how it complicated,

think through something that's pretty straightforward. Yeah, that applies to a lot of places in life. Yeah. All right, you guys, ready for framework number two? Framework number two. All right, framework number two, and I can't take credit for this. I didn't invent this.

It's called Rip Pivot and Jam. It comes from the boys of the Tropical MBA podcast, one of my all-time favorite shows, one of the first podcasts I started listening. to and one of the reasons that the side hustle show exists today. But rip pivot and jam is basically taking somebody else's business model, pivoting it to a different industry, different vertical, putting your own unique spin on it, and then jam just, you know, hustle going to work and doing the execution on that. An example that comes to mind is Alex Kennan, who was a guest on the show.

She hosts urban hiking tours in San Francisco. And so what she saw was Segway Tour, and biking tours and bus tours and walking tours. And she was like, you know what? I really like hiking. Maybe there's room in this market for a hiking tour. And so she, you know, ripped off that basic tour idea, pivoted in a slightly different direction, and then went to work in selling it. And when we spoke, she'd hosted like a thousand people on these hikes over the course of

the last year at 50 bucks a pop. She's gotten a book deal out of it. You know, it was just crazy stuff. All on the side. I think she works full time for some. like Google subsidiary doing copywriting and stuff. But that was a crazy example of, you know, just doing something that she loved doing. And she's actually hired people to run the hikes for her.

So like it's become a little bit more passive and time leverage. So very cool stuff. That business requires so much equipment, right, for the urban hikes. Yeah, shoes, socks. Yeah. Lots of overhead involved. Possibly a website where you now have WordPress to make everything easy and beautiful. So literally they just walk around the city of San Francisco.

up and down hills in the very hilly St. Francisco area. And that's what she's, her business model is. Is that right? Yeah. So she's got, I think, you know, when we spoke, she had three different kind of preset hikes or tours that she would take people on. She studied the history, you know, the different landmarks and stuff that was going on to make it interesting and entertaining. But, you know,

once she started to get some traction on TripAdvisor and some of these other platforms that people would be looking for that sort of thing, and partnering actually with some of the companies in the city for, like, team building events. I think it's really started to take off. Wow. Although you did say it was work. She had to do research. What's one that you can just jump into with nothing and don't have to do any work? There's one.

I would love this one too because you guys know Russ Perry from Design Pickle? No. I do not. Okay. So Design Pickle is this unlimited graphic design service that you can buy on like a monthly subscription basis. And Russ's best line was like I sucked. design. So, like, first of all, like, where most freelancers fall into this trap is trading time for money. Like, for him, it was never about that. He was like, I sucked out it. It was all about playing

matchmaker between designers on his outsourced team and customers. And, you know, I first met him. He was dancing around, like, in a pickle costume at some conference. And I didn't even know it was him at the time. But, you know, it was attention getting. So he used the rip, pivot and jam method, too, because he saw some other companies out there selling, like, website maintenance on a monthly subscription basis or, you know, article writing on a monthly subscription basis. And he was like, you know, what if I could sell design on a monthly subscription basis? So that was his pivot. And then, you know, the jam was dancing around in the pickle costume until, you know, people gave him money. This sounds like a huge dill this business. I'm rolling my eyes. Yes. And that's what we

do on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast is tell really bad jokes. It was awful. I tried to use my column of hobbies outside of work, I guess they're now inside of work, which involved bad jokes to start a t-shirt business way back in the day that failed. So I, there you go, correct effort into it. But it may have worked if I had put, if I had kind of been a little smarter and tried a little harder. You need a different name. Speaking, oh my gosh, so speaking of bad jokes and t-shirts, like, so one of the, you know, hot side hustles right now is merch by Amazon, which is, Amazon's like print on demand t-shirt platform, upload your design, upload your bad joke and, you know, a fun font or whatever. And they print the t-shirt, they, you know,

ship it to the customer, Prime eligible and is like no overhead at all. Like, you uploaded some some PNG file. Like it's crazy. I think so my wife has gotten into this and like the last year. I think she made like two grand doing it last year with a handful of different design. So it's like it's not nothing. And she, you know, spent some time making these designs. But it's totally passive because, you know, somebody can search for it and find it on Amazon. That's great. I love it. Connect with somebody on Fiverr to do the design for you if you really, really, really are terrible at design. Or go to Design Pickle and have this guy create a bunch of T-shirts. You keep them spinning.

Yeah. Stack up. Last week we talked to Lee Huffman and we talked about stacking travel rewards. We stack some side hustles on top of each other. So you pay the design pickle guy and then you make a bunch of T-shirts on merch by Amazon. Nice. Now, who's going to be next in the bald guest streak? Oh, wow.

Yeah, Scott, you need to shave your head too. We'll have a July will be the month of bald money guests. Yeah, who else could that be? Oh, I don't know. Yeah, we'll have to, we'll brainstorm after the show. Don't want to give it away. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing.

And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going and more important. where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward, it's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax

season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves the needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code pockets at monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off at monarch.com code pockets.

You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored jobs helps you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking.

And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored posts. The best part? No monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer.

Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash bigger pockets. Just go to Indeed.com slash bigger pockets right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash bigger pockets. Terms and conditions apply.

Hiring, Indeed is all you need. When you want more, start your business with Northwest registered agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business all in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest Today. Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They're the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S.

With over 1,500 corporate guides who are real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. Northwest makes life easy for business owners. They don't just help you form your business. They give you the free tools you need after you form it, like operating agreements, meeting minutes, and thousands of how-to guides that explain the complicated insomers. and outs of running a business. And with Northwest, privacy is automatic. They never sell your data.

And all services are handled in-house because privacy by default is their pledge to all customers. Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free. Okay. So you said you have three? Yeah. So the third one I would talk about is called the sniper method, which is, you know, so if you consider Amazon, for example, is a shotgun business. They sell almost everything under the sun, whereas a company that sells wood-framed sunglasses, that's a sniper business. They're going off after just a tiny sliver of Amazon's business. And that can work for physical products. And I think

it can work for services as well. I can work for websites as well, too. So I just talked to the guys from ChooseFI, where it's like, okay, we're going after this sliver of the personal finance market in podcasting, and they've done really well with that. Even my comparison shopping site for shoes, it was called shoe sniper, so no correlation really between the sniper method and the name of the site. But instead of being a comparison engine trying to have digital cameras and clothes and mattresses and all this other random stuff, it was like, look, I just want to snipe off a piece of that market in footwear and saying by doing so, position myself as the expert in that space, hopefully be able to deliver better, tighter, you know, algorithm results for for those products

and maybe even negotiate some special deals with those advertisers because, you know, hey, we're the shoe guy versus everybody else. I think we've had people just build e-commerce stores around. I just sell dance clothing or I just, well, like Steve Choo's store. Like I just sell like wedding linens. You're like, hey, and that's enough to build, I think, a million dollar business from. It's crazy. Well, anything wedding related is a million dollar business, a billion dollar business. Yeah, on the service side, it could be something like, instead of raising my hand and saying, I'm an accountant, it could be like, okay, I do bookkeeping for e-commerce sellers, Amazon FBA sellers, or something like pigeonholing yourself in a way that makes it easy for people to recommend you and to immediately recognize, you know, what it is that you do. Awesome. Let's see if we can maybe move into like what are the most ridiculous. or most interesting or weirdest side hustles that you've kind of come across in your time

running your site. And I'm going to throw in a caveat, I'm going to throw in a caveat profitable. Yes. Weird. Weird yet profitable. Yeah. There's a lot of weird ones that are never, oh, I made nothing. Wow, what a surprise. Yeah, well, we talked about the pallet flipping guy. We talked about the flea market flipper. So recently I talked to a guy who wanted to get started in real estate investing, said, okay, I don't have the capital to do that right now. Went to his, his son's friend's birthday party and they had one of these like inflatable bounce houses. And he was like, the light bulb goes off. He's like, somebody is making money renting that thing for this party.

And so he goes home, buys a used bouncy house for like 800 bucks on Craigslist and turns around and starts renting it out for 130, 140 bucks a pop. And he's like, man, compared to the 1% rule in rental real estate, this thing blows it out of the water. And he is, you know, now hired a guy to, you know, set it up and take it down for him on the weekends and he has a VA answering the phones for him to schedule these bookings. And I was like, man, that's a really cool side hustle. Dude works full time in IT.

And I think he did 15 grand worth of, worth of bookings last year for his bounce house. Wow. That sounds to me like the mobile home business. Yeah, very mobile. God, Scott. Sorry. I vow to never laugh at your dumb jokes. That's funny.

Other weird ones. I met the guy. He started a parking lot cleanup business. You know, he started this like... That's awesome. I love that one. I'm sorry. Yeah, he started like 30 years ago. He started like in the early 80s, probably like 35 years ago, I guess, you know, time flies. And now he's since hired people to go out and do this work for him.

But he's built this into like a $600,000 a year business starting with like three parking lot contracts, you know, rolling up, talking to property managers and having them be like, yeah, actually we're having a hard time finding somebody reliable to do this for us. And he was like, hey, this is a perfect side hustle because you can't do it when cars are there. So you got to do it early mornings or late at night. And I can kind of work this around my gig. I was like, I was blown away by that one. I was really impressed with, you know, they're probably under the category of like doing things that other people wouldn't really even think about. And chances are that guy is not competing in your hometown if you're listening to this. So that's probably one that anybody can really repeat.

And all you got to do is get out there and go, right? Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully he's not. That's what I was asking about. You're going to franchise this thing? You're going global? I don't know. That was one of my favorite episodes ever because that story is just like anybody can do this.

Literally anybody can go around a parking lot and pick up garbage. Pick up garbage. Pick up trash. Pick up, you know. And if you do it consistently, there's not that much to pick up. Like every single day, people aren't just dumping out their ashtrays in the parking lot every single day. You might get one jerk who does that, but there's a rapper or, you know, leaves or whatever you have to pick up. But if you do it all the time, you're keeping yourself really busy.

Plus, doesn't he like walk around the whole parking lot? So he's getting exercise. He's listening to music or podcast or something while he's doing it. This is such a great college kid. I got to get up earlier. I went to bed late kind of job. I mean, regular people could do it too, but. Regular people could do it too.

So I really like that one as well. Just kind of in the realm of like almost no equipment necessary, no upfront investment. And if you can walk, you can do that one. Another one that's come up recently with actually really strong hourly rates. And this was something I was kind of unaware of was a loan signing agent. And maybe you guys being kind of in the real estate world knew about this before. But when you're closing on a home loan, you know, the escrow company or whoever's going to send somebody over to, oversee you signing and walk you through that giant stack of loan documents.

And the people that I talk, you say, well, you know, that person is making 150 bucks for that hour-long appointment. And in most states, the only requirement is that you have a notary license. And in most states, that's as simple as like paying a filing fee. Like, in most states, there's not even a test for it. And I was like, that's nuts. So a guy heard about that on the show last year. and said he's making now 1,500 to 2,000 a month doing that on the side of his full-time job,

which was completely unrelated in tire sales, I think. So he was super excited because for him, it was a major lifestyle change from working a minimum wage moonlighting gig, second job on the weekends, to being like, oh, I can make that in just one or two appointments. Yeah, that's fantastic. And you're working after work hours anyway, for the most part. People don't want to take time off work to go buy a house. So you go to their house.

I've had mobile notaries. And we actually did it in my real estate agent's house because I hadn't bought the house yet. But they come over and they help you sign all the docs. They do. Well, they don't help you. They show you where to sign and then you sign. Wow, $150 an hour. I need a raise.

Yeah. He said between $75 and $200 for these appointments. And it's like most of the time, you know, they take an hour or less. I was like, dang, dude. you know, this is something, I'm like this close to like getting my notary thing just to like test this out and be like, yeah, this is legit. And well, and how much does it cost to be a notary? A couple of hundred bucks?

I mean, you do two or three closings and now you're a notary. Yeah. Again, almost no overhead and, you know, just kind of have to learn what that paperwork is so you can talk somebody through it. Yeah. Anything else that you want to cover here related to getting started on a side hustle, ideas for starting a side hustle or cool stories related to some. side hustles before we move into the famous four?

So one thing that we haven't really touched on, and maybe we'll call this tier four on the side hustle ladder, is kind of this online authority business model where, you know, we talked a little bit about creating content, but, you know, this could be selling digital products, selling online courses. There's been a couple inspiring examples of that in niches outside of, you know, the make money online space or the,

where the joke is the only people making money online or the people telling other people how to make money online. But, you know, we've seen from hundreds of episodes that's definitely not the case. So a couple examples that come to mind is Jacques Hopkins from Piano in 21 Days.com. They'll teach you how to play the piano in 21 days. And I guess modern songs, like pop songs, not Mozart and stuff. When we spoke, he did like 20 grand worth of this course, you know,

that he put together in the last month and quit his job as an engineer to, you know, become the online piano teacher guy. And I was like, that's, that's really cool. He kind of the sound bite that he left me with was like, I'm not, I'm not teaching piano lessons. And I was like, wait, what? And he's like, no, I'm teaching people.

The skill that I'm teaching is like, you know, how to be the cool guy at the party to play, you know, whatever modern song that people want to hear and like be, you know, become the life of the party is like, all right, it's a cool little, you know, flip of the switch there. I can't read music, but I can play this one song really well. Right. I'm going to be a hit at the next thing or get on the dueling piano bar. The other one, this is one actually really inspiring. So this is Teresa Greenway. She teaches bread baking classes, actually just specifically sourdough bread baking classes. She is a mother of 10, including a child of autism.

She escaped kind of an abusive relationship. So I was really inspired by her story where she was making four or five grand a month teaching, you know, these bread baking classes on Udeme. com, U-D-E-M-Y, it's a peer-to-peer education platform, whereas Jacques was teaching the course on his own platform. With Teresa, she kind of told me, like, the first course is, you know, a lot of close-ups of my hands working the dough because I didn't want to zoom out because this thing is being filmed in my, like, dingy garage. I don't want to zoom out and have people see, like, the crappy background and the oil stains

on the floor and stuff like that. But it's like, start with what you have when you have it. And she's built up this amazing baking group on Facebook, which had like 30,000 members when we spoke. That's her tribe. They're her fans. And even though she had like a dozen courses out on baking bread, I was like, are you worried about running out of content? She was like, oh, honey, you know, I am just scratching the surface over here. I could do the bread of Spain.

I was like, all right, all right, fair enough. Show shows my ignorance there. Wow, she's making dough, teaching others to make dough. That's awesome. Sorry, I can't help myself this episode. It just keeps coming out. I don't know where they come from. If I was there, I would stick them back in.

That side hustle is a bread winner. Oh, oh, God, stop. This is all the time. People will send us jokes now. Just terrible, terrible jokes. And Scott's like, oh, I love it, I love it, I love it. I'm sure you do. I'm with Nick, who is just smiling politely.

And we're going to, that was it. Oh, okay. Yeah, I love that she's online showing people how to make bread. I mean, would you? Yeah, I was, I was nuts. I was blown away by that one. It kind of started as a challenge from one of her daughters. Like, nobody can make perfect sourdough.

And so that was, you know, I think that's the name of her Facebook group, Perfect Towerdough or Northwest Sourdough. And she took that as a personal challenge. It was like, well, you know what? I'm going to do it. That's awesome. So she charges for her classes? Yeah.

And it's, do you? You know what she charges? So on U-Domie, most of the stuff is usually pretty heavily discounted, you know, usually between probably 10 and 30 bucks would be my guess. Okay. Shall we move on then to the famous four, Scott? Yeah, let's do it. Anything else you want to add before we do that, Nick? No, I'm good.

Let's go. Okay. So these are our famous four questions. It's the same four, really five questions that we ask every guest. We start off with what is your favorite finance book and they get harder from here. Okay, I'm going to go with the maybe controversial classic. Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Say what you will about if Rich Dad ever existed. But for me, this was one of the first nonfiction books that I read as an impressionable 19-year-old youth. And I guess I can summarize the book in one sentence. It's like, you know, you are financially free when income from assets that you control exceeds your monthly expenses. And that was like mind-blown kind of thing. And there are a lot of, you know, you are financially free when income from assets that you control exceeds your monthly expenses. And that was like mind-blown kind of thing. And there are a lot. And there are a lot of, lots of different ways to get there. So that was really important for me to read at an early age. To follow up on that, what's the best book that someone could read if they're interested in side hustle?

I mean, we're about side hustles and kind of continuing this thought process that we talked about today. I mean, four-hour work week is good. Chris Gillibow has got a book called side hustle, which is good. I've got a book called Buy Buttons, which I think is good. It's about, you know, tapping into the preexisting marketplaces to make extra money. Awesome. We'll link to all. all those in the show notes. Yes, and you can find the show notes today at biggerpockets.com slash money show 28. Say what you will about the rich dad. Like, is it real? Is it fake? It's a book. Why does it have to be real? Just because it's teaching a concept doesn't mean that it all has to be 100% true. So I didn't understand that part. Now, I'm not going to stick up for him

because I didn't particularly like the book. I think I'm the one person who ever read it and was like, but every single person that I've ever talked to is like, yep, that's the best book ever. On the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast, that is the number one favorite real estate book that anybody has ever nominated by far. It's like we've got 287 episodes or something of the Bigger Puckets Real Estate podcast and 200 people said Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So it's just... Well, now I feel bad if not coming up with something like cool and indie that nobody else has

heard of. No, it's not mentioned that much on our show. And he teaches good lessons, I guess. It doesn't matter that he made it up. He still taught it doesn't make the lesson fake just because he made up the story. When I read it, I thought he had gay dads. It was like, why does he have two dads? And I was really confused about that.

So I should read it again because I really, really did not understand it the first time I read it. Yeah, I just thought it was a good book in terms of framing the mindset in a way that anybody can understand. There's nothing in it that's complex. and they actually start it from a position of a child's point of view. So it's, you know, hey, this eight-year-old is getting it, I get it too. And I thought that was kind of, I think that's part of the power behind it and helping to grasp the concept really well. Do you ever played his cash flow board game?

Yes. I'm not playing it. I like the board game too. Like this, you know, that was really cool to play too. I mean, it's the same concept as like trying to build passive income or business income to exceed your expenses and escape the rat race. Yeah, I love that game. All right, moving on to the next question here.

What was your biggest money mistake? I've got a two-parter that both revolved around one real estate deal. So we bought a townhouse here in California in 2007. 18 months later, it was worth 40% of what we paid. So that was a major source of just stress in my wife and I as relationship. and even in relationships with our friends who were kind of like two years behind us financially, and now they were all buying houses for half price and complaining about how crazy the market is. We finally got up the nerve to short sell the place to get out from under this underwater situation in 2012,

maybe early 2013, when the sale finally finalized. And of course, since then, the market has rebounded above and beyond the point where it was. So it was a mistake on the front end, buying and a stake on the back end selling and just kind of a painful, painful expensive chapter in our lives. Yes, I think that it's only slightly helpful to know that you're not the only one who went through that during that time. But that's a big one. And, you know, a lot of people went through that.

What were the numbers again? You bought it for how much? So we bought it for about half a million. And, you know, at the very bottom, it was worth 200. Oh, man. So it was, I mean, it was depressing, knowing that you can move next door for half price. But, you know, we like it. I mean, we actually still live in the same neighborhood.

I mean, we like living here. It was an expensive mistake. We thought, you know, we just lost, you know, the hundred grand that we put into it. But now on the upside, you know, we figured out we lost way more than that. So I don't want to think about it. Yeah. You know, coming from a position 10 years later, it seems like, oh, well, I should have known. Real estate never goes down. Pre-2007, 2008, real estate never goes down. It might

flatten out a little bit, but it always goes up. So you're buying houses thinking, oh, it's a good thing I got in at 500 because next week it's going to be 600. So that's why so many people were buying at these prices because real estate never goes down. And now, you know, hindsight is always 20-20. Don't beat yourself up. I lost out on the gains that I had predicted I was going to get when I sold my flip because I sold in 2012 at pretty much the bottom of the market. So I kind of like I made a profit, but not even close to what I was predicting. Yeah. So, you know, even just covering your cost is a, I was, I was thankful to do that. So, okay, I'm sorry, moving on.

What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? Let's say, let's caveat that with just starting out on the side hustle trip. So just starting out on the side hustle trip, my advice would be to do one proactive thing every day that moves you forward. What I mean by that is you probably, it probably makes sense to tackle that first thing in the morning just because you have hopefully the most control of your time either then or at the very end of the day. but before you dive into email or social media or, you know, hopefully you can get this done before your kids start screaming. In my case, I feel much better when I have even just 15 minutes or 30 minutes like before I'm woken up to that. It's just doing that one thing or, you know, your highest priority task to move yourself forward. Like you're going to, it's just, at least in my case, it puts me in

such a better mood, you know, mentally. And it's like, okay, I did, I did my thing today. If nothing else happens, like at least I made a little bit of progress. Love it. Daily, consistent action. First thing of the morning, moves you forge your goals. Very big secret here. Yeah, my brother calls it the should do's before you have to do. And I never really heard it frame that way, but I kind of like that because it's like, well, you know, if you have to do it, you're going to find a way to get it done. So, you know, prioritize your should do's. I was like, okay, I like that. Yeah, if you're looking for more info on that kind of concept, the seven habits of highly effective people is a really good. for that. And they have quadrants of these activities. Like, they call it important and urgent. So important and urgent is not what you're going to be doing. You're going to be that not urgent,

but important stuff first because that's the stuff that really gets you ahead long term. But that's a great book as well. All right. Last question here for the famous four. What is your favorite joke to tell it parties? Because we haven't had enough this episode. Oh, my, yeah. What kind of cheesy eye-rolling joke do we do? Yeah. Actually, so this is an official joke, but it's kind of like, you know, personal finance related. So somewhat Mr. Money Mustache inspired, I was like, you know, I should be biking more. And so, you know, in the past couple years have made an effort to take the bike out more, you know, ride downtown instead of taking the car, you know, bike the kid to school, pick him up to school on the bike.

What I like about that is, you know, it's fresh air, getting some exercise. What I dislike about that is it's noticeably slower. And so everybody is strapped for time. And it's, especially in this town, I feel like I'm always riding into a 15 mile an hour headwind. And it's just like so frustrating to be plotting along. So I'm like, well, maybe the compromise is to get an e-bike. You know, I get some electric pedal assist. And I rented one of these through like the lime bike thing in San Diego when I was down there for a conference. I was like, this thing is incredible. Like I'm just powering up this hill. Like it's nothing. I was like, maybe the solution is to get an e-bike. And I tell this to my dad. I'm like, hey, I'm thinking about.

getting an e-bag and thinking he's going to be like all on board with this like this is going to be you know you're better for the environment and you know you're taking cars off the road and all this stuff and his first reaction his only reaction really was what's wrong with your legs no i i think that's like definitely a conception with these like e-bikes that are going around like they're very unpopular amongst like traditionalist cyclers but they're so fun and they're so practical like i've never seen anybody riding an e-bike even if they're it's their hundredth time who doesn't have a huge smile plastered all over their face because they're going like fairly fast with no effort and they're the sun's in their face, their winds in

their face. It's just what a great experience. Yeah. So that's that's probably still on my shopping list. I haven't, haven't acquired one yet, but that might be my might be my splurge for for this year. You can make one. Oh, and I just got, you've got an inside hookup on the conversion kits? I don't have an inside hookup on the conversion kits, but my husband wrote an article. for Mr. Money Mustache's site on how to make your own e-bike. Oh, I'm on board with that. Yeah. I've actually built that e-bike and that's the one I have.

It's pretty great. Okay, okay. Shoot, I've got to check it out. I realized, by the way, what I should have said in response to what's wrong with your legs, punchline of that, you should have said back to him, I'm too tired. Oh, they come to be too late this time. I'm sorry, everybody. I'm not.

Sometimes Scott cracks himself up and nobody. else. Yeah, no, it didn't take very long to put the bike together. And he's got some links to places that you can get the supplies. But it's like they cost about the same if you're going to do it. Like if you're going to DIY it, they kind of cost the same everywhere. The motor is more expensive if you get more horsepower, obviously. Funny story about Mr. Money Mustache.

I live halfway up a big hill. and then he lives past the end of the hill. And I saw him riding his bike up the hill. Like, it's a tough hill. I mean, it's not a mountain, but it's a really tough hill. And everybody gets off their bike to walk it up or they're like going really, really slow. And he is flying up the hill. Like, oh, my God.

Carl was in the car with me. Like, oh, my God, do you see that? He is going so fast up the hill. I can't believe what great shape he's in. Carl said, well, he's on his e-bike. And at the time, I didn't know he was on his e-bike. I didn't know he had an e-bike at all. So I felt really silly.

This is like super Pete, yeah. I was so impressed that he could ride so fast up this hill. It's a really awful hill. Yeah, you're like 5,000 feet elevation and all this stuff. Yeah. Okay, so Scott lied. He said the other joke question was the last question, but it is not. The last question that we ask everybody is where can people find more about you?

more about me. So we covered a lot of different side hustle ideas in this show. If you want even more to kind of get the creative juices flowing, I would invite you to hit up side hustle nation.com slash ideas. And of course, would love to have you tune into the side hustle show podcast available on iTunes and wherever fine podcasts are sold. Yeah. And you sent us over a link to an article called Make Extra Money. And that is 250 plus side hustle ideas. It's called 250 plus proven ways to make extra money in 2018, the ultimate guide. And I was flipping through there. I'm like, oh, I could do that. I could do that. I could do that.

There's like four things I don't want to do. And this is just amazing. Well, that's good. I'll take a link to that as well. That's an awesome. That's an awesome article. And yes, so we will include all these links in the show notes at biggerpockets. dot com slash money show 28. Nick, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate this,

and I am sure our listeners will appreciate it too. You bet. Thanks for me. I could geek out on this stuff for a long time. Yeah, thanks, Nick. This was awesome. We had so many ideas and so many frameworks from which to approach it. I think it's, I think that anybody listening to the show should be able to come across and become up and be like, the only reason I'm not going to do a side hustle is because I simply won't commit the time to do it or simply can't commit any time at all to do it. So thank you. Awesome. Okay.

Bye. All right. That was Nick Loper from side hustle nation.com. Man, that guy is full of information. He has not only done the side hustling himself several times and in several different areas, but he has interviewed hundreds and hundreds of other people and just kind of gave us some of the best anecdotes that he's come across. I love his podcast and I love the concept of the side hustle.

And I really like that he points out you don't have to commit to a ton of time. You don't have to commit to a ton of money. In fact, you shouldn't jump in with both feet with a ton of money right off the bat. His two favorite side hustles are the sourdough lady and the pallet guy. I see those pallet guys all the time. I always, I never want to drive behind them because I'm like, oh, those are going to fall. They're stacked up in the back of the truck. But wow, what an amazing side hustle.

And it takes like no money. I liked the parking lot one because, well, yeah, that would not be the most fun thing to do for the first while while you're getting a rammed up. Think about how little competition there's got to be in that market space, right? Like once you have that systematized, it can hire some folks to help you to do that for you and get them steady work, man, you've got a real business that can expand pretty rapidly there. Yeah. Well, and the bouncy house thing.

My neighbor has a Fourth of July party every year and she always gets a bouncy house and they come in, they set it up. It's like 20 minutes of setup, 20 minutes of takedown. And that's it. That's all they do is drive to your house, put this big thing up and leave. It's very heavy. Like it weighs more than me. It's super, super heavy.

But you get a couple of big college guys. Hey, how would you like to, I'm sorry, you get a couple of sturdy people. It does not have to be men. And how would you like to make a lot of money just driving stuff around? Oh, okay. I think they have a box truck. And, you know, they put two or three in the back of the box truck, drive them around, go get more.

You can make a lot of money on those. You pay those off three, four, five rentals and you're done. Yeah, love it. There's so many good ideas in how to do this. My personal approach to this kind of thing has been, in the past, has been to try a few, see if I can fail within a couple of months. You know, I try to succeed, of course. But if I'm going to fail, I try to, you know,

make that clear within the first couple of months, I move on to the next one. You know, this can be done in conjunction with spending very little money, in conjunction with working hard at your career, and in conjunction with your investment philosophy, whether that's stock market investing, real estate or something else. I mean, why not take the opportunity to divert time away from something that's not bringing you happiness, that's wasting time or whatever, and pick up yourself by the bootstraps

and put that energy towards something that gives you the potential to have some income generation. Yeah, I love it. I love the idea. And it doesn't have to be a full-time thing. It doesn't even have to be a consistent thing. You know, oh, I've got 20 hours this week, but next week I only have four. Well, then I guess you're only going to do four next week. You know, just keeping track of your schedule and planning your side hustle when you can fit it in is great,

especially when you're just getting started. Yeah, with these gigs, you have to like literally plan ahead one week in advance, you know, maybe. Sometimes. Maybe a little bit more. Yeah, and that's about it. And if you can do that, you have a chance to make some extra income. And then the more you're willing to plan and being a little creative and take some chance. the more potential scalable results that you can produce.

Yep, you get in what you put into it. You get out of it what you put into it. You might need to plan ahead a little bit more with the bouncy house, because people are making those plans ahead of time. But yeah, so great. Okay, Scott, shall we get out of here today? Let's get out of here. Okay, from episode 28 of the Bigger Puckets Money podcast,

this is Mindy Jensen, over and out. And sorry about all the jokes, guys. Yes, I'm so sorry about all the jokes. They're terrible.