Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: Nick Loper, Master the Art of Side Hustles to Create Lasting Freedom

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Starting point is 00:00:34 As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com slash deals. Yep, gang gang gang. Earlier this week we aired my latest interview with Mr. Side Hustle himself, Nick Loper. In that episode we talked about his very first appearance on the show that was episode 10 when he was one of my first ever guests. I was a baby podcaster in this episode. Well, now is your chance to experience that conversation as well in this the app classic episode. Now, this was recorded back in 2018. So it may sound a bit different than the podcast does today.

Starting point is 00:01:21 But this is so much more than just an interesting archive exercise. And that's because Nick shares some solid gold nuggets of wisdom that are still useful today. You're going to hear Nick talk about his very first side hustle, what he calls the three laws of side hustle physics, as well as which personality types do especially well when it comes to side hustles. So if you're considering a new side hustle or looking to

Starting point is 00:01:44 expand an existing one, then why not prime yourself with a double dose of Nick Loper this week? You won't regret it. Without further ado, I bring you Nick Loper. So I thought that we could get started with getting acquainted. So an icebreaker, if you will.

Starting point is 00:02:04 I was on your website and I saw this list of 25 facts about yourself. with getting acquainted. So an icebreaker, if you will. I was on your website and I saw this list of 25 facts about yourself, one of which I found really interesting. You took a cold shower for 500 days in a row. kind of in the 2014 to 2015 timeframe, started actually with a guest of mine on the Side Hustle show who was talking about, you know, taking cold showers, starting out as a fat burning hack, like to boost your metabolism for the rest of the day, because you're going to expend calories like heating your body up long after the shower is over.

Starting point is 00:02:41 But then what he found was it was effective for that. But what he also found it was effective for just like motivation and he's like if this is the hardest thing that I have to do today and some days it's really hard because it sucks. You just you feel like you're ready to tackle anything and I kind of found the same thing and I said on on air is like you know what that sounds awful but let me give it a shot and some good things started happening. It might have been totally placebo but you know at that time started to get but let me give it a shot. Absolutely. Get out of your comfort zone a little bit, do it for 30 days, or even maybe the baby steps way to do it would be to end your showers cold, which is kind of what I

Starting point is 00:03:28 tend to do today, because that's for some reason less jarring than just jumping straight into the cold water. That's funny. That sounds horrible. So how did you become the chief side hustler at Side Hustle Nation. Tell us about yourself, your journey, how you got started with it all. My original side hustle was when I was working corporate with a footwear comparison shopping site. It was called Shoesniper.com and it would aggregate the product catalogs from Zappos and Amazon and all these other online footwear retailers and tell you where you can find

Starting point is 00:04:05 the best price on your next pair of shoes and it earned money as an affiliate. So, you know, if somebody went and bought that pair of shoes through Amazon, the site would get a commission. And while I was running that, and the site had almost a 10 year run, we was always looking for stuff on the side. And it was kind of like during one of these lower points of that business, doing some

Starting point is 00:04:26 soul searching, we were like, well, what do you want to be known for when people Google you? What do you get excited about talking about? And it was that prospect of lower risk entrepreneurship. How do I build a business on the side? How do I make extra money that really never gets old and still doesn't get old? Because there's a million and one creative ways that people are doing it.

Starting point is 00:04:46 And that's kind of where the Side Hustle Show and the Side Hustle Nation blog kind of were born from. So right now, are you a side hustler? Like how many side hustles do you have? A lot of them overlap. And so my days of experimenting with a lot of this stuff are kind of limited. So I used to do some freelancing, used to do some e-commerce experiments So my days of experimenting with a lot of this stuff

Starting point is 00:05:05 are kind of limited. I used to do some freelancing, I used to do some e-commerce experiments with Amazon and eBay. I still do a dozen income streams related to that and not related to that through self-publishing, through affiliate marketing on the site and on a couple other sites that I still run. Sadly, the shoe site no longer exists, but some other sites that were started during that time are still around. Starting some experiments in the investing world, and it all adds up versus trying to rely on one source

Starting point is 00:05:45 of income, having a single point of failure. Yeah, so to that point, why do you prefer or recommend having side hustles over a nine-to-five job? Well, not necessarily a preference one over the other, but the ultimate freedom is control over your calendar. How do you spend your time? How do you spend your days? And if you can piece together an income on your own terms rather than on somebody else's terms, you're more likely to have that freedom. So that's kind of where it came from for me. And I would definitely advocate focus first, simplify first, and then diversify second.

Starting point is 00:06:16 So try and get one thing, one business, one income stream off the ground before going crazy and trying six things with an unfocused effort, because I think that's harder to see results from. before going crazy and trying six things low end of that. It could be like babysitting, walking dogs, delivering pizzas. I think all of those count as side hustles. There's a connotation that a side hustle has a little bit more of an entrepreneurial upside where maybe you're not directly trading hours for dollars or maybe there's this vision, this hope, this dream that it could become something bigger as it definitely did for me with the shoe business.

Starting point is 00:07:05 I have a little trouble distinguishing a side hustle from a part-time job or a second job. How do you personally define what a side hustle is? Probably the textbook definition would be that upside potential. It's something that you have ownership over. Maybe it's an asset that you own versus, okay, I drive for Uber, or I'm delivering pizzas, or I'm doing Instacart deliveries, or something like that, right? That absolutely counts as a side hustle in my mind, but at the same time, you're limited on how much you can do

Starting point is 00:07:37 by your hours in the day, versus with you starting the podcast, it's all of a sudden from a single mic and two people having a conversation, you could reach thousands and thousands of people, is with you starting the podcast, it's all of a sudden from a single mic and two people having a conversation, you could reach thousands and thousands of people, and that is really powerful. I was doing a bit of research on the show and I found out that more Americans are working a side hustle than ever before and to be exact there are 44 million Americans with a side hustle today. Why do you think the motivations to start a side

Starting point is 00:08:14 hustle are so much stronger than they were in the past? That's a weird, it's a weird time right? It's a weird statistic because on the surface the economy is great, unemployment is at record lows. Why are 44 million people feeling the need or the desire to go out and make extra money? So I think part of it is reactive, right? Housing, education, insurance, or health care, all of those costs have grown way faster than real wages. to start something that scratches a creative itch, that is something that I have control over, that I'm interested in, that I'm passionate about.

Starting point is 00:09:10 That's probably driving some of that as well. And those are kind of the people that are more interesting to talk to than the people like, well, I need to make rent next month. You're approaching it from a completely different standpoint. to do that years ago. saying, look, this is going to be a side hustle. in most cases, and it's just, okay, how do I make ends meet? And the way I approached it was like, I was just looking for a way to use my free time more productively. When I was first starting the shoe business, I moved across the country for my day job. I didn't have any friends outside of the office, really, and so I had a lot of free times, nights and weekends. I was like, well, I could play Xbox with my buddies back home, or just sit there and watch TV.

Starting point is 00:11:05 How can I be more intentional, be more effective with these hours that I've been given and try and make something worthwhile out of it? You mentioned that you have a blog. It's a very cool blog. One blog that I saw that I thought might be interesting to kind of recap for our listeners is this Three Laws of Side Hustle Physics. Do you mind explaining what those three laws are? by an external force. to put yourself out there. And maybe that's a meeting with your boss

Starting point is 00:12:30 that doesn't go as well as you planned. One of my favorite moments on the show was a photographer, a journalist I had on the show. goes into his boss for his annual review, and his boss is like, he's making like 30 grand a year doing this. And so that was the motivating factor to kind of get him off the sidelines and start thinking seriously about starting a side hustle. So that's kind of the first law. And it goes both ways.

Starting point is 00:13:06 Like once you're in motion, we see this over and over again, ideas start to pop up that you never would have had just based on conversations that you have or things that you come across during your research. And that it's really powerful, like this inertia and momentum law. Law number two is this law of force and impact. And so this is Newton's law of like acceleration. inertia and momentum law.

Starting point is 00:13:25 Law number two is this law of force and impact. And so this is Newton's law of acceleration. Acceleration of an object occurs based on the force that was applied to it. So the smack of that 3% raise after winning the highest award in your industry, that was a pretty hard smack. And so it motivated Vincent to take off in a hurry. He told me he would have been happy with 10%. And so that wouldn't have been a big enough impact to really change his life. I just want to pause here for a second, because I love that.

Starting point is 00:13:52 For me, rejection is such great motivation. And it's like every time I've ever been rejected, it's been when I've pivoted to something that is a life achievement for myself. So I think that if you get rejected, if you feel like you've been let down, pivoted to something that is like a life achievement for myself. So I think that if you get rejected, if you feel like you've been let down, it's the best time to put that negative energy into something positive and do something different and impactful for yourself.

Starting point is 00:14:20 Yeah, this was kind of like, here at home, we were at this beach vacation this summer, and you're at the pool all the time, and you're like, man, I really should hit the gym more, because I see all these people who are super fit. And so maybe that's a motivating factor. You could see it in health, you could see it in business, you could see it in relationships. It happens all over the place. And then the third law is this action and reaction. So for every action, there's an equal

Starting point is 00:14:41 and opposite reaction. And so we're recording this on election day, and somebody just posted, whether you vote or not, that's an equal and opposite reaction. And so we're recording this on election day and somebody just posted like, whether you vote or not, that's a vote. And so that got me thinking about this, there's an equal and opposite reaction. And even if nobody theoretically reacts to your stuff, because I wrote a personal blog for years and years

Starting point is 00:15:00 and years that nobody really read outside of my friends and family. Well, that was a reaction. It was a reaction that told me that, hey, you better write about stuff that people care about. And it wasn't all for waste because it was practicing skills of writing online and learning WordPress and learning all this other stuff. But it can be depressing when on the surface it's like, yeah, there was no reaction.

Starting point is 00:15:24 What kind of side hustles do you write about on your blog? it can be depressing when on the surface it's like, an online presence to talk about this subject matter that maybe I'm an expert in, maybe I'm not, maybe I'm learning this subject matter, and monetizing through ads, through affiliate relationships, through digital products. I've seen it work across introverts, extroverts, young, old. or spend a vast amount of time on it. Redbubble, some of these other similar marketplaces It's a handmade product. paying for traffic is to land some social proof a similar strategy, not just on Etsy, but on iTunes. Hey, can you review this podcast? On Udemy, hey, could you review my course? On Amazon, hey, could you review my book?

Starting point is 00:17:55 Just to kind of seed the platform with a little bit of social proof so the algorithms start to work in your favor. And so people, when they do land on that page, they say, okay, this isn't a ghost town. there's actually something to this. Isn't that so funny how you could have thousands of listeners and the best personal feedback, but if you have no reviews, you ain't shit? Yeah, and maybe that's feedback too. If nobody wants your thing, if you can't get your friends or family to buy it, that's probably a sign that it's not the best business to go into. like left to go out and grow over the next five, 10, 15 years as people discover on-demand audio and they're probably going to react like I did. This is amazing. How did I waste so many years listening to nonsense on the radio

Starting point is 00:18:55 when I could listen to stuff that is going to help me grow personally and professionally? The key then is, okay, how can I reach those people and the 40% that already do know about podcasts, how can I reach those people in a way that is either helpful or entertaining? A friend of mine kind of gave me, this was five or six years ago at a conference, gave me the rule of the internet, which I quote all the time.

Starting point is 00:19:17 It's, you know, people are only ever online for one of two reasons. You know, number one, to be entertained, and number two, to solve a problem. And you can think of it, that's Facebook and that's Google. You know, to be entertained. And number two, to solve a problem. And you can think that's Facebook and that's Google. To be entertained or solve a problem. And the podcast may bridge the gap there. Some friends have called it infotainment, where you're providing educational content, hopefully in an entertaining way. But putting the listener first.

Starting point is 00:20:25 practice. would like to see is a track record of earnings history, you know, six to 12 months, and other people will be more aggressive than this, of replacing not necessarily your day job salary, but at least your monthly expenses, so you know you're not going to be dipping into your emergency fund, your savings, to try and get to that ramp up period. The exception to that has been from folks where the day job really is the bottleneck. And you say, hey, if I had an extra 40, 50, 60 hours a week in some cases, I know I could get this thing to the next level

Starting point is 00:20:55 where it could support me, where it could support my family. That's when it might make sense to make the leap where it looks on paper prematurely. It has to align with your goals too, right? Some people have no intention of leaving their day jobs. Hey, I love my work, but I just, I do this stuff on the side because it's fun, because it's interesting, because it provides play money, you know, for whatever reason.

Starting point is 00:21:18 You know, it's building my skills, it's exercising a different side of my brain. So not everybody is out to quit their day job. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. I personally feel like side hustles have a negative appeal to some people, especially like the older generation that you should be more traditional, you should have a regular job.

Starting point is 00:21:44 Have you faced any of that negative judgment? That's an interesting one. So the negativity comes from a couple places. The first is that economic macro positioning that we talked about where it's like, what a sad state of affairs that 44 million people feel the need to side hustle. Why can't it be like the old days, right? That's maybe one angle. The other angle is just like maybe the word hustle,

Starting point is 00:22:09 like as the connotation of like, I'm going to scam people or something like that, not recognizing. It just means your effort, like control what you can control, work as hard as you can when you can and be smart about it. And so actually side hustle nation comes from a quote from an old baseball coach of mine. He's like, look, you're going to have bad days at the plate. You're going to have bad days in the field, but hustle nation comes from a quote freelancing consulting stuff. and charging the parents like 100 bucks an hour. started a photography business, completely unrelated to her engineering job. So it doesn't have to be, I'm an accountant by day,

Starting point is 00:23:25 so I'll do accounting at night. We talked about the podcasting stuff, we talked about kind of like the online authority business blogging content marketing businesses. I continue to see, and I continue to be impressed by some of the numbers that these guys are posting. I just talked to a guy this afternoon who is selling $45,000 a month worth of a online course

Starting point is 00:23:49 that teaches you how to start a microgreens farming business and grow this stuff in your garage and sell it to the farmer's market and to local restaurants. And it just blew my mind that there was that much demand in a niche I had never even heard of. And I'm really excited by stuff like that. People having this new ability to kind of monetize these little skills, in a niche I had never even heard of. And I'm really excited by stuff like that. People having this new ability to kind of monetize these little skills, hobbies, interests that they might be able to put out there.

Starting point is 00:24:15 Yeah, I feel like courses are getting more and more popular and so in demand. Because people just want to learn and if it's unique content that they can't find anywhere else you can package that up and monetize it you know so yeah make it easy for me make it step-by-step absolutely and how about blogs like is there a way to really monetize blogs these days because it seems so oversaturated yeah that was my initial reaction too but I keep getting proven wrong you know people starting you know relatively new sites. enough and the commission is high enough, he's able to make a full-time living doing that. So, you know, on the blogging front, the trap I want people to avoid is like, okay, I'm

Starting point is 00:25:09 going to start a personal blog and expect that that makes money. You know, the ones that I see doing well are the blogs that have content that solve specific problems. As you're creating every piece of content, think, okay, how is somebody going to discover this? Usually it's going to discover this? Usually it's going to be Google, usually it's going to be Pinterest, but thinking of these user-to-content platforms, that's a term from Rosemary Groner who runs the Busy Budgeter.com, it's like a personal finance budgeting site that's gone crazy.

Starting point is 00:25:40 How are people going to discover this? If it has some nonsensical, clever title that only makes sense to you, probably nobody's going to click on that. You're going to pour hours into creating this stuff. Make sure that you're setting yourself up for success. and you've given them the best chance to find it. Okay, so we're going to close out with one last question. Tell us about the day that you quit your 9-5 job, and what made you officially decide to start your side hustle career?

Starting point is 00:26:20 The day that I quit, I was out to dinner with my boss, boss and this has been this had been kind of on my mind for for months really because you know I was building the shoe business on the side from this corporate gig so I had dinner with my boss and I'm like okay this is the day I'm like I'm gonna break I'm gonna break him the news like I'm out of here I'm gonna get my notice still took me like a couple beers deep into this dinner to like build up the nerve to to do it because it's like is it is that allowed can I cut my own paycheck you know I went to school I have it's like, is that allowed? I have these obligations, is this actually going to work?

Starting point is 00:26:50 I had several months of earnings history at that point, you might have heard the definition of an entrepreneur, somebody who jumps off a cliff and is going to figure out how to build their parachute on the way down. That was not me, and it was still super scary. But after I told him, it was like this huge weight off my shoulders. And it's just like, okay, this is real. Let's go do this. And for millennials who are working a side hustle, when should they decide to make that move?

Starting point is 00:27:20 I would say once you have at least six months of earnings, history to cover your expenses from the side business. I would say once you have at least six months of earnings history to cover your expenses from the side business, you're not jumping without a parachute. You've got something that you know is working and you think you can get to the next level if you're going to free up some time. Awesome. Well, I really enjoyed this. Before we go, can you let our listeners know show available in iTunes and pretty much every other podcast player app as well. Perfect. Thanks, Nick.

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: Nick Loper, Master the Art of Side Hustles to Create Lasting Freedom

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