AI transcript
0:00:01 (upbeat music)
0:00:02 Is business coaching worth it?
0:00:04 Here’s a look inside the last 12 months
0:00:05 of Side Hustle Nation.
0:00:07 What’s up, what’s up, Nick Loper here.
0:00:08 Welcome to the Side Hustle Show.
0:00:11 It’s the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply.
0:00:13 So there’s been a few requests
0:00:15 for a progress report type of episode,
0:00:17 just kind of a state of side hustle nation.
0:00:19 So to speak, and it’s been a while
0:00:21 since I’ve done this probably over a year.
0:00:23 So wanted to take some time today
0:00:24 to catch up on what I’ve been working on,
0:00:25 what I’ve been working through,
0:00:27 some of the challenges, wins and projects
0:00:29 from the last 12 months or so.
0:00:32 And the biggest new thing is late last year
0:00:35 I joined a business coaching program called 2X.
0:00:37 It’s run by Austin Netsley,
0:00:39 who I must have met 10 years ago
0:00:42 at probably my first ever blogging conference.
0:00:44 This was like three businesses ago or more for him.
0:00:47 Now our paths have crossed several times since then
0:00:49 in the podcasting world, in the self publishing world,
0:00:51 at different conferences.
0:00:53 But what really sealed the deal for me
0:00:56 was having three different friends all go through 2X.
0:00:59 And these are people you would recognize.
0:01:01 They’ve been guests on the show sometimes multiple times
0:01:04 and they all saw really strong results.
0:01:06 And on top of that, another friend of mine, Tom Sylvester,
0:01:08 was one of the 2X head coaches.
0:01:11 Beyond that, they actually had this power guarantee,
0:01:12 which is something you could take away
0:01:13 and maybe apply to your own business.
0:01:14 But it was a power guarantee like,
0:01:16 “Hey, look, if we don’t increase revenue
0:01:18 by the amount of your investment,
0:01:20 we’ll just keep working with you until you do.”
0:01:21 Or something like that.
0:01:22 So very little to lose,
0:01:25 even though it was a big upfront investment.
0:01:28 And especially when combined with my kind of long history
0:01:30 in the business, who was over 10 years old at that point,
0:01:33 I reasoned, “Look, it’s time to get some outside perspective
0:01:37 from a group with a proven track record of getting results.”
0:01:39 My biggest fear going into it was,
0:01:42 am I even coachable with those 10 years in business?
0:01:44 I had developed certain habits and processes
0:01:46 that were pretty well ingrained,
0:01:48 maybe some bad habits along the way.
0:01:51 And to be fair, they were working pretty well,
0:01:54 but there’s always this nagging,
0:01:57 grass is always greener kind of feeling of what could be.
0:01:59 Is there a way to make more and work less?
0:02:00 Is there a way to build better systems?
0:02:03 Is there a way to make the business less reliant on me?
0:02:05 And then on a more existential level,
0:02:06 is that something you’d even want?
0:02:08 After all, you got to fill your days with what lights you up.
0:02:10 And I still get a kick out of finding
0:02:12 and sharing cool side hustle stories.
0:02:13 But up until that point,
0:02:18 I really had had very little in the way of formal coaching
0:02:19 from a business standpoint.
0:02:22 I worked with a podcast coach for a while a few years ago,
0:02:23 which was helpful.
0:02:26 I had a speaker coach leading up to my TEDx talk,
0:02:29 which was helpful, but not a lot outside of that.
0:02:30 I remember thinking as a kid,
0:02:33 look, if Michael Jordan is the best in the world,
0:02:35 what’s he need to coach for?
0:02:35 And then over time,
0:02:37 you start to realize that no, no,
0:02:39 the highest performers in just about every field
0:02:42 still work with coaches in some capacity.
0:02:43 And in most cases,
0:02:47 those coaches never reached the same level of achievement
0:02:49 in that field as the people they’re coaching.
0:02:50 And that was always weird to me,
0:02:52 but I came to accept that it didn’t really matter
0:02:55 so much as their skill in guidance
0:02:56 and frameworks and fundamentals
0:02:58 and pulling the best out of their clients.
0:02:59 And I would like to think of myself
0:03:01 as having humility enough to admit,
0:03:02 look, you got this far,
0:03:03 but you don’t have all the answers.
0:03:05 And even though every business is different,
0:03:08 I wanna share a couple of the 2x frameworks
0:03:10 that I found most interesting/helpful.
0:03:14 The first is understanding your value chain.
0:03:17 This is a way to describe your customer journey.
0:03:18 How do they find you?
0:03:19 How do they pay you?
0:03:22 What’s a typical lifetime value of a customer?
0:03:23 What are the steps in that chain
0:03:26 from marketing to sales to fulfillment?
0:03:28 And what kind of numbers and percentages
0:03:29 and conversion rates are associated
0:03:32 and costs are associated with each of those steps?
0:03:34 Now, the typical 2x client
0:03:36 is a six-figure service business
0:03:37 that’s trying to figure out
0:03:39 how to scale to a million or beyond.
0:03:42 And the value chain might be like,
0:03:44 someone clicks on our Facebook ad,
0:03:46 a certain percentage of those people opt in
0:03:48 for some free guide,
0:03:49 a certain percentage of those,
0:03:51 book a discovery call,
0:03:52 and a certain percentage of those,
0:03:55 sign up for a $4,000 or $5,000 package,
0:03:57 and a certain percentage of those
0:03:58 ended up being a good fit
0:04:00 for our monthly retainer type of service.
0:04:03 But understanding all of those little steps
0:04:04 and the little sub steps
0:04:06 inside each part of the system is pretty fun.
0:04:08 And you can start to think about
0:04:10 what different levers you can pull
0:04:12 to make a dramatic impact on the end result
0:04:12 on the bottom line.
0:04:14 What was challenging for me
0:04:16 as more of a media business,
0:04:17 the question became,
0:04:20 well, what’s a website visitor worth?
0:04:21 What’s a podcast listener worth?
0:04:22 How do we break that down?
0:04:24 Well, if we’re sold out on ads,
0:04:26 maybe a download is worth 10 cents,
0:04:28 plus or minus, like not to diminish it,
0:04:30 but kind of small numbers relative to,
0:04:32 oh, I sold a $5,000 package,
0:04:34 and maybe that listener becomes a subscriber,
0:04:36 maybe they listen to dozens of episodes,
0:04:37 maybe they tell five friends about it,
0:04:39 and those downloads are worth another 10 cents,
0:04:41 but it was really difficult
0:04:44 and that totally discounts the value of the relationship
0:04:46 and the trust and the possibility of connecting someone
0:04:50 to a hopefully life-changing new income stream.
0:04:53 So the value chain exercise is really interesting
0:04:54 to try and break down what that looks like
0:04:55 for your business.
0:04:57 Again, every business is different,
0:05:00 but it kind of all comes back to these certain fundamentals
0:05:03 and even for the different areas of your business
0:05:05 because the website traffic value chain
0:05:07 is a different one entirely.
0:05:09 The other one that I wanna share
0:05:11 was what they call the CEO takeover
0:05:13 and the process looks like this.
0:05:15 Imagine you’re about to get fired
0:05:17 as the CEO of your business
0:05:19 and there’s a new CEO that’s coming in
0:05:21 and he’s got or he or she’s got a much bigger,
0:05:24 more ambitious, more strategic vision
0:05:25 and they’re coming in.
0:05:27 So what actions are they gonna take
0:05:29 in the next one to three months?
0:05:30 What are they gonna stop doing?
0:05:31 What are they gonna focus on?
0:05:33 Where are your biggest opportunities?
0:05:35 And of course, the punchline is that CEO is you,
0:05:37 so go get after it.
0:05:39 Now, as far as results, business is up
0:05:40 compared to last year.
0:05:43 How much of that is a direct result of 2X is hard to say,
0:05:44 but I will say this.
0:05:47 I feel like I have a more strategic outlook
0:05:48 on the whole operation.
0:05:50 I feel like I have a clearer picture
0:05:52 on the work that I truly love and enjoy.
0:05:55 I feel like I’ve built some better systems for my team
0:05:57 and have attempted to get better
0:05:59 and letting go of certain responsibilities.
0:06:02 Oh, the other thing that was kind of annoying,
0:06:04 but actually ended up being helpful
0:06:05 was this quarterly planning process.
0:06:08 I would hardly, been doing this business for 10 years,
0:06:10 would hardly ever do anything like that.
0:06:13 Big picture, what are our most important initiatives
0:06:13 for the next three months?
0:06:15 I’m sorry, I’m too busy chopping down trees
0:06:16 to sharpen the ax here,
0:06:19 but in doing so you get some helpful clarity
0:06:21 and instant positive results
0:06:22 came out of those planning sessions.
0:06:25 Now, 2X is a structure-wise,
0:06:27 it’s a combination of one-on-one coaching.
0:06:29 My coach, Brian, has been great.
0:06:30 There’s some group sessions
0:06:32 and then there’s these in-person masterminds
0:06:34 roughly every quarter or so.
0:06:37 What I learned about myself is got to be one-on-one
0:06:39 or in-person because I had a really hard time
0:06:40 prioritizing any of the group stuff.
0:06:42 The in-person events were really cool.
0:06:46 Almost a forced pause to get out of the normal
0:06:49 day-to-day operations and think at a higher level.
0:06:51 Now, Austin has been generous enough
0:06:53 to offer Side Hustle Show listeners a free copy
0:06:55 of his book from six to seven figures
0:06:59 at 2X.co/sidehustle, subtitle on this one,
0:07:01 The Proven Playbook to get more traction,
0:07:02 free up 20 hours per week
0:07:05 and scale past $1 million in revenue.
0:07:07 It’s a great book, I first read it a few years ago
0:07:09 on my second pass through it.
0:07:11 I think I actually had to put it down
0:07:13 and go implement some stuff, which is a great sign.
0:07:14 Again, this is best for people
0:07:16 who’ve already got a business up and running,
0:07:18 but maybe you’re running into bottlenecks
0:07:21 or maybe you’ve hit a growth plateau
0:07:22 and you’re looking for a playbook
0:07:25 to unlock that next stage of your business.
0:07:29 Again, 2X.co/sidehustle to grab that book for free
0:07:32 from six to seven figures by Austin Netsley.
0:07:34 So thanks to Austin and his team for putting that together
0:07:36 and really for all their help over the last year or so.
0:07:39 So I wanted to kick off this Progress Report episode
0:07:40 with that coaching program
0:07:43 because that’s kind of been the underlying base layer
0:07:46 foundation for everything else that I’ve been working on
0:07:47 and not working on.
0:07:50 Now, prior to joining last year,
0:07:52 there were a couple other significant shifts
0:07:53 that I should talk about.
0:07:57 On the podcast side, it was joining a new ad sales network
0:07:59 called the App Media, Young and Profiting Media,
0:08:01 as you’ve probably heard on the show.
0:08:04 They’ve done a great job selling sponsorships far better
0:08:05 than I ever did on my own.
0:08:07 Bigger deals with bigger brands.
0:08:08 Now, as part of that shift,
0:08:12 that meant getting off of Libsyn as the podcast host,
0:08:13 shifting over to Megaphone,
0:08:17 which supports dynamic ad insertion across the whole catalog
0:08:19 where previously I was just selling a set number
0:08:22 of predicted downloads on the latest episode.
0:08:25 Hey, we think we can deliver you 30,000 downloads
0:08:27 in the first 30 days, in the first 60 days
0:08:30 on this episode that’s gonna air on this date.
0:08:33 I was definitely late to make this move,
0:08:35 but it’s another example of that underrated entrepreneurial
0:08:37 skill of simply looking around.
0:08:39 What are the other top shows doing?
0:08:40 Well, they’re doing this
0:08:42 and they’ve actually been doing it for a while.
0:08:43 Get with the time, Sloper.
0:08:46 Now, the other challenging thing on the podcast
0:08:49 was this download drop that I guess was a result
0:08:53 of some iOS update late last year.
0:08:56 It impacted a ton of different podcasters.
0:08:58 The hardest hit shows were ones like mine
0:09:00 that had a big back catalog.
0:09:02 And in talking with other hosts,
0:09:05 it sounds like this was pretty much across the board
0:09:07 where all of a sudden you’re getting half to two thirds
0:09:09 of the downloads you were previously getting.
0:09:11 And so on the one hand, there’s like safety in numbers.
0:09:14 There is the misery loves company aspect to it.
0:09:17 And even if the numbers today are more accurate
0:09:19 or more accurate picture of what’s happening,
0:09:20 it’s still a blow to the ego
0:09:22 where I had this inflated sense of self worth.
0:09:24 Hey, I’m talking to a stadium full of people every week
0:09:27 when it’s more like, well, you’re talking to
0:09:29 an arena full of people every week.
0:09:32 Still great, still super grateful to be able to do it.
0:09:34 Now to combat that, I’ve done a couple of things.
0:09:37 The first was adding a new episode like this one
0:09:40 every other Monday, usually shorter format,
0:09:43 but it gives listeners more content to choose from
0:09:46 and has proven more sustainable than my short lived attempt
0:09:49 at going to two a week a couple of summers ago.
0:09:51 That ended up not really working out,
0:09:53 but this one has been probably six months or so
0:09:55 and it’s been fine, it’s been fun.
0:09:58 It’s kind of, I like the creative challenge of filling
0:10:01 in those dates with content that hopefully is compelling.
0:10:05 The second thing was expanding my paid listener acquisition
0:10:07 efforts, what that looks like in practice
0:10:10 is probably spent 20 grand this year trying to grow the show
0:10:13 by advertising on various podcast platforms
0:10:18 like Cast Box, like Overcast, like PodBeam, like Player FM,
0:10:19 some smaller ones as well.
0:10:23 And those do deliver some download and listener growth,
0:10:25 but going back to that listener value chain
0:10:27 is still somewhat of a question mark
0:10:29 in terms of how profitable that ad spend is
0:10:32 or if it’s even profitable at all.
0:10:34 Whereas you’re just banking on that long-term value
0:10:38 of a listener, what I do know is that listener growth
0:10:41 is a really consistent lead domino
0:10:42 and it has been for 10 years.
0:10:46 As downloads grow, so tend to many downstream metrics
0:10:50 like email subscribers, ultimately sponsorship sales
0:10:50 and other revenue.
0:10:53 So that’s why I’m comfortable making that investment
0:10:55 even if it doesn’t, even if it’s really hard to tell
0:10:57 the near-term profitability of that.
0:10:59 So that’s been what’s going on on the podcast front.
0:11:02 I missed podcast movement and podcast this year,
0:11:06 but do hope to get to a podcast-specific event next year
0:11:08 to connect with other hosts and just learn
0:11:11 what’s the latest and greatest in the industry.
0:11:12 I’ll be right back with more
0:11:14 of this online business progress report,
0:11:15 including the simple tweak
0:11:18 that probably should have made years ago right after this.
0:11:22 Being an entrepreneur and being able to work remotely
0:11:23 definitely has its perks.
0:11:27 I’ve recorded podcasts everywhere from Vietnam to Italy,
0:11:29 drafted newsletters from Japan,
0:11:31 hosted mastermind meetings from Spain,
0:11:32 ended up being the middle of the night
0:11:34 to get to US business hours
0:11:37 and outlined courses in Mexico.
0:11:40 The common thread of all of these trips though is Airbnb.
0:11:43 We love being able to get exactly what we’re looking for
0:11:47 in a place to stay and have a more local experience
0:11:50 than staying in some giant hotel chain.
0:11:51 And you know me, I’m always thinking about
0:11:54 the next side hustle idea, the next income stream, right?
0:11:56 And one that’s at the top of the list
0:11:59 is hosting our place on Airbnb while we’re traveling.
0:12:01 That way the house doesn’t have to sit empty.
0:12:03 We could use the income to help pay for the trip.
0:12:05 And we’ve heard from several successful
0:12:07 Airbnb hosts on the show.
0:12:09 And what’s interesting is a lot of them started
0:12:12 with almost that exact strategy, running their place
0:12:15 or even a spare room while they’re out of town.
0:12:17 Taking inspiration from that,
0:12:20 you might have an Airbnb right under your nose.
0:12:22 In fact, your home might be worth more than you think.
0:12:27 You can find out how much at airbnb.com/host.
0:12:29 That’s airbnb.com/host
0:12:32 to find out how much your home is worth.
0:12:35 Lots of scrappy side hustlers start their business
0:12:37 with just their personal phone number.
0:12:39 And I love that, but at a certain point,
0:12:41 you can’t be limited to just your cell phone
0:12:42 and notes app to get your work done.
0:12:44 With our sponsor, OpenPhone,
0:12:47 you can stay connected while powerful AI features
0:12:49 help keep your business on track.
0:12:50 OpenPhone, if you’re not familiar,
0:12:52 is the number one business phone system
0:12:53 for modern businesses.
0:12:57 OpenPhone works through an app on your phone or computer
0:12:58 and then integrates with HubSpot
0:13:01 and hundreds of other systems that you might be using.
0:13:03 One of my favorite features is their AI powered
0:13:05 call transcripts and summaries.
0:13:07 So you can streamline client communication
0:13:09 and have a summary of every phone call
0:13:12 with action items right when you hang up.
0:13:15 That means no more note taking or forgotten to do items.
0:13:18 On top of that, OpenPhone is rated the number one business phone
0:13:22 for customer satisfaction with over 1700 reviews.
0:13:24 And right now, OpenPhone is offering 20% off
0:13:28 your first six months when you go to openphone.com/sidehustle.
0:13:33 That’s O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E.com/sidehustle
0:13:37 for 20% off six months.
0:13:40 That’s openphone.com/sidehustle.
0:13:42 And if you have existing numbers with another service,
0:13:44 OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge.
0:13:48 The other big shift that happened just before
0:13:51 joining the 2x coaching program was adding display ads
0:13:53 to the SideHustle Nation website for the first time.
0:13:56 Like you, I think display ads on the internet
0:13:57 are pretty annoying.
0:13:59 I’ve been using an ad blocking browser for years.
0:14:01 I was always hesitant to clutter up the site with them
0:14:04 in the name of better load times, better user experience.
0:14:07 But that being said, 10 years into the business,
0:14:08 I come out of my cave for a minute
0:14:11 and again, practice that underrated skill of looking around
0:14:13 and notice that all my friends and peers
0:14:16 in the personal finance space in the SideHustle space
0:14:18 are running display ads on their content.
0:14:19 So I said, hey, let’s give it a test.
0:14:20 Doesn’t have to be permanent.
0:14:22 Let’s just turn it on and see what happens.
0:14:23 Well, here’s what happened.
0:14:25 No noticeable drop in site traffic,
0:14:26 email signups, affiliate conversions,
0:14:29 or whatever drop there was was more than offset
0:14:30 by the incremental revenue.
0:14:32 This is through Mediavine, by the way.
0:14:33 They’ve been super supportive.
0:14:34 They’ve been great to work with.
0:14:36 They’re very involved in the creator economy.
0:14:40 I would always see their team at FinCon and at other events,
0:14:42 but flipping this one switch pays the mortgage
0:14:44 and then some every month to the extent
0:14:46 I probably should have done it years earlier
0:14:48 as much as it pains me to admit that.
0:14:51 And then what we were able to do just recently
0:14:53 was figure out how to turn off the ads
0:14:54 for SideHustle Nation email subscribers.
0:14:57 So if you’re already a subscriber
0:14:58 and you click a link from one of our emails,
0:15:01 it should be an ad-free experience for you,
0:15:02 at least on that first page.
0:15:04 I don’t know if you’ll remember that setting
0:15:05 throughout your whole session.
0:15:08 If you click on multiple pages or navigate throughout the site.
0:15:11 But in any case, it felt like a win to be able to hide the ads
0:15:13 for people who’ve already opted in.
0:15:14 On the website side,
0:15:17 I have definitely struggled to create new content this year.
0:15:22 We’ve probably only added maybe 20, 25 or so new posts.
0:15:25 And this was a realization of mine in the last month or so.
0:15:28 We’ve made a focus and investment
0:15:30 in maintaining the existing library of content.
0:15:32 Defend what you got, keep that up to date.
0:15:34 But with that, there’s only so much potential
0:15:36 search traffic we can capture, right?
0:15:37 Even if we do everything right,
0:15:39 there’s only so much search volume
0:15:40 surrounding those keywords.
0:15:43 And some of that is being eroded by AI snippets.
0:15:46 It’s being eroded by more ad results
0:15:48 in the search results pages.
0:15:49 A million and one Reddit posts.
0:15:52 And so while it definitely is important
0:15:53 to keep the archives up to date and relevant,
0:15:55 if we want to increase traffic,
0:15:57 we’re gonna have to get more serious about adding new content
0:16:00 to expand the quote unquote surface area
0:16:02 of search potential.
0:16:07 One idea that I tried early in the year that flopped,
0:16:08 surprise, I don’t know.
0:16:12 It was recruiting a handful of paid side hustle app testers
0:16:13 from the community.
0:16:15 I said, maybe I’ll pay you 50 bucks,
0:16:18 test this thing out, answer a few questions about the app,
0:16:20 take some screenshots, easy, right?
0:16:22 Now this plan was inspired by Dave Cheson
0:16:24 from Kindlepreneur.
0:16:28 He says, look, I can get this raw feedback from users.
0:16:30 I can hand it off to a writer who knows SEO.
0:16:32 They know how to structure product review posts
0:16:33 that are gonna rank in Google.
0:16:35 Then I do my final edits and hit publish.
0:16:37 I thought this was a genius plan.
0:16:38 I thought this was really gonna accelerate
0:16:39 content production.
0:16:42 And while I did get several volunteers to test the apps
0:16:45 when it came time to actually do the work
0:16:46 and send in the answers to the questions
0:16:49 and send in the screenshots, it all fell apart.
0:16:50 It was like radio silence.
0:16:53 So what I’m trying to do instead is hire
0:16:55 a dedicated app tester or reviewer
0:16:57 who can be a consistent member of the team
0:16:58 and help put these together.
0:17:01 Hopefully they’ll be hired by the time this airs
0:17:03 and we’ll see if that approach works any better.
0:17:06 And quick note, quick pause on the strategy here.
0:17:09 So there are dozens of little apps and websites
0:17:11 that promise you can make money with them.
0:17:15 You know, they’ll pay you to take pictures of your receipts.
0:17:16 They’ll pay you for tracking your steps.
0:17:18 They’ll pay you to take little surveys.
0:17:19 I’ve tested a bunch of these over the years.
0:17:21 Some are better than others,
0:17:23 but the plan is to create honest reviews for those.
0:17:24 Here’s how it works.
0:17:26 Here’s how much you can realistically expect to make.
0:17:28 Is it legit or not?
0:17:29 You know, if you still want to sign up,
0:17:31 here’s our affiliate link or referral link.
0:17:33 If such a program exists,
0:17:34 a lot of them have referral programs.
0:17:35 A lot of them don’t.
0:17:37 But if not, here are some alternatives
0:17:38 that might be worth a look.
0:17:40 And if you’re serious about making extra money,
0:17:41 why don’t you check out the sign hustle show?
0:17:43 Hey, we got 600 plus episodes.
0:17:44 They’re filled with legit business ideas.
0:17:45 Come on in.
0:17:48 So my gut says that that could be valuable
0:17:49 top of the funnel type of content.
0:17:50 Hey, you’ve heard about this app.
0:17:52 You’re looking for a little more information.
0:17:54 You say, okay, maybe that isn’t for me,
0:17:57 but there’s other content here
0:17:59 that can help me get to where I want to go.
0:18:00 So that’s what my gut says.
0:18:01 If we can build a system to test
0:18:04 and review those in a way that attracts visitors.
0:18:07 Couple other projects on the site itself
0:18:09 were more on the technical side of SEO.
0:18:12 So I hired a couple pros off of Upwork
0:18:15 to update and modernize the schema
0:18:17 across the site and the articles.
0:18:20 This is kind of like the structured metadata
0:18:22 that theoretically tells Google
0:18:24 what the content is about, how it’s structured,
0:18:26 who wrote it, all that jazz.
0:18:28 Hard to say if it had any direct impact,
0:18:30 but relatively low investment
0:18:33 for some potential upside there.
0:18:34 The other Upwork hire was related
0:18:36 to site speed and load times.
0:18:38 Again, I think a fast website
0:18:40 is probably just table stakes at this point.
0:18:42 And we just wanted to make sure we were playing
0:18:43 by Google’s best practices here.
0:18:46 You can punch in your site to Google’s page speed,
0:18:49 metrics, tester tool and see how you’re performing.
0:18:51 Don’t just do it for the homepage.
0:18:53 Make sure to test some internal content pages as well.
0:18:55 I’m happy to link up the profiles of both
0:18:58 the freelancers that I hired in the show notes
0:19:01 if you’d like to hire them for your own site.
0:19:02 Other thing on the website front
0:19:05 was creating more product displays
0:19:08 and callouts using the Lasso plugin this year.
0:19:09 I’ve been a customer of theirs
0:19:11 for probably about a year or so.
0:19:13 It’s easy to use the product displays.
0:19:14 They look nice on the site.
0:19:15 They kind of look like the wire cutter displays.
0:19:17 Like, oh, our top pick is this.
0:19:19 And it’s got little star ratings
0:19:21 and a link out to the product.
0:19:23 It really only takes a few incremental conversions
0:19:25 to pay for the software.
0:19:27 So been using Lasso, loving that.
0:19:30 And then inspired by Alex Goldberg,
0:19:33 a recent episode we did on his paid traffic campaign,
0:19:37 I have been running a small scale paid traffic campaign
0:19:38 through Google for years,
0:19:40 but it was kind of inspired by that chat
0:19:42 with Alex to try and ramp it up a little bit.
0:19:44 If you missed it, it was about driving
0:19:47 consistently profitable affiliate traffic
0:19:48 through Google ads.
0:19:51 I don’t have the most sophisticated tracking system
0:19:53 in place, but I’ve added a few new campaigns
0:19:55 over the last few months.
0:19:58 And we’ve kind of been trying to find a freelance expert
0:20:01 to, you know, with some paid media arbitrage experience
0:20:02 to help scale this.
0:20:04 The challenge I run into is, you know,
0:20:06 aside from the revenue attribution tracking
0:20:09 is being somewhat limited or throttled
0:20:11 by the bid targets.
0:20:13 This is where Google is kind of, you know,
0:20:15 genius for setting this up as an auction system
0:20:18 where for me, there are certain prices per click
0:20:19 where it makes sense to buy traffic.
0:20:21 And there are certain prices per click
0:20:23 where it would be super unprofitable to buy traffic.
0:20:27 So Google’s default suggestion is to increase that bid.
0:20:28 You know, it’s kind of like, well, you know,
0:20:31 if you’re trading a dollar for $2,
0:20:33 would you trade a dollar for a buck 50?
0:20:36 You know, probably would you trade a dollar for a buck 25?
0:20:38 Maybe, you know, would you trade a dollar
0:20:39 for a buck 50?
0:20:42 You kind of squeeze as much margin as they can out of you.
0:20:46 But this is a situation where, yeah, I understand.
0:20:48 I can get more traffic if I spend more,
0:20:51 but I needed to be at this price,
0:20:52 not at your suggested price.
0:20:56 Like I’d happily spend $10,000 a month or more
0:20:58 if that was at a certain price point.
0:21:01 But so I think last month it was less than $1,000 in spend
0:21:03 for the sake of reference.
0:21:07 Now, Alex’s argument is that this is consistent,
0:21:09 predictable, high converting traffic
0:21:12 that doesn’t rely on the ebbs and flows of social media
0:21:15 or the latest SEO algorithm update.
0:21:18 In our survey of email subscribers early in the year,
0:21:20 and this has been consistent every year we’ve run the survey,
0:21:23 is one of the biggest challenges or pain points
0:21:24 for side hustle nation members
0:21:26 is finding customers for your side hustle
0:21:28 or growing your business.
0:21:30 So that led me to create a new course
0:21:31 this summer called Get Gigs.
0:21:35 It aims to help people with service-based businesses
0:21:37 get more gigs, connect with more customers,
0:21:37 make more money.
0:21:39 This was a fun one ’cause I got to pull
0:21:42 in my all-time favorite strategies
0:21:43 from the over 600 episodes
0:21:46 and compile them into this choose your own adventure course.
0:21:49 Not every method is applicable to every business,
0:21:50 but I’m confident a few of the strategies
0:21:52 when you put them into action
0:21:54 will more than cover the price of admission.
0:21:55 And on the price of admission,
0:21:57 I said, “Hey, let’s not reinvent the wheel.”
0:21:58 So we went back to a launch formula
0:22:00 that’s worked well for me in the past.
0:22:02 That was to pair the Get Gigs launch
0:22:05 with the annual BC stack bundle sale.
0:22:06 The pitch went like this,
0:22:09 “Hey, I made a new thing, here’s how it can help you.”
0:22:12 But while I know these client finding methods are effective,
0:22:15 I’m looking for feedback and testimonials.
0:22:15 It’s a brand new course,
0:22:18 which means that you can get it at a special launch price
0:22:21 instead of $97, it’s gonna be half off.
0:22:23 And to sweeten the deal even further,
0:22:25 not only do you get like time access to get gigs,
0:22:28 you also get these 50 plus other products
0:22:30 that are included as part of the BC stack as well.
0:22:33 That ended up being another $10,000 launch
0:22:35 and hopefully helps a lot of people connect
0:22:37 with new customers and build their side hustles.
0:22:40 Now, if you’re in that boat of looking for more people
0:22:42 to hire you for whatever you sell,
0:22:45 put together a special offer for side hustle show listeners.
0:22:46 It’s not as good as that launch price
0:22:48 because that was a one time deal,
0:22:49 but it’s the next best thing.
0:22:52 All you gotta do is go to get gigs.me
0:22:53 and use promo code podcast
0:22:56 to get that special listener only discount.
0:23:00 Again, get gigs.me and use promo code podcast.
0:23:02 Another bright spot from the last few months
0:23:03 has been YouTube,
0:23:06 where my efforts in planting little money seeds
0:23:08 has slowly been starting to pay off.
0:23:09 Again, I think of these videos
0:23:12 as evergreen mini digital assets
0:23:13 that can earn traffic and revenue
0:23:15 with a really long shelf life.
0:23:16 Usually these are based off
0:23:19 of existing side hustle nation blog articles.
0:23:22 So it’s not creating content completely from scratch.
0:23:23 And for a lot of the newer ones,
0:23:25 I’m barely on camera at all.
0:23:26 So I’m not at all
0:23:30 where we’re using a really cool new AI powered video tool
0:23:32 called Pictori to create these
0:23:34 and how it works as you upload your script.
0:23:36 And it pulls together dozens of stock video clips
0:23:40 to make a pretty visually compelling video.
0:23:41 This is the kind of work
0:23:43 that would take hours to do manually.
0:23:45 And it does it in just a couple of minutes.
0:23:46 It adds subtitles.
0:23:47 It’s really impressive.
0:23:50 It even has some AI voiceover capabilities.
0:23:51 If you don’t want to do your own voiceover
0:23:53 for most of my newer videos,
0:23:56 I’ve been recording my own voiceover uploading to Pictori.
0:23:59 And then it syncs the visuals to what I’m saying.
0:24:00 It’s pretty slick.
0:24:03 We use discount code NSHN20,
0:24:06 like Nick, side hustle nation 20 to save 20% on Pictori.
0:24:08 I’ll also link that up in the show notes.
0:24:09 We’ve been using Pictori
0:24:12 for almost every non-podcast video that we upload.
0:24:14 And while they’re not necessarily going viral,
0:24:17 some are earning thousands of views
0:24:20 and making money from YouTube ads every single day.
0:24:22 Almost double what the channel was earning
0:24:23 at the start of the year.
0:24:24 And that income doesn’t include
0:24:27 any affiliate earnings, email signups, podcast listeners
0:24:29 that the video content might result in as well.
0:24:31 So the next question is, how do we scale production?
0:24:35 There are a few steps from idea to finished video,
0:24:38 but one of the key ingredients is that voiceover recording.
0:24:39 This is where 11 Labs comes in.
0:24:42 I uploaded a few hours of podcast recordings,
0:24:44 audio from YouTube video,
0:24:46 and even I think some chapters from some of my audio books.
0:24:50 And it created a pretty convincing AI version of my voice.
0:24:52 Then you upload the video script to 11 Labs.
0:24:54 It creates the voiceover MP3.
0:24:57 And then you can plug that audio into Pictori
0:24:58 of the videos created that way.
0:25:01 A couple are closing in on a thousand views,
0:25:03 but on average, they haven’t performed as well as the ones
0:25:06 where I’ve recorded the voiceover directly.
0:25:07 I have to imagine the day will come
0:25:09 where it becomes almost indistinguishable
0:25:12 and the videos perform as well or better
0:25:14 than the old fashioned manual recording ones.
0:25:15 How good is 11 Labs?
0:25:16 I can tell the difference
0:25:19 because I know I didn’t actually speak those words,
0:25:21 but I don’t know how obvious it is to someone
0:25:23 just discovering the channel for the first time.
0:25:25 And maybe as a podcast listener,
0:25:26 you’d be better attuned to it,
0:25:29 but you’ll have to let me know if you were able to tell
0:25:31 because the last 60 seconds of this episode
0:25:33 were AI generated.
0:25:34 A real Nick back behind the mic now.
0:25:35 Did I get you?
0:25:37 Or could you tell it was a voice clone right away?
0:25:39 So the real bottleneck that we’ve run into
0:25:41 on the video side is in scripting.
0:25:44 Even though we’re starting from an existing blog post
0:25:46 in most cases, not starting completely from scratch,
0:25:47 a video script is slightly different.
0:25:49 Like you wouldn’t want to just read
0:25:50 a blog post word for word.
0:25:53 So we’ve been working on a series of chat GPT prompts
0:25:57 to try and convert the article text into a YouTube script.
0:25:59 But if I’m being completely honest,
0:26:00 we don’t have that dialed into the point
0:26:01 where we want it yet.
0:26:04 It’s like, hey, I’m trying to create a video
0:26:07 based on this side hustle nation blog post.
0:26:08 Do you understand?
0:26:12 Yes, you can use a lot of the same wording,
0:26:13 but it doesn’t have to be word for word.
0:26:14 Do you understand?
0:26:16 Yes, when you introduce numbers on a list,
0:26:19 make sure to script out, you know, number one is blank.
0:26:20 Do you understand?
0:26:21 Yes, it kind of like going through,
0:26:23 kind of like prompting it, priming it, I guess,
0:26:26 to what the output, you don’t need to include
0:26:27 any visual cues.
0:26:28 Do you understand?
0:26:29 Yes.
0:26:31 And kind of going through there and seeing,
0:26:33 and then you paste in the, okay, here’s the script.
0:26:34 Boom, go.
0:26:34 Or here’s the blog post.
0:26:36 Now you can generate the script.
0:26:39 And it’s been probably, and then you can edit it.
0:26:41 So it’s like, it’s not 100% done for you,
0:26:43 but that’s the thing with all of these AI tools
0:26:45 is it’s just trying to make your work
0:26:48 faster and more effective than having to,
0:26:49 if you were to do it completely by hand,
0:26:52 at least that’s the way that I’m looking at it at the moment.
0:26:53 And the reason that script is so important
0:26:55 is ’cause it’s still gonna be,
0:26:57 it’s either me reading it or RoboNik reading it,
0:26:59 it still has to sound like something that I would actually say.
0:27:02 Still excited about building out that video library
0:27:06 and continuing it to stack up those evergreen video assets
0:27:08 and hopefully the income from those as well.
0:27:11 Lately the channel’s been earning around 25 to 30 bucks a day,
0:27:13 which again is double where it was at
0:27:14 at the beginning of the year.
0:27:15 It would be really exciting to get that
0:27:17 to $100 a day or beyond.
0:27:19 Some friends of mine I know are making $1,000 a day
0:27:20 from this type of content.
0:27:24 It’s, there’s a really high ceiling on where this could go.
0:27:25 Now, if you wanna check out Pictori,
0:27:27 make sure to use our link and that discount code
0:27:30 in the show notes, been really happy with that addition
0:27:32 to the toolbox.
0:27:33 A couple other tools to note,
0:27:36 earlier in the year made the switch from Active Campaign
0:27:39 to ConvertKit for my email list.
0:27:41 Been happy with that move so far.
0:27:44 ConvertKit is far, far, far more invested
0:27:45 in the creator economy.
0:27:47 And despite some learning curves
0:27:48 like you’d have with any new software,
0:27:50 it’s pretty straightforward.
0:27:52 And I’m just starting to explore some of their other features
0:27:53 like their sponsor network,
0:27:55 like their creator recommendations
0:27:58 and some of the spark loop integrations,
0:28:00 referral programs type of stuff.
0:28:02 There’s lots of cool things that they’ve got going on.
0:28:04 Another tool swap has been on the bookkeeping side
0:28:07 and that’s been to Kick KICK.
0:28:09 It’s an up and coming bookkeeping software
0:28:11 that pulls in transactions from all your accounts,
0:28:15 gives you a real time snapshot of how the business is doing
0:28:17 and it should save over 1,500 bucks a year
0:28:19 compared with our old bookkeeping software.
0:28:22 Now, I know this sounds like a lot of different things
0:28:23 going on and it has been, but you gotta remember,
0:28:25 zoom out, this is over the course of 12 months
0:28:29 and we haven’t talked about what things didn’t make the list,
0:28:30 what things haven’t gotten done.
0:28:34 Still haven’t prioritized really any social media,
0:28:38 haven’t created any sort of membership program.
0:28:39 It’s still on the table.
0:28:41 I think it would be kind of cool to create kind of a side hustle
0:28:44 into full time accelerator program
0:28:46 for people who’ve already got something going.
0:28:48 How do we get this over the finish line
0:28:50 and make this your full time income?
0:28:51 How do we get you out of that day job
0:28:53 if that’s a goal of yours?
0:28:55 My children’s book that I wrote last year,
0:28:57 still hasn’t been published,
0:28:59 still going back and forth on illustrations for that.
0:29:02 I haven’t been able to update the side hustle book
0:29:04 as kind of a top of the funnel entry point.
0:29:06 It was last updated 2019,
0:29:09 so it’s definitely overdue for a refresh
0:29:11 and maybe that’ll be a project for an upcoming quarter.
0:29:13 Haven’t really been able to touch
0:29:16 the website homepage redesign.
0:29:18 One of the question marks around that
0:29:20 is so much of the traffic is mobile
0:29:22 and so much of the traffic is to internal pages
0:29:24 where it’s like, does the homepage even matter anymore?
0:29:26 Like, you know, this nice big laptop desktop
0:29:28 splash type of page.
0:29:28 I don’t know.
0:29:29 Like most people don’t even see it,
0:29:33 but it’s something that is on the future project list
0:29:36 or wish list is kind of that update refresh.
0:29:39 It’s been since 2017, it’s been a long time.
0:29:41 So definitely overdue for that as well.
0:29:44 So even though there’s been lots of positive progress
0:29:46 and things that have gotten done,
0:29:49 there’s an equal or growing number of things
0:29:52 that have had to kind of sit on the back burner
0:29:55 and prioritize what is gonna move the needle.
0:29:57 So that’s been what I’ve been working on.
0:30:01 Habit wise, mostly a continuation of last year,
0:30:03 it was the goal of walking a mile a day.
0:30:05 I think that’s been really positive
0:30:06 just to get some extra steps in
0:30:08 and get some extra outside time.
0:30:10 It’s been doing pretty consistently
0:30:13 my three question journal, Nightly Habit.
0:30:15 The three, this is a journal that I created.
0:30:18 You can find it on Amazon or 3QJournal.com.
0:30:19 We’ll redirect you over there.
0:30:22 The three questions are, what did I get done today?
0:30:22 Did I do work?
0:30:23 That was important.
0:30:24 What am I grateful for?
0:30:27 Always important to have that gratitude practice.
0:30:28 And how am I gonna win tomorrow?
0:30:30 What are my top priorities for the next day?
0:30:32 The other thing that I’ve added habit wise
0:30:35 is going to hot yoga a couple of times a week.
0:30:38 This is, I’ve been practicing yoga on and off for years
0:30:41 in the name of flexibility and injury prevention.
0:30:43 This is one of those things
0:30:45 that’s pretty uncomfortable in the moment.
0:30:46 And I guess that’s true of a lot of workouts,
0:30:48 but feels really good afterwards.
0:30:50 So I’ve been happy with that addition
0:30:52 to the workout routine there.
0:30:54 Now, book wise, always like to ask guests
0:30:55 for their book recommendations.
0:30:56 I’ve got some bangers for you.
0:30:59 I feel like I’ve been on a real hot streak here.
0:31:02 It started with this title called Astoria
0:31:03 that a neighbor recommended.
0:31:04 We were talking about The Wager.
0:31:07 Oh, this incredible shipwreck survival story.
0:31:08 Oh, have you checked out Astoria?
0:31:09 No, what’s that?
0:31:12 It’s a story, even though Astoria organ,
0:31:13 you know, we’ve driven through there.
0:31:15 Goonies is set there.
0:31:17 There’s some Northwest familiarity with Astoria.
0:31:19 Never knew it was named after John Jacob Astor
0:31:23 in his attempt to set up kind of a Northwest fur trading post
0:31:26 in this elaborate overland party
0:31:28 that was going to meet the over the sea party
0:31:30 that went around the Cape of South America
0:31:34 and the harrowing adventures that ensued there.
0:31:36 So that was a really interesting one.
0:31:39 A really, really cool book was called Unbroken.
0:31:41 This is a World War II survival story
0:31:43 where it’s an Olympic distance runner.
0:31:46 An Olympic miler gets joined, joins the war.
0:31:48 He’s an Air Force bomber
0:31:50 and ends up getting shot down over the Pacific.
0:31:52 Him and like two other guys survive.
0:31:53 They’re in this life draft.
0:31:56 Unfortunately, they’re floating east.
0:31:58 They’re floating towards Japan enemy territory.
0:32:00 They end up on this Japanese controlled island
0:32:04 after like a month at sea trying to survive off of birds
0:32:06 and trying to kill sharks and all sorts of crazy stuff.
0:32:09 And then how they end up in a Japanese POW camp
0:32:13 and just the horrible abuse and will to survive.
0:32:14 Like crazy story.
0:32:16 Living with Seal was the next book that I read.
0:32:18 This was Jesse Itzler.
0:32:19 He’s like the founder of Net.
0:32:21 He’s got like some private jet company.
0:32:22 But this is his experience
0:32:24 in hiring David Goggins, Navy Seal.
0:32:26 What’s David Goggins book?
0:32:27 It’s, you know, can’t hurt me.
0:32:30 Like a super, super tough guy, an ultra marathon runner.
0:32:31 I’m going to pay David Goggins to come
0:32:34 and live with me and train me on the condition
0:32:35 that I just have to do everything he says,
0:32:38 no matter what time of day, no matter how crazy it sounds.
0:32:40 It’s just a kind of a funny and intense read
0:32:43 of like, if you want to be the best,
0:32:44 if you want to push through pain, you know,
0:32:46 here’s kind of how I did that for a month.
0:32:49 The next was a detour into the fiction world.
0:32:53 Thankfully a fiction story is called Alas Babylon.
0:32:56 Took place in Central Florida Cold War era book.
0:32:58 I think it was written in 1950s.
0:33:01 And this is like envisioning what life was like
0:33:02 after the bombs dropped.
0:33:05 You know, this little enclave was not hit,
0:33:08 but everything surrounding them was.
0:33:10 And it’s the story of how they survived
0:33:11 and put their lives back together.
0:33:13 It was really, really interesting.
0:33:15 And then the last book recommendation
0:33:18 that I’ve got for you is called The Long Walk.
0:33:20 This is not the Stephen King version.
0:33:24 This is the Slavomir Rawitz version.
0:33:26 This is the story, and there’s some debate on the internet
0:33:28 whether, you know, how much of the story is true.
0:33:29 So I’ll put that out there.
0:33:33 But this is Slavomir’s account of his escape
0:33:37 from Siberian, you know, Russian prison camp
0:33:40 during World War II, and literally walking thousands
0:33:43 of miles south to India to freedom.
0:33:44 And just incredible.
0:33:47 Like the common theme of just about all these books
0:33:51 is persistence, tenacity, overcoming the odds.
0:33:53 It’s this dichotomy of, you know, human life
0:33:55 is at once really, really fragile.
0:33:57 You just never know when you’re gonna get hit by a bus.
0:34:01 But all of these stories illustrate a remarkable will
0:34:03 to survive where you kind of put yourself
0:34:04 in the position of these people and you ask,
0:34:05 what would you do?
0:34:06 Would you be able to handle it?
0:34:10 And it makes you grateful for whatever challenges
0:34:12 you’re facing is nothing like what they went through.
0:34:13 If they can do that,
0:34:15 then I can certainly handle my day.
0:34:17 Appreciate the request to put this together.
0:34:20 I’ll link up all of those books in the show notes for you
0:34:20 if you wanna go check them out.
0:34:23 As per the usual, I’ve got links to all the resources
0:34:25 mentioned in the show notes for this episode.
0:34:27 Just follow the link in the episode description
0:34:28 and it’ll get you right over there.
0:34:31 Appreciate the request to put this episode together.
0:34:33 It was a lot of fun looking back on some of the big projects
0:34:34 and shifts this year.
0:34:36 And hopefully this inside baseball look at what’s going on
0:34:39 and Inside Hustle Nation and The Side Hustle Show
0:34:41 was interesting and compelling for you.
0:34:43 Thank you to our sponsors for helping make
0:34:45 this content free for everyone.
0:34:47 You can hit up sidehustlenation.com/deals
0:34:51 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:34:52 Thank you for supporting the advertisers
0:34:53 that support the show.
0:34:54 That is it for me.
0:34:56 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:34:58 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen
0:35:00 and I’ll catch you in the next edition
0:35:02 of The Side Hustle Show, hustle on.
0:00:02 Is business coaching worth it?
0:00:04 Here’s a look inside the last 12 months
0:00:05 of Side Hustle Nation.
0:00:07 What’s up, what’s up, Nick Loper here.
0:00:08 Welcome to the Side Hustle Show.
0:00:11 It’s the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply.
0:00:13 So there’s been a few requests
0:00:15 for a progress report type of episode,
0:00:17 just kind of a state of side hustle nation.
0:00:19 So to speak, and it’s been a while
0:00:21 since I’ve done this probably over a year.
0:00:23 So wanted to take some time today
0:00:24 to catch up on what I’ve been working on,
0:00:25 what I’ve been working through,
0:00:27 some of the challenges, wins and projects
0:00:29 from the last 12 months or so.
0:00:32 And the biggest new thing is late last year
0:00:35 I joined a business coaching program called 2X.
0:00:37 It’s run by Austin Netsley,
0:00:39 who I must have met 10 years ago
0:00:42 at probably my first ever blogging conference.
0:00:44 This was like three businesses ago or more for him.
0:00:47 Now our paths have crossed several times since then
0:00:49 in the podcasting world, in the self publishing world,
0:00:51 at different conferences.
0:00:53 But what really sealed the deal for me
0:00:56 was having three different friends all go through 2X.
0:00:59 And these are people you would recognize.
0:01:01 They’ve been guests on the show sometimes multiple times
0:01:04 and they all saw really strong results.
0:01:06 And on top of that, another friend of mine, Tom Sylvester,
0:01:08 was one of the 2X head coaches.
0:01:11 Beyond that, they actually had this power guarantee,
0:01:12 which is something you could take away
0:01:13 and maybe apply to your own business.
0:01:14 But it was a power guarantee like,
0:01:16 “Hey, look, if we don’t increase revenue
0:01:18 by the amount of your investment,
0:01:20 we’ll just keep working with you until you do.”
0:01:21 Or something like that.
0:01:22 So very little to lose,
0:01:25 even though it was a big upfront investment.
0:01:28 And especially when combined with my kind of long history
0:01:30 in the business, who was over 10 years old at that point,
0:01:33 I reasoned, “Look, it’s time to get some outside perspective
0:01:37 from a group with a proven track record of getting results.”
0:01:39 My biggest fear going into it was,
0:01:42 am I even coachable with those 10 years in business?
0:01:44 I had developed certain habits and processes
0:01:46 that were pretty well ingrained,
0:01:48 maybe some bad habits along the way.
0:01:51 And to be fair, they were working pretty well,
0:01:54 but there’s always this nagging,
0:01:57 grass is always greener kind of feeling of what could be.
0:01:59 Is there a way to make more and work less?
0:02:00 Is there a way to build better systems?
0:02:03 Is there a way to make the business less reliant on me?
0:02:05 And then on a more existential level,
0:02:06 is that something you’d even want?
0:02:08 After all, you got to fill your days with what lights you up.
0:02:10 And I still get a kick out of finding
0:02:12 and sharing cool side hustle stories.
0:02:13 But up until that point,
0:02:18 I really had had very little in the way of formal coaching
0:02:19 from a business standpoint.
0:02:22 I worked with a podcast coach for a while a few years ago,
0:02:23 which was helpful.
0:02:26 I had a speaker coach leading up to my TEDx talk,
0:02:29 which was helpful, but not a lot outside of that.
0:02:30 I remember thinking as a kid,
0:02:33 look, if Michael Jordan is the best in the world,
0:02:35 what’s he need to coach for?
0:02:35 And then over time,
0:02:37 you start to realize that no, no,
0:02:39 the highest performers in just about every field
0:02:42 still work with coaches in some capacity.
0:02:43 And in most cases,
0:02:47 those coaches never reached the same level of achievement
0:02:49 in that field as the people they’re coaching.
0:02:50 And that was always weird to me,
0:02:52 but I came to accept that it didn’t really matter
0:02:55 so much as their skill in guidance
0:02:56 and frameworks and fundamentals
0:02:58 and pulling the best out of their clients.
0:02:59 And I would like to think of myself
0:03:01 as having humility enough to admit,
0:03:02 look, you got this far,
0:03:03 but you don’t have all the answers.
0:03:05 And even though every business is different,
0:03:08 I wanna share a couple of the 2x frameworks
0:03:10 that I found most interesting/helpful.
0:03:14 The first is understanding your value chain.
0:03:17 This is a way to describe your customer journey.
0:03:18 How do they find you?
0:03:19 How do they pay you?
0:03:22 What’s a typical lifetime value of a customer?
0:03:23 What are the steps in that chain
0:03:26 from marketing to sales to fulfillment?
0:03:28 And what kind of numbers and percentages
0:03:29 and conversion rates are associated
0:03:32 and costs are associated with each of those steps?
0:03:34 Now, the typical 2x client
0:03:36 is a six-figure service business
0:03:37 that’s trying to figure out
0:03:39 how to scale to a million or beyond.
0:03:42 And the value chain might be like,
0:03:44 someone clicks on our Facebook ad,
0:03:46 a certain percentage of those people opt in
0:03:48 for some free guide,
0:03:49 a certain percentage of those,
0:03:51 book a discovery call,
0:03:52 and a certain percentage of those,
0:03:55 sign up for a $4,000 or $5,000 package,
0:03:57 and a certain percentage of those
0:03:58 ended up being a good fit
0:04:00 for our monthly retainer type of service.
0:04:03 But understanding all of those little steps
0:04:04 and the little sub steps
0:04:06 inside each part of the system is pretty fun.
0:04:08 And you can start to think about
0:04:10 what different levers you can pull
0:04:12 to make a dramatic impact on the end result
0:04:12 on the bottom line.
0:04:14 What was challenging for me
0:04:16 as more of a media business,
0:04:17 the question became,
0:04:20 well, what’s a website visitor worth?
0:04:21 What’s a podcast listener worth?
0:04:22 How do we break that down?
0:04:24 Well, if we’re sold out on ads,
0:04:26 maybe a download is worth 10 cents,
0:04:28 plus or minus, like not to diminish it,
0:04:30 but kind of small numbers relative to,
0:04:32 oh, I sold a $5,000 package,
0:04:34 and maybe that listener becomes a subscriber,
0:04:36 maybe they listen to dozens of episodes,
0:04:37 maybe they tell five friends about it,
0:04:39 and those downloads are worth another 10 cents,
0:04:41 but it was really difficult
0:04:44 and that totally discounts the value of the relationship
0:04:46 and the trust and the possibility of connecting someone
0:04:50 to a hopefully life-changing new income stream.
0:04:53 So the value chain exercise is really interesting
0:04:54 to try and break down what that looks like
0:04:55 for your business.
0:04:57 Again, every business is different,
0:05:00 but it kind of all comes back to these certain fundamentals
0:05:03 and even for the different areas of your business
0:05:05 because the website traffic value chain
0:05:07 is a different one entirely.
0:05:09 The other one that I wanna share
0:05:11 was what they call the CEO takeover
0:05:13 and the process looks like this.
0:05:15 Imagine you’re about to get fired
0:05:17 as the CEO of your business
0:05:19 and there’s a new CEO that’s coming in
0:05:21 and he’s got or he or she’s got a much bigger,
0:05:24 more ambitious, more strategic vision
0:05:25 and they’re coming in.
0:05:27 So what actions are they gonna take
0:05:29 in the next one to three months?
0:05:30 What are they gonna stop doing?
0:05:31 What are they gonna focus on?
0:05:33 Where are your biggest opportunities?
0:05:35 And of course, the punchline is that CEO is you,
0:05:37 so go get after it.
0:05:39 Now, as far as results, business is up
0:05:40 compared to last year.
0:05:43 How much of that is a direct result of 2X is hard to say,
0:05:44 but I will say this.
0:05:47 I feel like I have a more strategic outlook
0:05:48 on the whole operation.
0:05:50 I feel like I have a clearer picture
0:05:52 on the work that I truly love and enjoy.
0:05:55 I feel like I’ve built some better systems for my team
0:05:57 and have attempted to get better
0:05:59 and letting go of certain responsibilities.
0:06:02 Oh, the other thing that was kind of annoying,
0:06:04 but actually ended up being helpful
0:06:05 was this quarterly planning process.
0:06:08 I would hardly, been doing this business for 10 years,
0:06:10 would hardly ever do anything like that.
0:06:13 Big picture, what are our most important initiatives
0:06:13 for the next three months?
0:06:15 I’m sorry, I’m too busy chopping down trees
0:06:16 to sharpen the ax here,
0:06:19 but in doing so you get some helpful clarity
0:06:21 and instant positive results
0:06:22 came out of those planning sessions.
0:06:25 Now, 2X is a structure-wise,
0:06:27 it’s a combination of one-on-one coaching.
0:06:29 My coach, Brian, has been great.
0:06:30 There’s some group sessions
0:06:32 and then there’s these in-person masterminds
0:06:34 roughly every quarter or so.
0:06:37 What I learned about myself is got to be one-on-one
0:06:39 or in-person because I had a really hard time
0:06:40 prioritizing any of the group stuff.
0:06:42 The in-person events were really cool.
0:06:46 Almost a forced pause to get out of the normal
0:06:49 day-to-day operations and think at a higher level.
0:06:51 Now, Austin has been generous enough
0:06:53 to offer Side Hustle Show listeners a free copy
0:06:55 of his book from six to seven figures
0:06:59 at 2X.co/sidehustle, subtitle on this one,
0:07:01 The Proven Playbook to get more traction,
0:07:02 free up 20 hours per week
0:07:05 and scale past $1 million in revenue.
0:07:07 It’s a great book, I first read it a few years ago
0:07:09 on my second pass through it.
0:07:11 I think I actually had to put it down
0:07:13 and go implement some stuff, which is a great sign.
0:07:14 Again, this is best for people
0:07:16 who’ve already got a business up and running,
0:07:18 but maybe you’re running into bottlenecks
0:07:21 or maybe you’ve hit a growth plateau
0:07:22 and you’re looking for a playbook
0:07:25 to unlock that next stage of your business.
0:07:29 Again, 2X.co/sidehustle to grab that book for free
0:07:32 from six to seven figures by Austin Netsley.
0:07:34 So thanks to Austin and his team for putting that together
0:07:36 and really for all their help over the last year or so.
0:07:39 So I wanted to kick off this Progress Report episode
0:07:40 with that coaching program
0:07:43 because that’s kind of been the underlying base layer
0:07:46 foundation for everything else that I’ve been working on
0:07:47 and not working on.
0:07:50 Now, prior to joining last year,
0:07:52 there were a couple other significant shifts
0:07:53 that I should talk about.
0:07:57 On the podcast side, it was joining a new ad sales network
0:07:59 called the App Media, Young and Profiting Media,
0:08:01 as you’ve probably heard on the show.
0:08:04 They’ve done a great job selling sponsorships far better
0:08:05 than I ever did on my own.
0:08:07 Bigger deals with bigger brands.
0:08:08 Now, as part of that shift,
0:08:12 that meant getting off of Libsyn as the podcast host,
0:08:13 shifting over to Megaphone,
0:08:17 which supports dynamic ad insertion across the whole catalog
0:08:19 where previously I was just selling a set number
0:08:22 of predicted downloads on the latest episode.
0:08:25 Hey, we think we can deliver you 30,000 downloads
0:08:27 in the first 30 days, in the first 60 days
0:08:30 on this episode that’s gonna air on this date.
0:08:33 I was definitely late to make this move,
0:08:35 but it’s another example of that underrated entrepreneurial
0:08:37 skill of simply looking around.
0:08:39 What are the other top shows doing?
0:08:40 Well, they’re doing this
0:08:42 and they’ve actually been doing it for a while.
0:08:43 Get with the time, Sloper.
0:08:46 Now, the other challenging thing on the podcast
0:08:49 was this download drop that I guess was a result
0:08:53 of some iOS update late last year.
0:08:56 It impacted a ton of different podcasters.
0:08:58 The hardest hit shows were ones like mine
0:09:00 that had a big back catalog.
0:09:02 And in talking with other hosts,
0:09:05 it sounds like this was pretty much across the board
0:09:07 where all of a sudden you’re getting half to two thirds
0:09:09 of the downloads you were previously getting.
0:09:11 And so on the one hand, there’s like safety in numbers.
0:09:14 There is the misery loves company aspect to it.
0:09:17 And even if the numbers today are more accurate
0:09:19 or more accurate picture of what’s happening,
0:09:20 it’s still a blow to the ego
0:09:22 where I had this inflated sense of self worth.
0:09:24 Hey, I’m talking to a stadium full of people every week
0:09:27 when it’s more like, well, you’re talking to
0:09:29 an arena full of people every week.
0:09:32 Still great, still super grateful to be able to do it.
0:09:34 Now to combat that, I’ve done a couple of things.
0:09:37 The first was adding a new episode like this one
0:09:40 every other Monday, usually shorter format,
0:09:43 but it gives listeners more content to choose from
0:09:46 and has proven more sustainable than my short lived attempt
0:09:49 at going to two a week a couple of summers ago.
0:09:51 That ended up not really working out,
0:09:53 but this one has been probably six months or so
0:09:55 and it’s been fine, it’s been fun.
0:09:58 It’s kind of, I like the creative challenge of filling
0:10:01 in those dates with content that hopefully is compelling.
0:10:05 The second thing was expanding my paid listener acquisition
0:10:07 efforts, what that looks like in practice
0:10:10 is probably spent 20 grand this year trying to grow the show
0:10:13 by advertising on various podcast platforms
0:10:18 like Cast Box, like Overcast, like PodBeam, like Player FM,
0:10:19 some smaller ones as well.
0:10:23 And those do deliver some download and listener growth,
0:10:25 but going back to that listener value chain
0:10:27 is still somewhat of a question mark
0:10:29 in terms of how profitable that ad spend is
0:10:32 or if it’s even profitable at all.
0:10:34 Whereas you’re just banking on that long-term value
0:10:38 of a listener, what I do know is that listener growth
0:10:41 is a really consistent lead domino
0:10:42 and it has been for 10 years.
0:10:46 As downloads grow, so tend to many downstream metrics
0:10:50 like email subscribers, ultimately sponsorship sales
0:10:50 and other revenue.
0:10:53 So that’s why I’m comfortable making that investment
0:10:55 even if it doesn’t, even if it’s really hard to tell
0:10:57 the near-term profitability of that.
0:10:59 So that’s been what’s going on on the podcast front.
0:11:02 I missed podcast movement and podcast this year,
0:11:06 but do hope to get to a podcast-specific event next year
0:11:08 to connect with other hosts and just learn
0:11:11 what’s the latest and greatest in the industry.
0:11:12 I’ll be right back with more
0:11:14 of this online business progress report,
0:11:15 including the simple tweak
0:11:18 that probably should have made years ago right after this.
0:11:22 Being an entrepreneur and being able to work remotely
0:11:23 definitely has its perks.
0:11:27 I’ve recorded podcasts everywhere from Vietnam to Italy,
0:11:29 drafted newsletters from Japan,
0:11:31 hosted mastermind meetings from Spain,
0:11:32 ended up being the middle of the night
0:11:34 to get to US business hours
0:11:37 and outlined courses in Mexico.
0:11:40 The common thread of all of these trips though is Airbnb.
0:11:43 We love being able to get exactly what we’re looking for
0:11:47 in a place to stay and have a more local experience
0:11:50 than staying in some giant hotel chain.
0:11:51 And you know me, I’m always thinking about
0:11:54 the next side hustle idea, the next income stream, right?
0:11:56 And one that’s at the top of the list
0:11:59 is hosting our place on Airbnb while we’re traveling.
0:12:01 That way the house doesn’t have to sit empty.
0:12:03 We could use the income to help pay for the trip.
0:12:05 And we’ve heard from several successful
0:12:07 Airbnb hosts on the show.
0:12:09 And what’s interesting is a lot of them started
0:12:12 with almost that exact strategy, running their place
0:12:15 or even a spare room while they’re out of town.
0:12:17 Taking inspiration from that,
0:12:20 you might have an Airbnb right under your nose.
0:12:22 In fact, your home might be worth more than you think.
0:12:27 You can find out how much at airbnb.com/host.
0:12:29 That’s airbnb.com/host
0:12:32 to find out how much your home is worth.
0:12:35 Lots of scrappy side hustlers start their business
0:12:37 with just their personal phone number.
0:12:39 And I love that, but at a certain point,
0:12:41 you can’t be limited to just your cell phone
0:12:42 and notes app to get your work done.
0:12:44 With our sponsor, OpenPhone,
0:12:47 you can stay connected while powerful AI features
0:12:49 help keep your business on track.
0:12:50 OpenPhone, if you’re not familiar,
0:12:52 is the number one business phone system
0:12:53 for modern businesses.
0:12:57 OpenPhone works through an app on your phone or computer
0:12:58 and then integrates with HubSpot
0:13:01 and hundreds of other systems that you might be using.
0:13:03 One of my favorite features is their AI powered
0:13:05 call transcripts and summaries.
0:13:07 So you can streamline client communication
0:13:09 and have a summary of every phone call
0:13:12 with action items right when you hang up.
0:13:15 That means no more note taking or forgotten to do items.
0:13:18 On top of that, OpenPhone is rated the number one business phone
0:13:22 for customer satisfaction with over 1700 reviews.
0:13:24 And right now, OpenPhone is offering 20% off
0:13:28 your first six months when you go to openphone.com/sidehustle.
0:13:33 That’s O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E.com/sidehustle
0:13:37 for 20% off six months.
0:13:40 That’s openphone.com/sidehustle.
0:13:42 And if you have existing numbers with another service,
0:13:44 OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge.
0:13:48 The other big shift that happened just before
0:13:51 joining the 2x coaching program was adding display ads
0:13:53 to the SideHustle Nation website for the first time.
0:13:56 Like you, I think display ads on the internet
0:13:57 are pretty annoying.
0:13:59 I’ve been using an ad blocking browser for years.
0:14:01 I was always hesitant to clutter up the site with them
0:14:04 in the name of better load times, better user experience.
0:14:07 But that being said, 10 years into the business,
0:14:08 I come out of my cave for a minute
0:14:11 and again, practice that underrated skill of looking around
0:14:13 and notice that all my friends and peers
0:14:16 in the personal finance space in the SideHustle space
0:14:18 are running display ads on their content.
0:14:19 So I said, hey, let’s give it a test.
0:14:20 Doesn’t have to be permanent.
0:14:22 Let’s just turn it on and see what happens.
0:14:23 Well, here’s what happened.
0:14:25 No noticeable drop in site traffic,
0:14:26 email signups, affiliate conversions,
0:14:29 or whatever drop there was was more than offset
0:14:30 by the incremental revenue.
0:14:32 This is through Mediavine, by the way.
0:14:33 They’ve been super supportive.
0:14:34 They’ve been great to work with.
0:14:36 They’re very involved in the creator economy.
0:14:40 I would always see their team at FinCon and at other events,
0:14:42 but flipping this one switch pays the mortgage
0:14:44 and then some every month to the extent
0:14:46 I probably should have done it years earlier
0:14:48 as much as it pains me to admit that.
0:14:51 And then what we were able to do just recently
0:14:53 was figure out how to turn off the ads
0:14:54 for SideHustle Nation email subscribers.
0:14:57 So if you’re already a subscriber
0:14:58 and you click a link from one of our emails,
0:15:01 it should be an ad-free experience for you,
0:15:02 at least on that first page.
0:15:04 I don’t know if you’ll remember that setting
0:15:05 throughout your whole session.
0:15:08 If you click on multiple pages or navigate throughout the site.
0:15:11 But in any case, it felt like a win to be able to hide the ads
0:15:13 for people who’ve already opted in.
0:15:14 On the website side,
0:15:17 I have definitely struggled to create new content this year.
0:15:22 We’ve probably only added maybe 20, 25 or so new posts.
0:15:25 And this was a realization of mine in the last month or so.
0:15:28 We’ve made a focus and investment
0:15:30 in maintaining the existing library of content.
0:15:32 Defend what you got, keep that up to date.
0:15:34 But with that, there’s only so much potential
0:15:36 search traffic we can capture, right?
0:15:37 Even if we do everything right,
0:15:39 there’s only so much search volume
0:15:40 surrounding those keywords.
0:15:43 And some of that is being eroded by AI snippets.
0:15:46 It’s being eroded by more ad results
0:15:48 in the search results pages.
0:15:49 A million and one Reddit posts.
0:15:52 And so while it definitely is important
0:15:53 to keep the archives up to date and relevant,
0:15:55 if we want to increase traffic,
0:15:57 we’re gonna have to get more serious about adding new content
0:16:00 to expand the quote unquote surface area
0:16:02 of search potential.
0:16:07 One idea that I tried early in the year that flopped,
0:16:08 surprise, I don’t know.
0:16:12 It was recruiting a handful of paid side hustle app testers
0:16:13 from the community.
0:16:15 I said, maybe I’ll pay you 50 bucks,
0:16:18 test this thing out, answer a few questions about the app,
0:16:20 take some screenshots, easy, right?
0:16:22 Now this plan was inspired by Dave Cheson
0:16:24 from Kindlepreneur.
0:16:28 He says, look, I can get this raw feedback from users.
0:16:30 I can hand it off to a writer who knows SEO.
0:16:32 They know how to structure product review posts
0:16:33 that are gonna rank in Google.
0:16:35 Then I do my final edits and hit publish.
0:16:37 I thought this was a genius plan.
0:16:38 I thought this was really gonna accelerate
0:16:39 content production.
0:16:42 And while I did get several volunteers to test the apps
0:16:45 when it came time to actually do the work
0:16:46 and send in the answers to the questions
0:16:49 and send in the screenshots, it all fell apart.
0:16:50 It was like radio silence.
0:16:53 So what I’m trying to do instead is hire
0:16:55 a dedicated app tester or reviewer
0:16:57 who can be a consistent member of the team
0:16:58 and help put these together.
0:17:01 Hopefully they’ll be hired by the time this airs
0:17:03 and we’ll see if that approach works any better.
0:17:06 And quick note, quick pause on the strategy here.
0:17:09 So there are dozens of little apps and websites
0:17:11 that promise you can make money with them.
0:17:15 You know, they’ll pay you to take pictures of your receipts.
0:17:16 They’ll pay you for tracking your steps.
0:17:18 They’ll pay you to take little surveys.
0:17:19 I’ve tested a bunch of these over the years.
0:17:21 Some are better than others,
0:17:23 but the plan is to create honest reviews for those.
0:17:24 Here’s how it works.
0:17:26 Here’s how much you can realistically expect to make.
0:17:28 Is it legit or not?
0:17:29 You know, if you still want to sign up,
0:17:31 here’s our affiliate link or referral link.
0:17:33 If such a program exists,
0:17:34 a lot of them have referral programs.
0:17:35 A lot of them don’t.
0:17:37 But if not, here are some alternatives
0:17:38 that might be worth a look.
0:17:40 And if you’re serious about making extra money,
0:17:41 why don’t you check out the sign hustle show?
0:17:43 Hey, we got 600 plus episodes.
0:17:44 They’re filled with legit business ideas.
0:17:45 Come on in.
0:17:48 So my gut says that that could be valuable
0:17:49 top of the funnel type of content.
0:17:50 Hey, you’ve heard about this app.
0:17:52 You’re looking for a little more information.
0:17:54 You say, okay, maybe that isn’t for me,
0:17:57 but there’s other content here
0:17:59 that can help me get to where I want to go.
0:18:00 So that’s what my gut says.
0:18:01 If we can build a system to test
0:18:04 and review those in a way that attracts visitors.
0:18:07 Couple other projects on the site itself
0:18:09 were more on the technical side of SEO.
0:18:12 So I hired a couple pros off of Upwork
0:18:15 to update and modernize the schema
0:18:17 across the site and the articles.
0:18:20 This is kind of like the structured metadata
0:18:22 that theoretically tells Google
0:18:24 what the content is about, how it’s structured,
0:18:26 who wrote it, all that jazz.
0:18:28 Hard to say if it had any direct impact,
0:18:30 but relatively low investment
0:18:33 for some potential upside there.
0:18:34 The other Upwork hire was related
0:18:36 to site speed and load times.
0:18:38 Again, I think a fast website
0:18:40 is probably just table stakes at this point.
0:18:42 And we just wanted to make sure we were playing
0:18:43 by Google’s best practices here.
0:18:46 You can punch in your site to Google’s page speed,
0:18:49 metrics, tester tool and see how you’re performing.
0:18:51 Don’t just do it for the homepage.
0:18:53 Make sure to test some internal content pages as well.
0:18:55 I’m happy to link up the profiles of both
0:18:58 the freelancers that I hired in the show notes
0:19:01 if you’d like to hire them for your own site.
0:19:02 Other thing on the website front
0:19:05 was creating more product displays
0:19:08 and callouts using the Lasso plugin this year.
0:19:09 I’ve been a customer of theirs
0:19:11 for probably about a year or so.
0:19:13 It’s easy to use the product displays.
0:19:14 They look nice on the site.
0:19:15 They kind of look like the wire cutter displays.
0:19:17 Like, oh, our top pick is this.
0:19:19 And it’s got little star ratings
0:19:21 and a link out to the product.
0:19:23 It really only takes a few incremental conversions
0:19:25 to pay for the software.
0:19:27 So been using Lasso, loving that.
0:19:30 And then inspired by Alex Goldberg,
0:19:33 a recent episode we did on his paid traffic campaign,
0:19:37 I have been running a small scale paid traffic campaign
0:19:38 through Google for years,
0:19:40 but it was kind of inspired by that chat
0:19:42 with Alex to try and ramp it up a little bit.
0:19:44 If you missed it, it was about driving
0:19:47 consistently profitable affiliate traffic
0:19:48 through Google ads.
0:19:51 I don’t have the most sophisticated tracking system
0:19:53 in place, but I’ve added a few new campaigns
0:19:55 over the last few months.
0:19:58 And we’ve kind of been trying to find a freelance expert
0:20:01 to, you know, with some paid media arbitrage experience
0:20:02 to help scale this.
0:20:04 The challenge I run into is, you know,
0:20:06 aside from the revenue attribution tracking
0:20:09 is being somewhat limited or throttled
0:20:11 by the bid targets.
0:20:13 This is where Google is kind of, you know,
0:20:15 genius for setting this up as an auction system
0:20:18 where for me, there are certain prices per click
0:20:19 where it makes sense to buy traffic.
0:20:21 And there are certain prices per click
0:20:23 where it would be super unprofitable to buy traffic.
0:20:27 So Google’s default suggestion is to increase that bid.
0:20:28 You know, it’s kind of like, well, you know,
0:20:31 if you’re trading a dollar for $2,
0:20:33 would you trade a dollar for a buck 50?
0:20:36 You know, probably would you trade a dollar for a buck 25?
0:20:38 Maybe, you know, would you trade a dollar
0:20:39 for a buck 50?
0:20:42 You kind of squeeze as much margin as they can out of you.
0:20:46 But this is a situation where, yeah, I understand.
0:20:48 I can get more traffic if I spend more,
0:20:51 but I needed to be at this price,
0:20:52 not at your suggested price.
0:20:56 Like I’d happily spend $10,000 a month or more
0:20:58 if that was at a certain price point.
0:21:01 But so I think last month it was less than $1,000 in spend
0:21:03 for the sake of reference.
0:21:07 Now, Alex’s argument is that this is consistent,
0:21:09 predictable, high converting traffic
0:21:12 that doesn’t rely on the ebbs and flows of social media
0:21:15 or the latest SEO algorithm update.
0:21:18 In our survey of email subscribers early in the year,
0:21:20 and this has been consistent every year we’ve run the survey,
0:21:23 is one of the biggest challenges or pain points
0:21:24 for side hustle nation members
0:21:26 is finding customers for your side hustle
0:21:28 or growing your business.
0:21:30 So that led me to create a new course
0:21:31 this summer called Get Gigs.
0:21:35 It aims to help people with service-based businesses
0:21:37 get more gigs, connect with more customers,
0:21:37 make more money.
0:21:39 This was a fun one ’cause I got to pull
0:21:42 in my all-time favorite strategies
0:21:43 from the over 600 episodes
0:21:46 and compile them into this choose your own adventure course.
0:21:49 Not every method is applicable to every business,
0:21:50 but I’m confident a few of the strategies
0:21:52 when you put them into action
0:21:54 will more than cover the price of admission.
0:21:55 And on the price of admission,
0:21:57 I said, “Hey, let’s not reinvent the wheel.”
0:21:58 So we went back to a launch formula
0:22:00 that’s worked well for me in the past.
0:22:02 That was to pair the Get Gigs launch
0:22:05 with the annual BC stack bundle sale.
0:22:06 The pitch went like this,
0:22:09 “Hey, I made a new thing, here’s how it can help you.”
0:22:12 But while I know these client finding methods are effective,
0:22:15 I’m looking for feedback and testimonials.
0:22:15 It’s a brand new course,
0:22:18 which means that you can get it at a special launch price
0:22:21 instead of $97, it’s gonna be half off.
0:22:23 And to sweeten the deal even further,
0:22:25 not only do you get like time access to get gigs,
0:22:28 you also get these 50 plus other products
0:22:30 that are included as part of the BC stack as well.
0:22:33 That ended up being another $10,000 launch
0:22:35 and hopefully helps a lot of people connect
0:22:37 with new customers and build their side hustles.
0:22:40 Now, if you’re in that boat of looking for more people
0:22:42 to hire you for whatever you sell,
0:22:45 put together a special offer for side hustle show listeners.
0:22:46 It’s not as good as that launch price
0:22:48 because that was a one time deal,
0:22:49 but it’s the next best thing.
0:22:52 All you gotta do is go to get gigs.me
0:22:53 and use promo code podcast
0:22:56 to get that special listener only discount.
0:23:00 Again, get gigs.me and use promo code podcast.
0:23:02 Another bright spot from the last few months
0:23:03 has been YouTube,
0:23:06 where my efforts in planting little money seeds
0:23:08 has slowly been starting to pay off.
0:23:09 Again, I think of these videos
0:23:12 as evergreen mini digital assets
0:23:13 that can earn traffic and revenue
0:23:15 with a really long shelf life.
0:23:16 Usually these are based off
0:23:19 of existing side hustle nation blog articles.
0:23:22 So it’s not creating content completely from scratch.
0:23:23 And for a lot of the newer ones,
0:23:25 I’m barely on camera at all.
0:23:26 So I’m not at all
0:23:30 where we’re using a really cool new AI powered video tool
0:23:32 called Pictori to create these
0:23:34 and how it works as you upload your script.
0:23:36 And it pulls together dozens of stock video clips
0:23:40 to make a pretty visually compelling video.
0:23:41 This is the kind of work
0:23:43 that would take hours to do manually.
0:23:45 And it does it in just a couple of minutes.
0:23:46 It adds subtitles.
0:23:47 It’s really impressive.
0:23:50 It even has some AI voiceover capabilities.
0:23:51 If you don’t want to do your own voiceover
0:23:53 for most of my newer videos,
0:23:56 I’ve been recording my own voiceover uploading to Pictori.
0:23:59 And then it syncs the visuals to what I’m saying.
0:24:00 It’s pretty slick.
0:24:03 We use discount code NSHN20,
0:24:06 like Nick, side hustle nation 20 to save 20% on Pictori.
0:24:08 I’ll also link that up in the show notes.
0:24:09 We’ve been using Pictori
0:24:12 for almost every non-podcast video that we upload.
0:24:14 And while they’re not necessarily going viral,
0:24:17 some are earning thousands of views
0:24:20 and making money from YouTube ads every single day.
0:24:22 Almost double what the channel was earning
0:24:23 at the start of the year.
0:24:24 And that income doesn’t include
0:24:27 any affiliate earnings, email signups, podcast listeners
0:24:29 that the video content might result in as well.
0:24:31 So the next question is, how do we scale production?
0:24:35 There are a few steps from idea to finished video,
0:24:38 but one of the key ingredients is that voiceover recording.
0:24:39 This is where 11 Labs comes in.
0:24:42 I uploaded a few hours of podcast recordings,
0:24:44 audio from YouTube video,
0:24:46 and even I think some chapters from some of my audio books.
0:24:50 And it created a pretty convincing AI version of my voice.
0:24:52 Then you upload the video script to 11 Labs.
0:24:54 It creates the voiceover MP3.
0:24:57 And then you can plug that audio into Pictori
0:24:58 of the videos created that way.
0:25:01 A couple are closing in on a thousand views,
0:25:03 but on average, they haven’t performed as well as the ones
0:25:06 where I’ve recorded the voiceover directly.
0:25:07 I have to imagine the day will come
0:25:09 where it becomes almost indistinguishable
0:25:12 and the videos perform as well or better
0:25:14 than the old fashioned manual recording ones.
0:25:15 How good is 11 Labs?
0:25:16 I can tell the difference
0:25:19 because I know I didn’t actually speak those words,
0:25:21 but I don’t know how obvious it is to someone
0:25:23 just discovering the channel for the first time.
0:25:25 And maybe as a podcast listener,
0:25:26 you’d be better attuned to it,
0:25:29 but you’ll have to let me know if you were able to tell
0:25:31 because the last 60 seconds of this episode
0:25:33 were AI generated.
0:25:34 A real Nick back behind the mic now.
0:25:35 Did I get you?
0:25:37 Or could you tell it was a voice clone right away?
0:25:39 So the real bottleneck that we’ve run into
0:25:41 on the video side is in scripting.
0:25:44 Even though we’re starting from an existing blog post
0:25:46 in most cases, not starting completely from scratch,
0:25:47 a video script is slightly different.
0:25:49 Like you wouldn’t want to just read
0:25:50 a blog post word for word.
0:25:53 So we’ve been working on a series of chat GPT prompts
0:25:57 to try and convert the article text into a YouTube script.
0:25:59 But if I’m being completely honest,
0:26:00 we don’t have that dialed into the point
0:26:01 where we want it yet.
0:26:04 It’s like, hey, I’m trying to create a video
0:26:07 based on this side hustle nation blog post.
0:26:08 Do you understand?
0:26:12 Yes, you can use a lot of the same wording,
0:26:13 but it doesn’t have to be word for word.
0:26:14 Do you understand?
0:26:16 Yes, when you introduce numbers on a list,
0:26:19 make sure to script out, you know, number one is blank.
0:26:20 Do you understand?
0:26:21 Yes, it kind of like going through,
0:26:23 kind of like prompting it, priming it, I guess,
0:26:26 to what the output, you don’t need to include
0:26:27 any visual cues.
0:26:28 Do you understand?
0:26:29 Yes.
0:26:31 And kind of going through there and seeing,
0:26:33 and then you paste in the, okay, here’s the script.
0:26:34 Boom, go.
0:26:34 Or here’s the blog post.
0:26:36 Now you can generate the script.
0:26:39 And it’s been probably, and then you can edit it.
0:26:41 So it’s like, it’s not 100% done for you,
0:26:43 but that’s the thing with all of these AI tools
0:26:45 is it’s just trying to make your work
0:26:48 faster and more effective than having to,
0:26:49 if you were to do it completely by hand,
0:26:52 at least that’s the way that I’m looking at it at the moment.
0:26:53 And the reason that script is so important
0:26:55 is ’cause it’s still gonna be,
0:26:57 it’s either me reading it or RoboNik reading it,
0:26:59 it still has to sound like something that I would actually say.
0:27:02 Still excited about building out that video library
0:27:06 and continuing it to stack up those evergreen video assets
0:27:08 and hopefully the income from those as well.
0:27:11 Lately the channel’s been earning around 25 to 30 bucks a day,
0:27:13 which again is double where it was at
0:27:14 at the beginning of the year.
0:27:15 It would be really exciting to get that
0:27:17 to $100 a day or beyond.
0:27:19 Some friends of mine I know are making $1,000 a day
0:27:20 from this type of content.
0:27:24 It’s, there’s a really high ceiling on where this could go.
0:27:25 Now, if you wanna check out Pictori,
0:27:27 make sure to use our link and that discount code
0:27:30 in the show notes, been really happy with that addition
0:27:32 to the toolbox.
0:27:33 A couple other tools to note,
0:27:36 earlier in the year made the switch from Active Campaign
0:27:39 to ConvertKit for my email list.
0:27:41 Been happy with that move so far.
0:27:44 ConvertKit is far, far, far more invested
0:27:45 in the creator economy.
0:27:47 And despite some learning curves
0:27:48 like you’d have with any new software,
0:27:50 it’s pretty straightforward.
0:27:52 And I’m just starting to explore some of their other features
0:27:53 like their sponsor network,
0:27:55 like their creator recommendations
0:27:58 and some of the spark loop integrations,
0:28:00 referral programs type of stuff.
0:28:02 There’s lots of cool things that they’ve got going on.
0:28:04 Another tool swap has been on the bookkeeping side
0:28:07 and that’s been to Kick KICK.
0:28:09 It’s an up and coming bookkeeping software
0:28:11 that pulls in transactions from all your accounts,
0:28:15 gives you a real time snapshot of how the business is doing
0:28:17 and it should save over 1,500 bucks a year
0:28:19 compared with our old bookkeeping software.
0:28:22 Now, I know this sounds like a lot of different things
0:28:23 going on and it has been, but you gotta remember,
0:28:25 zoom out, this is over the course of 12 months
0:28:29 and we haven’t talked about what things didn’t make the list,
0:28:30 what things haven’t gotten done.
0:28:34 Still haven’t prioritized really any social media,
0:28:38 haven’t created any sort of membership program.
0:28:39 It’s still on the table.
0:28:41 I think it would be kind of cool to create kind of a side hustle
0:28:44 into full time accelerator program
0:28:46 for people who’ve already got something going.
0:28:48 How do we get this over the finish line
0:28:50 and make this your full time income?
0:28:51 How do we get you out of that day job
0:28:53 if that’s a goal of yours?
0:28:55 My children’s book that I wrote last year,
0:28:57 still hasn’t been published,
0:28:59 still going back and forth on illustrations for that.
0:29:02 I haven’t been able to update the side hustle book
0:29:04 as kind of a top of the funnel entry point.
0:29:06 It was last updated 2019,
0:29:09 so it’s definitely overdue for a refresh
0:29:11 and maybe that’ll be a project for an upcoming quarter.
0:29:13 Haven’t really been able to touch
0:29:16 the website homepage redesign.
0:29:18 One of the question marks around that
0:29:20 is so much of the traffic is mobile
0:29:22 and so much of the traffic is to internal pages
0:29:24 where it’s like, does the homepage even matter anymore?
0:29:26 Like, you know, this nice big laptop desktop
0:29:28 splash type of page.
0:29:28 I don’t know.
0:29:29 Like most people don’t even see it,
0:29:33 but it’s something that is on the future project list
0:29:36 or wish list is kind of that update refresh.
0:29:39 It’s been since 2017, it’s been a long time.
0:29:41 So definitely overdue for that as well.
0:29:44 So even though there’s been lots of positive progress
0:29:46 and things that have gotten done,
0:29:49 there’s an equal or growing number of things
0:29:52 that have had to kind of sit on the back burner
0:29:55 and prioritize what is gonna move the needle.
0:29:57 So that’s been what I’ve been working on.
0:30:01 Habit wise, mostly a continuation of last year,
0:30:03 it was the goal of walking a mile a day.
0:30:05 I think that’s been really positive
0:30:06 just to get some extra steps in
0:30:08 and get some extra outside time.
0:30:10 It’s been doing pretty consistently
0:30:13 my three question journal, Nightly Habit.
0:30:15 The three, this is a journal that I created.
0:30:18 You can find it on Amazon or 3QJournal.com.
0:30:19 We’ll redirect you over there.
0:30:22 The three questions are, what did I get done today?
0:30:22 Did I do work?
0:30:23 That was important.
0:30:24 What am I grateful for?
0:30:27 Always important to have that gratitude practice.
0:30:28 And how am I gonna win tomorrow?
0:30:30 What are my top priorities for the next day?
0:30:32 The other thing that I’ve added habit wise
0:30:35 is going to hot yoga a couple of times a week.
0:30:38 This is, I’ve been practicing yoga on and off for years
0:30:41 in the name of flexibility and injury prevention.
0:30:43 This is one of those things
0:30:45 that’s pretty uncomfortable in the moment.
0:30:46 And I guess that’s true of a lot of workouts,
0:30:48 but feels really good afterwards.
0:30:50 So I’ve been happy with that addition
0:30:52 to the workout routine there.
0:30:54 Now, book wise, always like to ask guests
0:30:55 for their book recommendations.
0:30:56 I’ve got some bangers for you.
0:30:59 I feel like I’ve been on a real hot streak here.
0:31:02 It started with this title called Astoria
0:31:03 that a neighbor recommended.
0:31:04 We were talking about The Wager.
0:31:07 Oh, this incredible shipwreck survival story.
0:31:08 Oh, have you checked out Astoria?
0:31:09 No, what’s that?
0:31:12 It’s a story, even though Astoria organ,
0:31:13 you know, we’ve driven through there.
0:31:15 Goonies is set there.
0:31:17 There’s some Northwest familiarity with Astoria.
0:31:19 Never knew it was named after John Jacob Astor
0:31:23 in his attempt to set up kind of a Northwest fur trading post
0:31:26 in this elaborate overland party
0:31:28 that was going to meet the over the sea party
0:31:30 that went around the Cape of South America
0:31:34 and the harrowing adventures that ensued there.
0:31:36 So that was a really interesting one.
0:31:39 A really, really cool book was called Unbroken.
0:31:41 This is a World War II survival story
0:31:43 where it’s an Olympic distance runner.
0:31:46 An Olympic miler gets joined, joins the war.
0:31:48 He’s an Air Force bomber
0:31:50 and ends up getting shot down over the Pacific.
0:31:52 Him and like two other guys survive.
0:31:53 They’re in this life draft.
0:31:56 Unfortunately, they’re floating east.
0:31:58 They’re floating towards Japan enemy territory.
0:32:00 They end up on this Japanese controlled island
0:32:04 after like a month at sea trying to survive off of birds
0:32:06 and trying to kill sharks and all sorts of crazy stuff.
0:32:09 And then how they end up in a Japanese POW camp
0:32:13 and just the horrible abuse and will to survive.
0:32:14 Like crazy story.
0:32:16 Living with Seal was the next book that I read.
0:32:18 This was Jesse Itzler.
0:32:19 He’s like the founder of Net.
0:32:21 He’s got like some private jet company.
0:32:22 But this is his experience
0:32:24 in hiring David Goggins, Navy Seal.
0:32:26 What’s David Goggins book?
0:32:27 It’s, you know, can’t hurt me.
0:32:30 Like a super, super tough guy, an ultra marathon runner.
0:32:31 I’m going to pay David Goggins to come
0:32:34 and live with me and train me on the condition
0:32:35 that I just have to do everything he says,
0:32:38 no matter what time of day, no matter how crazy it sounds.
0:32:40 It’s just a kind of a funny and intense read
0:32:43 of like, if you want to be the best,
0:32:44 if you want to push through pain, you know,
0:32:46 here’s kind of how I did that for a month.
0:32:49 The next was a detour into the fiction world.
0:32:53 Thankfully a fiction story is called Alas Babylon.
0:32:56 Took place in Central Florida Cold War era book.
0:32:58 I think it was written in 1950s.
0:33:01 And this is like envisioning what life was like
0:33:02 after the bombs dropped.
0:33:05 You know, this little enclave was not hit,
0:33:08 but everything surrounding them was.
0:33:10 And it’s the story of how they survived
0:33:11 and put their lives back together.
0:33:13 It was really, really interesting.
0:33:15 And then the last book recommendation
0:33:18 that I’ve got for you is called The Long Walk.
0:33:20 This is not the Stephen King version.
0:33:24 This is the Slavomir Rawitz version.
0:33:26 This is the story, and there’s some debate on the internet
0:33:28 whether, you know, how much of the story is true.
0:33:29 So I’ll put that out there.
0:33:33 But this is Slavomir’s account of his escape
0:33:37 from Siberian, you know, Russian prison camp
0:33:40 during World War II, and literally walking thousands
0:33:43 of miles south to India to freedom.
0:33:44 And just incredible.
0:33:47 Like the common theme of just about all these books
0:33:51 is persistence, tenacity, overcoming the odds.
0:33:53 It’s this dichotomy of, you know, human life
0:33:55 is at once really, really fragile.
0:33:57 You just never know when you’re gonna get hit by a bus.
0:34:01 But all of these stories illustrate a remarkable will
0:34:03 to survive where you kind of put yourself
0:34:04 in the position of these people and you ask,
0:34:05 what would you do?
0:34:06 Would you be able to handle it?
0:34:10 And it makes you grateful for whatever challenges
0:34:12 you’re facing is nothing like what they went through.
0:34:13 If they can do that,
0:34:15 then I can certainly handle my day.
0:34:17 Appreciate the request to put this together.
0:34:20 I’ll link up all of those books in the show notes for you
0:34:20 if you wanna go check them out.
0:34:23 As per the usual, I’ve got links to all the resources
0:34:25 mentioned in the show notes for this episode.
0:34:27 Just follow the link in the episode description
0:34:28 and it’ll get you right over there.
0:34:31 Appreciate the request to put this episode together.
0:34:33 It was a lot of fun looking back on some of the big projects
0:34:34 and shifts this year.
0:34:36 And hopefully this inside baseball look at what’s going on
0:34:39 and Inside Hustle Nation and The Side Hustle Show
0:34:41 was interesting and compelling for you.
0:34:43 Thank you to our sponsors for helping make
0:34:45 this content free for everyone.
0:34:47 You can hit up sidehustlenation.com/deals
0:34:51 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:34:52 Thank you for supporting the advertisers
0:34:53 that support the show.
0:34:54 That is it for me.
0:34:56 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:34:58 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen
0:35:00 and I’ll catch you in the next edition
0:35:02 of The Side Hustle Show, hustle on.
There have been a few requests for a Progress Report update, so wanted to take some time this week to give a behind-the-scenes look at the last year or so of the business of Side Hustle Nation.
Inside you’ll learn more about:
- what I’ve been working on / through
- some of my biggest challenges, wins, and projects
- what’s been on my reading list
Ready? Let’s do it!
Full Show Notes: Is Business Coaching Worth It? A Look Inside the last 12 months of Side Hustle Nation
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