638: 10 Scary-Good Side Hustles That Make Real Money

0:00:01 (upbeat music)
0:00:04 All right, this is 10 scary good side hustles
0:00:05 that make real money.
0:00:07 What’s up, what’s up, Nick Lover here.
0:00:08 Welcome to the “Side Hustle Show”
0:00:11 because your nine to five may make you a living,
0:00:13 but your five to nine makes you alive.
0:00:14 Happy Halloween to you.
0:00:16 This is a fantastic holiday.
0:00:17 In the words of Greg Barron,
0:00:20 he teaches kids some really valuable life skills.
0:00:21 You get dressed, you go to work,
0:00:23 you get paid in candy.
0:00:26 So today we’ve got 10 scary good side hustles,
0:00:28 some more Halloween related than others.
0:00:31 The man to help me out is a man of many side hustles.
0:00:34 You know him as the host of the “Nitch Pursuits” podcast
0:00:37 from 201creative.com, Jared Bauman.
0:00:38 Welcome to the “Side Hustle Show.”
0:00:40 – Hey, Nick, this is gonna be really fun.
0:00:42 What a fun theme that we have here
0:00:44 and I love the list and the running or we’re gonna be going
0:00:46 through in terms of some of these really cool side hustles.
0:00:47 – Well, excited as well.
0:00:50 I’m a longtime “Nitch Pursuits” listener
0:00:51 and I feel like it’s a long time coming
0:00:52 to have you on the show
0:00:54 and obviously a lot of overlap between the two audiences.
0:00:56 So I know we’ll have lots of listeners
0:00:57 familiar with Jared as well.
0:01:00 I want to tee this off with a side hustle
0:01:03 that came across my desk from Ebay’s Facts this year
0:01:07 and the headline is $2,000 a month reacting to horror movies.
0:01:09 And so this is Catherine Fogle’s YouTube channel.
0:01:11 It’s called Cat Watches Horror Movies.
0:01:12 At the time of this recording,
0:01:15 she’s over 80,000 subscribers,
0:01:16 started a little over two years ago.
0:01:18 So she’s two years deep into this,
0:01:20 I assume, side hustle project.
0:01:23 And some of her videos, which is like the headline is like,
0:01:24 you know, I’m freaked out by horror movies.
0:01:25 Let’s watch them together.
0:01:28 And it’s just her reacting to these for the first time
0:01:31 and screaming and just getting, getting scared.
0:01:32 Are you a horror movie fan?
0:01:33 I like cannot do horror movies.
0:01:35 – No, no, I was going to say, like,
0:01:37 I have a funny story with my girlfriend in college
0:01:38 and we were going to see, I think the ring
0:01:39 and we were on our way.
0:01:41 I looked, I finally was like,
0:01:42 I don’t even like horror movies, what are we doing?
0:01:43 And she was like, I don’t either.
0:01:45 So I love this idea because this is the only way
0:01:46 I would really watch a horror movie is
0:01:48 but it’s with somebody like this
0:01:49 kind of having fun with it.
0:01:52 – Yeah, I remember seeing like Blair Witch in high school
0:01:54 and then, you know, probably the next week
0:01:56 going on a 50 mile backpacking trip
0:01:58 and just it was not, I was not in a good place.
0:01:59 So I can’t do horror movies.
0:02:01 Like give me a comedy any day of the week.
0:02:04 But so some of her videos, like she’s got her reacting
0:02:07 to some of these older classic horror movies
0:02:10 like Exorcist and Predator and Aliens,
0:02:11 Silence of the Lambs.
0:02:14 Like these have between 150,000 views and 200,000 views.
0:02:17 And so you can plug the, you can plug the channel,
0:02:19 you plug any YouTube channel into social blade
0:02:20 and it’ll estimate the earnings.
0:02:21 And like, depending on the niche,
0:02:24 there’s a huge variety in YouTube RPMs, right?
0:02:26 But it says up to $2,000 a month
0:02:30 just in YouTube ad revenue from Catwatches Horror Movies.
0:02:32 Plus she’s got a Patreon campaign
0:02:34 or Patreon, you know, support cat for this
0:02:36 with almost 300 paying members
0:02:38 anywhere from three to $10 a month.
0:02:40 And you get, you know, special bonus footage
0:02:41 or you get inside access.
0:02:42 I don’t know what their different tiers are
0:02:45 but pretty well monetized for a side hustle
0:02:46 that’s only a couple of years deep.
0:02:47 – I was blown away in your article
0:02:49 by how many people are paying her.
0:02:50 I think she said her most popular tier
0:02:52 is at $10 a month.
0:02:53 And I’m thinking like, what do you get for $10 a month?
0:02:56 I’m already getting what I need by watching this.
0:02:58 And so that’s the power of creating a concept,
0:02:58 creating an idea.
0:02:59 And then once it gets traction
0:03:02 there’s usually several layers that can go deeper than that.
0:03:03 This is also fun.
0:03:05 I don’t know if you remember this is gonna date me a bit
0:03:07 but this is also a great example of taking a model
0:03:09 that already has been proven to work.
0:03:11 I remember in high school and college, I think,
0:03:14 watching something called Mystery Science Theater.
0:03:15 And it was a couple of guys
0:03:18 who would just watch these old movies that were bad.
0:03:19 That was a central premise.
0:03:21 They were like really poorly produced
0:03:23 or terrible storylines or really bad acting.
0:03:24 They were just bad movies
0:03:26 and they would just joke through the whole thing.
0:03:28 And that was, I mean, even before the day of YouTube
0:03:29 but they were incredibly popular
0:03:31 and they did this to a lot of movies
0:03:33 in a different way as she’s putting her own spin
0:03:35 on something that was done and successful 20 years ago.
0:03:36 – Yeah, exactly.
0:03:38 It goes back to the Pivot and Jam framework
0:03:40 from the Tropical MBA guys.
0:03:42 You take somebody else’s idea, rip it off,
0:03:44 pivot it to a new niche, a new idea,
0:03:46 and then jam, go to town and do your thing
0:03:48 and see if you can get a following,
0:03:49 see if you can get some traction with that.
0:03:53 This genre of reaction videos is a tried and true thing.
0:03:54 We saw it during the pandemic.
0:03:58 Like lawyer reacts to stimulus package bill
0:04:01 or writer reacts to this opening line of some novel
0:04:04 by my friend, Graham Baldwin, it runs the speaker lab.
0:04:07 And it was him reacting to these famous TED talks and stuff.
0:04:10 So a formula that can work in a lot of different niches.
0:04:13 – Yeah, it reminds me of like, my nephew is young
0:04:15 and he will watch on YouTube people playing a game
0:04:18 to both learn but actually it’s like a community event,
0:04:22 watching on YouTube or live playing the game.
0:04:26 So like, this concept exists in so many different areas.
0:04:28 It’s kind of, she’s really made a niche out of it.
0:04:30 – All right, next up, podcast reactions.
0:04:33 We don’t watch, listen to this podcast with the Winnick.
0:04:34 Maybe that’s my next side hustle,
0:04:36 but that’s the first one on this list.
0:04:37 Making a couple of grand a month,
0:04:40 probably more when you layer on both the Patreon
0:04:44 and the AdSense from Google views, watching horror movies.
0:04:45 So there’s a side hustle for you.
0:04:47 Maybe you pivot that to your own niche.
0:04:48 – And she doesn’t even like them.
0:04:50 She doesn’t even like horror movies.
0:04:52 – All right, what’s next on your list here?
0:04:53 What else have we got?
0:04:55 – Yeah, so next up is pumpkin carving.
0:04:57 I mean, it is a Halloween here.
0:04:59 So why would we not at least jump into something
0:05:01 specific to the Halloween holiday itself?
0:05:04 And this is Mark, Evan and Chris Soria.
0:05:08 And they started ManicPumpkinCarvers.com.
0:05:11 And basically they carve pumpkins for you.
0:05:14 And obviously it’s a very seasonal business.
0:05:15 Extremely seasonal.
0:05:17 And we’ll get into some of the other things
0:05:17 that are a little bit seasonal.
0:05:20 Like this reminds me of Christmas lights.
0:05:22 You always see the signs as you’re driving your neighborhood
0:05:23 during the Christmas season.
0:05:25 Someone who’ll come out and hang your Christmas lights for you.
0:05:27 But this business, they basically carve pumpkins.
0:05:30 And I mean, I was shocked by how much money
0:05:31 that they’re able to make per pumpkin.
0:05:33 Now, obviously they do a really good job.
0:05:34 They’re pretty good at it.
0:05:36 They’re charging like three figures over $100,
0:05:38 high $100 for some of these.
0:05:40 And they’re making a pretty good side hustle income.
0:05:43 – Yeah, this is ManiacPumpkinCarvers.com.
0:05:45 And this truly artworks of art.
0:05:47 Like some of the stuff that they’re able to create
0:05:48 is genuinely impressive.
0:05:50 And it’s somewhat depressing
0:05:52 that it’s on such a temporary medium.
0:05:53 Like, okay, we can capture a picture of it,
0:05:56 but like next month this pumpkin is gonna rot away.
0:05:59 But $150 to $700 per pumpkin.
0:06:01 And according to Side Hustle School,
0:06:04 they’re doing 500 to 1,000 pumpkins per season.
0:06:07 And a lot of these are gonna be corporate clients,
0:06:08 weddings, special events,
0:06:09 like people who have the budget
0:06:12 to spend up to $700 for a custom pumpkin.
0:06:14 But that pencils out or estimates out
0:06:17 to be over $100,000, maybe $150,000
0:06:19 for a very seasonal business.
0:06:22 And I’ve got to imagine that either some other job
0:06:24 or some other source of income going on
0:06:25 the rest of the year, but like, hey,
0:06:27 you know, over the course of eight weeks
0:06:30 to cash in 100 grand doing pumpkin art,
0:06:32 if that’s something you love to do.
0:06:33 I was really impressed with that one.
0:06:35 – I mean, you think that obviously you need to be
0:06:38 in an area, I mean, they’re in Brooklyn, I think I saw.
0:06:39 So, you know, they can probably service
0:06:40 the greater New York metropolitan area.
0:06:42 That probably helps them get access to it.
0:06:44 Like you said, corporate clients and that sort of thing.
0:06:47 But I mean, it’s also seemed somewhat scalable, you know,
0:06:50 you got to find some people who are good pumpkin carvers
0:06:51 and you can kind of scale up.
0:06:53 I’m sure they’re probably not carving 1,000 pumpkins,
0:06:55 you know, the weekend of Halloween.
0:06:56 I’m assuming that by the way,
0:06:58 but it is interesting to think that, you know,
0:06:59 it’s actually got some scale
0:07:01 that you could build into it if you really wanted to.
0:07:05 – Any other food related or like this temporary art thing
0:07:09 for anything I see people will do like ice sculptures
0:07:12 or where it’s, you know, it’s built just for this event.
0:07:14 You know, I guess of like a fancy cake decorating
0:07:15 type of thing.
0:07:18 Like maybe these guys have a corner on the pumpkin market.
0:07:20 Like, is there another niche
0:07:21 where you think this might work well?
0:07:21 – Yeah, you know, it’s interesting
0:07:22 if you could bring it up.
0:07:26 My father-in-law ran it for 40 years, was an ice carver.
0:07:27 That was his business.
0:07:28 – Okay, wow.
0:07:29 – So funny you brought that up.
0:07:31 And so, yeah, he would get hired
0:07:34 for a lot of the types of things you just talked about.
0:07:36 And he would make ice carvings
0:07:38 of a whole different variety of things.
0:07:41 So he would do Eiffel towers for French themed parties.
0:07:44 He would do Statue of Liberty for a New York themed party.
0:07:45 He would, so there’s a lot of themed parties
0:07:47 that aren’t just Halloween related.
0:07:49 This is a time of year where there’s parties for it.
0:07:50 But there’s every time of year,
0:07:52 he would do great Gatsby themed parties
0:07:53 and he would build ice sculptures for that.
0:07:55 So just leaning into the whole theme idea.
0:07:56 You know, we got the fall,
0:07:57 we got the pumpkin, we got the Halloween,
0:07:59 but these themes apply throughout every holiday
0:08:00 and every year.
0:08:01 – Yes, and it’s just an example of like,
0:08:03 well, here’s a skill that I have
0:08:06 that I probably never would have thought
0:08:07 anybody would pay money for.
0:08:10 Like, it’s just a good old time to carve pumpkins.
0:08:11 And like, hey, I got pretty good at this.
0:08:13 And then turning, like figuring out how to monetize that.
0:08:15 Like that’s kind of inspiring, pretty creative.
0:08:17 Now, if you’re looking for a little bit of guidance
0:08:19 on, well, what skills do I have?
0:08:21 What could I turn into a side hustle?
0:08:23 I want to invite you to take our two minute quiz
0:08:25 at sidehustlenation.com/quiz.
0:08:26 And then based on your answers,
0:08:29 I’ll make some recommendations on what business models
0:08:31 or side hustles might be the best fit for you.
0:08:34 Now, the third one on this list is kind of a creepy,
0:08:37 crawly one, and this is Jeff Neal
0:08:40 who is running the critterdepot.com.
0:08:42 This is a cricket breeding.
0:08:44 And I think e-commerce business,
0:08:49 he sells live crickets to primarily reptile owners,
0:08:52 like people who need crickets to feed their other pets.
0:08:55 And he says average, he’s been doing it for several years,
0:08:58 average annual profits, $30,000 on the side from his day job.
0:09:01 Crickets, apparently super easy to breed, fast to breed.
0:09:03 And then just trying to figure out the shipping regulations
0:09:06 about selling live insects on the internet.
0:09:07 – This one definitely threw me off.
0:09:09 It feels like in our modern era,
0:09:12 wow, side hustling your way with crickets.
0:09:13 But it makes sense.
0:09:14 So many people have pets.
0:09:16 I mean, in my agency, we do work with some veterinarians.
0:09:19 And so I know for a fact that they call them the exotics,
0:09:20 right?
0:09:22 The exotic animals, not the cat, the dog, the bird,
0:09:23 but all these other like,
0:09:25 so there is a good collection of people
0:09:26 that have these types of animals.
0:09:28 – And you gotta find food for it.
0:09:30 Sounds like he blew up during COVID
0:09:33 when maybe the local pet stores weren’t open
0:09:34 or they weren’t, I don’t know what it was,
0:09:36 but he has done well with it.
0:09:38 – Said he has a bearded dragon.
0:09:39 I was kind of intrigued.
0:09:41 Didn’t know you could have a pet bearded dragon.
0:09:44 – Yeah, I wanna say we had somebody on the show,
0:09:46 or somebody in the community
0:09:49 who had like a bearded dragon niche site early on,
0:09:51 all about taking care of these.
0:09:54 ‘Cause it’s, you find a million one dog sites
0:09:56 and probably a site for every specific breed.
0:09:58 But okay, I’m gonna have to go a little more niche
0:10:01 if I wanna find something maybe a little bit less competitive
0:10:02 on that keyword research there.
0:10:04 Growing up, I had a pet frog as a kid.
0:10:06 As the story goes, I was fairly young.
0:10:08 We were a late, you know, kind of nearby
0:10:10 and there were all these tadpoles.
0:10:12 And I said, “Dad, can I take a tadpole home?”
0:10:13 And he raised it as a frog.
0:10:14 And he’s like, “Yeah, if you catch one,
0:10:15 we can take it home.”
0:10:16 Thinking I’d never catch one.
0:10:18 I don’t know how, that was my day to buy a lottery ticket.
0:10:19 I caught a tadpole.
0:10:20 – Okay.
0:10:22 – So we raised this tadpole up to being a frog
0:10:24 and then released him back into the same lake
0:10:24 like six months later.
0:10:26 But we had to go down to the pet store
0:10:27 to buy crickets once in a while.
0:10:28 And I remember it being quite the process.
0:10:31 Now, marketing-wise, it sounds like Jeff is relying
0:10:33 on these like reptile forums,
0:10:34 like good old forum marketing.
0:10:36 Go where your customers already are.
0:10:37 Whether they’re hanging out in these bearded dragon forums
0:10:39 or other reptile forums.
0:10:41 And hey, you know, do you have a good cricket dealer?
0:10:43 If not, I’m your guy.
0:10:44 – I mean, it sounds like he really started
0:10:46 by solving his own problem.
0:10:48 And then he realized there was this need
0:10:49 because he was a part of that community.
0:10:50 And it’s a great way to look,
0:10:52 if you’re looking at what kind of side hustle
0:10:53 you might want to go into.
0:10:54 Like what problems do you have in your life
0:10:55 that you might have already solved
0:10:57 and don’t realize that other people have a need for it?
0:10:59 Or what problems do you have that maybe you could find
0:11:01 a solution for and then see if other people want it?
0:11:04 – What is kind of cool about this niche is, yeah,
0:11:06 there’s probably some initial crickets
0:11:07 that you’re going to have to buy.
0:11:10 And I guess feed, but after a while,
0:11:12 it becomes self-perpetuating, right?
0:11:13 It’s like they’re just going to keep making more.
0:11:16 And it’s like we had somebody who was doing like
0:11:19 plant propagation or selling, you know,
0:11:20 any types of those things where it’s like,
0:11:22 okay, I bought the seed once
0:11:24 and now it grows into this thing.
0:11:25 And then I cut off the limbs of it.
0:11:27 And then those re-propagate.
0:11:29 And it’s like, it’s almost this cool, like infinite loop
0:11:31 where almost zero cost of goods sold, you know,
0:11:33 the farther down the road that you get.
0:11:34 I thought that was really interesting.
0:11:36 – I’m thinking of like sourdough starter.
0:11:38 And like, you know, a lot of people like the home brew.
0:11:40 And like, you know, I know you have your starter for that.
0:11:42 And obviously not a, not very good at any of those things.
0:11:44 But to your point, like I got my mind thinking like,
0:11:45 this kind of almost self-perpetuates itself.
0:11:47 – Yeah, I think that’s one of those really exciting ones.
0:11:50 We had a guy in that last year who was selling
0:11:52 mushrooms out of maybe a spare bedroom.
0:11:55 I can’t imagine that that room smelled very good,
0:11:57 but it was, I wanna say 800 bucks a week
0:11:59 or something worth of, you know, mushrooms
0:12:01 to local restaurants and farmers markets.
0:12:03 And just keep it, keep it rolling.
0:12:04 – Amazing.
0:12:05 – All right.
0:12:08 So we’ll be back with more Halloween themed side hustles
0:12:10 with Jared or right after this.
0:12:14 Being an entrepreneur and being able to work remotely
0:12:16 definitely has its perks.
0:12:19 I’ve recorded podcasts everywhere from Vietnam to Italy,
0:12:21 drafted newsletters from Japan,
0:12:23 hosted mastermind meetings from Spain,
0:12:25 ended up being the middle of the night
0:12:29 to get to US business hours and outlined courses in Mexico.
0:12:32 The common thread of all of these trips though
0:12:33 is Airbnb.
0:12:36 We love being able to get exactly what we’re looking for
0:12:40 in a place to stay and have a more local experience
0:12:42 than staying in some giant hotel chain.
0:12:43 And you know me, I’m always thinking about
0:12:46 the next side hustle idea, the next income stream, right?
0:12:48 And one that’s at the top of the list
0:12:51 is hosting our place on Airbnb while we’re traveling.
0:12:53 That way the house doesn’t have to sit empty.
0:12:55 We could use the income to help pay for the trip.
0:12:57 And we’ve heard from several successful
0:12:59 Airbnb hosts on the show.
0:13:01 And what’s interesting is a lot of them started
0:13:04 with almost that exact strategy,
0:13:06 running their place or even a spare room
0:13:08 while they’re out of town.
0:13:10 Taking inspiration from that,
0:13:12 you might have an Airbnb right under your nose.
0:13:15 In fact, your home might be worth more than you think.
0:13:19 You can find out how much at Airbnb.com/host.
0:13:22 That’s Airbnb.com/host to find out
0:13:24 how much your home is worth.
0:13:26 We’re at our local street fair last month
0:13:30 and my kids are like magnets to any of these vendor booths
0:13:33 that have a prize wheel or a bowl of candy.
0:13:34 And one of those booths happens to be
0:13:37 one of the big name brand wireless carriers.
0:13:40 So the woman asks me as the kids are collecting
0:13:42 their little trinket prize, are you a customer of ours?
0:13:45 And I have to say, no, I’m actually on Mint Mobile
0:13:47 and have been for a long time.
0:13:50 So she asks, well, how much do you pay?
0:13:51 And so I tell her and she says,
0:13:53 “Yeah, I can’t match that,”
0:13:55 which is why I’m excited to partner
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0:13:59 because friends don’t let friends overpay for wireless.
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0:14:53 All right, we’re back with Jared from 201 Creative End.
0:14:54 The niche pursuits podcast,
0:14:57 doing some scary good side hustles.
0:14:58 And number four on this list
0:15:01 is an AI baby picture generator.
0:15:03 Like what is your baby gonna look like?
0:15:06 Upload your picture and your spouse’s picture
0:15:07 and it matches them together.
0:15:09 And it gives kind of this age progression.
0:15:11 Like, oh, at four years old, they’re gonna look like this.
0:15:14 This was launched by Yifan Go out of Singapore
0:15:18 called ourbabyai.com launched April 2023,
0:15:22 charged nine bucks for a set of AI created baby pictures.
0:15:25 I wanna, there’s gotta be like a face mash app
0:15:26 that had been doing it.
0:15:28 I don’t know if the AI angle is necessarily important here.
0:15:31 I feel like there’s been tools to do this for a long time.
0:15:34 But by December, so six, seven months later,
0:15:37 he has crossed over $10,000 in revenue.
0:15:39 According to Yifan’s personal site,
0:15:42 sold that site this year for an undisclosed five figure sum
0:15:44 and relied on Google traffic.
0:15:47 Like people were typing in AI baby generator
0:15:50 and he was blessed with some solid SEO
0:15:52 and came up on the first page for that.
0:15:54 Then look like he’s on the first page anymore.
0:15:56 I couldn’t find our baby AI anymore,
0:15:59 but he sold it, he moved on, built a cool little tool
0:16:01 and was making some money with it.
0:16:03 – I mean, you know, I’ve got, I have kids
0:16:06 and I know when we were, you know, doing all the stuff
0:16:07 while, you know, pregnant leading up to it,
0:16:09 like they’re like, hey, you wanna get that 3D image
0:16:10 of your baby and all that.
0:16:12 And I, you know, I thought it looked kind of weird,
0:16:14 but it is your baby and there’s something about it, you know?
0:16:17 But they never told you what your baby was gonna look like
0:16:19 after it was born and when it was four and when it was six.
0:16:21 I mean, it feels like one of those things that, you know,
0:16:24 it’s like, we talked about already, like parties,
0:16:26 events, weddings, but also baby, like people are willing
0:16:28 to kind of spend some money in that category.
0:16:32 And throwing $9 at something, probably for most people
0:16:34 on a whim, my dad, anybody’s going like, oh my gosh,
0:16:35 I always knew I’d have a blonde haired kid.
0:16:37 Like I don’t think anyone’s taking it too seriously,
0:16:40 but it’s probably worth like nine bucks to people.
0:16:42 And it’s just a cool story in how he really found a price
0:16:44 point that seems to have resonated with enough people
0:16:46 that he got a viable side hustle out of it.
0:16:48 – Yeah, it’s almost the novelty factor
0:16:51 where you could either create it before you have a kid
0:16:55 and then like now five years later, like, hey,
0:16:57 that was pretty accurate or that was way off.
0:16:59 It’s almost this, you know, surprise it.
0:17:01 You put it in a time capsule kind of thing.
0:17:04 I’d be curious to see, maybe I should upload my wife’s
0:17:07 and I can see like, well, did it generate a kid
0:17:08 that looks anything like ours?
0:17:09 – That’s actually a good point.
0:17:11 I mean, we have no idea how accurate this is.
0:17:12 To some degree, it’s gonna take years for it to,
0:17:16 I guess, determine if it’s accurate, but why not?
0:17:17 I mean, he had fun with the whole thing.
0:17:20 He’s got a post on Twitter, my silly website,
0:17:22 our baby AI that doesn’t actually solve a problem
0:17:24 has crossed $10,000 in total revenues.
0:17:26 I think he kind of knew it was a fun thing.
0:17:28 Hopefully everybody who bought those pictures
0:17:30 thought it was kind of a fun thing.
0:17:32 – Yeah, are there any other, you know,
0:17:35 one of the AI side hustles would be building,
0:17:38 you know, an internal GPT for organizations
0:17:41 or building kind of like a customer response bot
0:17:43 for different organizations based on the knowledge base
0:17:45 or something like any other, you know,
0:17:47 could be in this fun category
0:17:49 or it could be in a more useful category,
0:17:52 but like any AI assisted side hustles
0:17:54 that you might be excited about these days.
0:17:56 – Oh man, I’ll talk about it maybe if we have time
0:17:58 to get into like what kind of side hustles we’re working on.
0:17:59 But one of the things I’m doing right now
0:18:01 is repurposing a lot of my email content
0:18:03 that I write for the Weekend Growth newsletter.
0:18:04 I’m repurposing on Medium.
0:18:07 And Medium is really fun ’cause you can kind of,
0:18:08 I’ve been doing that,
0:18:10 but I’ve also been exploring new topics on Medium
0:18:11 and just sharing about it.
0:18:12 And a couple months ago,
0:18:14 my wife and I were having the hardest time
0:18:15 meal planning every week.
0:18:16 And I thought, wait a second,
0:18:19 we know our priorities, we know what we like to eat,
0:18:20 we know what our families like to eat,
0:18:21 we know all these details.
0:18:23 How about I just write a GPT for it?
0:18:24 And so I did.
0:18:26 And so it’s a GPT and then, you know,
0:18:27 it’s pretty simple for people to follow,
0:18:29 but I just thought a month ago, I’m like, Bill,
0:18:30 I wonder if you could sell this,
0:18:33 I wonder if you could sell this idea of here’s a GPT
0:18:35 that’s gonna build your family a custom meal plan
0:18:37 based on, you know, your preferences, your allergies,
0:18:39 your all the different things you want
0:18:41 and actually give you a meal plan every week.
0:18:43 – Yeah, I mean, that’s a huge pain point
0:18:46 that perpetual question of, you know, what’s for dinner?
0:18:48 And, you know, there’s companies solving it
0:18:51 in different ways, obviously from the, you know,
0:18:54 done for you meal kit delivery type of things
0:18:57 down to Paprika is a meal planning app
0:19:00 that’s been mentioned, Cooksmarts we’ve used off and on.
0:19:02 But yeah, if there’s, you know, maybe there is
0:19:04 this AI assisted type of thing, that’d be really cool
0:19:06 to figure out, okay, what’s the grocery list, right?
0:19:09 You know, what are the proportions that need to go at this?
0:19:12 Could we reuse one ingredient across
0:19:13 two or three different meals?
0:19:14 Like, can we make enough to have leftovers?
0:19:17 Like there’s a few different boxes that you could check there
0:19:20 and definitely use some tech assist on that.
0:19:22 – My friend even gave me an idea on that.
0:19:23 He read the article and he’s like,
0:19:24 you know, you could probably do it
0:19:26 where you actually just take a picture of your fridge
0:19:27 and you’re covered and it kind of learns
0:19:28 and sees what you already have.
0:19:30 So you don’t have to go buy that again.
0:19:31 – Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:19:32 Yeah, we already have this stuff.
0:19:33 I like it.
0:19:34 What’s the process?
0:19:36 Like, you know, to make your own meal planning thing
0:19:39 or to make your own GPT, like what does that even look like?
0:19:41 How technical do I have to be?
0:19:42 – Not at all, not at all.
0:19:46 Seriously, like we do a lot of AI implementation
0:19:48 at our agency, but not in a complicated way.
0:19:52 Like you just go to the chat GPT open AI framework
0:19:54 and there’s a whole section on GPTs
0:19:55 and you can create your own.
0:19:57 It’s just, it’s kind of the classic analogy
0:19:58 of how to best use AI to begin with.
0:20:00 Like the more you give it on the way in,
0:20:02 the better it’s going to do for you.
0:20:04 Clearly tell it what you want it to do.
0:20:05 So you kind of have to have the goal in mind.
0:20:07 Don’t go in just kind of brainstorming.
0:20:08 Have the goal in mind
0:20:10 and then just start working in all the different things.
0:20:11 But that’s the great thing.
0:20:12 Like you can make the GPT.
0:20:13 You can play around with it.
0:20:14 You can test it.
0:20:15 You can use it and you can go back in
0:20:16 and add more to it later.
0:20:17 So you can say, you know,
0:20:18 let me give you some more information.
0:20:19 And now that I’ve used this for a week or two.
0:20:20 – Okay, got it.
0:20:22 Yeah, I could upload 10 years of podcast archives
0:20:26 and build something that would be helpful.
0:20:28 – I mean, the challenges creating a side hustle through AI
0:20:30 is that it’s going to be always be changing.
0:20:33 But the brilliance of using AI to create a side hustle,
0:20:36 I think is that, you know, there’s low barriers to entry.
0:20:39 Obviously the cost for doing it isn’t very high,
0:20:40 but also like to your point,
0:20:42 a lot of us can get in there and kind of, you know,
0:20:44 use a lot of these no code solutions
0:20:48 along with, you know, some customization in the AI model
0:20:49 and come up with some different ideas.
0:20:50 I mean, this guy made it work.
0:20:53 I think he said in the shower one day for the AI baby,
0:20:56 you know, all the way back to the AI baby photo thing,
0:20:58 you know, and so it’s an interesting opportunity.
0:21:00 It’s really an interesting opportunity for a lot of people.
0:21:03 That was the original idea for this episode.
0:21:06 Like, could I make the 100% AI episode?
0:21:07 And I’m glad we’re doing this instead,
0:21:09 but maybe that day is coming to be like,
0:21:12 well, that’s kind of a spooky, scary, futuristic thing.
0:21:15 Like we make a Halloween episode where it’s not even,
0:21:18 it’s just Robo, Robo Nick, but we’re really here
0:21:20 in the flesh, very good.
0:21:22 So that was number four, this AI baby generator
0:21:25 making 10 grand in total revenue before selling
0:21:29 for a $10,000 plus exit there.
0:21:30 What’s next for us?
0:21:31 This one’s fun.
0:21:33 We’re gonna go from AI to like a little bit more
0:21:35 of a classic idea.
0:21:37 And this is the cotton candy vending machines.
0:21:40 And so this is somebody who basically started
0:21:42 with two machines inside of a resort.
0:21:44 And so they have this kind of story
0:21:46 about how they stopped working and et cetera.
0:21:48 But basically their first weekend,
0:21:51 that story they talked about was $800 in revenue
0:21:53 from a machine on a good month.
0:21:55 Now, again, they’re doing it year round, it seemed like.
0:21:57 So summer, one machine can make anywhere
0:21:59 from six to 15K in revenue.
0:22:02 They have, I think 10 machines now.
0:22:05 And so they’re up into much higher revenue.
0:22:07 I mean, this is a really interesting idea
0:22:08 because I don’t know about in your neighborhood,
0:22:11 but you’ve obviously got the Halloween festivals.
0:22:14 We’ve got like my kids at their elementary school.
0:22:16 They have their little PTA fundraiser festival.
0:22:18 You’ve got a lot of the ironically like churches
0:22:20 in the neighborhood that do their fall festivals.
0:22:22 And then you’ve also got October fest, by the way.
0:22:25 And that’s usually at end of September, early October.
0:22:26 So specifically this time of year,
0:22:29 like the cotton candy of any machine you could use year round.
0:22:30 But this time of year, there’s actually a lot
0:22:32 of like fall festivals where these sorts
0:22:33 of things would work really well.
0:22:36 – Yeah, if you could rent it out for an event.
0:22:38 ‘Cause the machines themselves are maybe a couple thousand
0:22:41 bucks and you have some material costs going into that.
0:22:45 But if he’s pulling in 800 bucks from one machine
0:22:47 on one weekend, like he’s making cotton candy.
0:22:49 Like there’s not that much material that goes into it.
0:22:53 And, you know, he described there is more,
0:22:54 I mean, any vending machine has some,
0:22:56 you either got to go restock it
0:22:58 or you got to go service it, like in this case.
0:23:00 But he’s like, I’ve got independent contractors
0:23:02 on the ground, they make this part of their route
0:23:03 and they go do this.
0:23:04 The question is always like,
0:23:06 oh shoot, why didn’t the resort think of this?
0:23:07 If they’re having that kind of ROI,
0:23:09 why didn’t the resort just put it in themselves?
0:23:12 But, you know, that’s not the business that they’re in.
0:23:13 They want to stay in their lane.
0:23:16 They want to, you know, delegate this little extra service
0:23:17 to somebody else.
0:23:20 This is distinctivevending.com if you want to check it out.
0:23:23 So he’s got the, I think he’s got a balloon machine
0:23:24 that makes balloon animals.
0:23:26 That seems even more complicated.
0:23:28 But again, almost no cost of goods,
0:23:29 all like a little Rover balloon.
0:23:32 And you charge three, four or five bucks for that
0:23:33 and you’re doing pretty well.
0:23:36 – Yeah, he said, in 2024, he’s on track
0:23:37 to make 500 grand in revenue.
0:23:39 I mean, that’s quite the side hustle.
0:23:40 Obviously we don’t know the, you know,
0:23:41 the net profit or anything like that.
0:23:44 My wife, when she was on a team growing up
0:23:45 and they would fundraise,
0:23:47 and their most successful fundraiser
0:23:49 was renting a snow cone machine
0:23:51 and then going to a local market
0:23:54 and selling snow cones to the local crowd.
0:23:56 And then they would pay obviously for the rental
0:23:58 for the snow cone, but they would make,
0:24:01 they would make 1,000 in one day selling snow cones
0:24:03 even after the rental and the cost of goods sold.
0:24:06 – Yeah, yeah, selling frozen water and sugar syrup
0:24:08 is some pretty good margins and that too.
0:24:09 – So this is a good idea.
0:24:11 And like you said, I mean, once you buy the machine,
0:24:14 probably some service, but if you have a place to store it,
0:24:16 if you have like an area you can store it,
0:24:16 like it’s kind of one of these things
0:24:18 where it’s not costing you money
0:24:19 if it’s not rented out that weekend.
0:24:21 – Yeah, there’s a novelty factor of like,
0:24:24 oh shoot, I’ve never seen a cotton candy vending machine before.
0:24:26 So I think that works in his favor.
0:24:28 And you can kind of get inspiration from this stuff
0:24:30 while you’re traveling.
0:24:32 Like we’ve got a trip to Japan coming up next year
0:24:35 and it’s like vending machine central.
0:24:36 There’s some stat, like, you know,
0:24:38 there’s a vending machine for every person in the country.
0:24:41 But you know, you wake up the first morning
0:24:43 that you’re there because of jet lag
0:24:44 and it’s five in the morning
0:24:46 and our son was three months old at the time.
0:24:47 Like, all right, buddy, you know,
0:24:49 strapped into the ergo, let’s go for a walk.
0:24:52 And you find these like iced coffee vending machines.
0:24:53 It’s like a dollar.
0:24:56 And you’re like, yes, this is exactly what I need right now.
0:24:57 This is fantastic.
0:24:58 But they have vending machines for everything,
0:25:00 even at certain restaurants.
0:25:02 And so you take inspiration from that
0:25:04 as long as you find manufacturing and stuff.
0:25:07 Like if you can bring that to a good location,
0:25:11 and that’s kind of the key component is, you know,
0:25:13 location, location, location, just like real estate.
0:25:16 In our vending machine episode we did earlier in the year
0:25:20 was 599 with Mike Hoffman from vendingpreneurs.
0:25:22 And he’s, I said, well, you know,
0:25:24 what’s going to separate you from the five other guys,
0:25:25 you know, knocking on the door,
0:25:27 trying to put a vending machine in this place.
0:25:28 And he’s like, don’t say the V word.
0:25:32 Talk about modern amenities instead of vending.
0:25:35 And, you know, because he’s opening it up to,
0:25:37 you know, these like staffless,
0:25:39 mini, mini market type of things.
0:25:41 And, you know, more than just like your old school
0:25:42 of vending machine type of stuff.
0:25:45 But I think it could play well with cotton candy
0:25:48 or balloons or different seasonal events.
0:25:51 There’s much more, the game is much broader
0:25:53 than just, you know, candy bars and sodas.
0:25:54 – I listened to that episode.
0:25:56 It was really a good episode.
0:25:59 And it was, that one felt like it was really, you know,
0:26:00 to some degree you’re relying a lot more
0:26:04 on how you discuss this concept with that local place,
0:26:06 whatever it is, whether it’s, you know,
0:26:08 what we get in all, he talked about it in the episode.
0:26:10 But, you know, to some degree, this one, you know,
0:26:12 you could capitalize on a lot of different things.
0:26:16 Like, you know, local events and festivals and parties.
0:26:18 And you could probably even going back to an idea
0:26:19 we already shared and talked about.
0:26:22 Like, you could probably market this to parties in the area.
0:26:25 You know, so you can market it to summer barbecues
0:26:27 and Halloween parties and all these different, you know,
0:26:29 Christmas parties and things that people throw.
0:26:31 And how cool would it be to have like a cotton candy machine
0:26:33 as the featured dessert for the night?
0:26:36 – Yeah, it would almost be like a photo booth rental
0:26:39 for this wedding, for this party or something like that.
0:26:41 But even better, if you could find that evergreen
0:26:43 location that’s just gonna make you sales all the time.
0:26:48 But there’s an event or a specific play there as well.
0:26:50 So that’s number five on this list.
0:26:53 Number six is one we alluded to earlier where it’s like,
0:26:56 okay, we’ll do Christmas light install and take down.
0:27:00 But, you know, that theme of decorating for holidays
0:27:02 has been creeping earlier and earlier in the year.
0:27:05 And Halloween has become quite a big thing.
0:27:07 We were at Home Depot with my son and they had, you know,
0:27:11 these huge, you know, animatronic zombies and stuff.
0:27:13 And then you got a button on the floor and watch them,
0:27:15 you know, raise his arms up at you and make some noise.
0:27:18 It’s definitely become a thing with the inflatables
0:27:20 and everything else to decorate your yard for Halloween.
0:27:22 In fact, we got a little spiderweb up in the yard now.
0:27:24 We never had anything like that as kids.
0:27:26 We had jack-o’-lanterns on the porch.
0:27:27 Like that was it. Turn the light on.
0:27:28 Jack-o’-lanterns on the porch.
0:27:29 You’re open for business for trick or treating.
0:27:32 But like now it’s become such a thing.
0:27:34 And so this is lightupyourholidays.com.
0:27:37 They started doing Christmas lights 20 years ago in Chicago.
0:27:40 Now they’ve expanded to do Halloween as well.
0:27:43 With packages starting at $1,800.
0:27:45 Doesn’t take many houses to make a meaningful side hustle
0:27:48 if your packages start at $1,800.
0:27:50 – They are all about free design, right?
0:27:52 So like, there’s clearly like,
0:27:54 you’re buying something that’s unique.
0:27:55 This is probably a little bit different at least
0:27:57 from what I saw than your classic like,
0:27:58 hey, we’ll hang your lights up.
0:28:00 And I show up and you’ve already got the lights
0:28:01 and I just hang them up and I move on.
0:28:04 Which for the record, I think that’s pretty lucrative too.
0:28:04 But this is different.
0:28:06 This is really going for that kind of luxury feel
0:28:08 where we’re gonna give you something totally unique.
0:28:09 We’re gonna design something.
0:28:12 We’ll click here to request your free Halloween design,
0:28:13 schedule you a virtual design call
0:28:16 to see your custom options and pricings and then reserve it.
0:28:18 So you’re exactly right.
0:28:19 Like if you’re already doing,
0:28:21 if you already have access to a lot of this stuff
0:28:23 for a different holiday like Christmas,
0:28:25 I mean, shoot, it’s such a good idea.
0:28:26 Their website is generic enough
0:28:29 that it’s probably start off about Christmas lights.
0:28:30 And I’m sure on November 1st,
0:28:34 this entire homepage gets changed over to Christmas, right?
0:28:36 But right now it’s all Halloween themed.
0:28:37 – Yeah, yeah, and then we’ll shoot.
0:28:40 We’ll take over for Valentine’s Day and 4th of July.
0:28:43 Like there’s, I mean, if you have enough customers
0:28:44 to keep doing it.
0:28:45 The other one that I wanna point out
0:28:49 under this category of holiday decor, Halloween decor
0:28:51 is porch pumpkins.
0:28:54 So you gotta check out this woman on Instagram.
0:28:57 Her handle is porch pumpkins, 34,000 followers.
0:29:00 This is Heather Torres out of Dallas.
0:29:04 And what she does is she just piles a bunch of pumpkins
0:29:05 on people’s porches.
0:29:08 And that’s me being somewhat facetious,
0:29:10 but she makes them look really nice.
0:29:11 – Two people that have no design skills.
0:29:12 Is that what you’re implying?
0:29:13 That’s kind of what it sounds like to us.
0:29:15 – A million dollars worth of pumpkins
0:29:18 in four months out of the year.
0:29:19 She’s got a whole, I think she has a warehouse.
0:29:20 She’s got drivers.
0:29:21 Like there’s some logistics involved.
0:29:23 There’s some costs involved.
0:29:25 But she’s found customers doing a million dollars
0:29:27 of revenue to put pumpkins on people’s porches.
0:29:28 There is a niche for everything.
0:29:30 I was really excited when I found this one.
0:29:32 – I think, I love that one when I saw it
0:29:35 because that just taps into,
0:29:36 you don’t have to stop at the porch.
0:29:39 You can go and help them decorate the inside of their house.
0:29:40 You can help them decorate their backyard.
0:29:44 You can, like people, they don’t have to then buy
0:29:48 and store and piece together a good looking design
0:29:51 for their holiday theme, in this case Halloween.
0:29:53 You can just have it all delivered, set up,
0:29:54 aesthetically put together.
0:29:56 You can do just your porch.
0:29:58 But I mean, I would imagine you could extend into the home
0:29:59 and you could do every holiday.
0:30:00 You know, people like to design for the summer
0:30:02 and the people like to design for fall in general.
0:30:05 So, there’s a, boy, that thing’s got a lot of legs
0:30:06 to work through.
0:30:09 – Yeah, I was super impressed.
0:30:11 It says last year, she did 900 jobs,
0:30:15 ranging between 300 and $2,000 with extra charges.
0:30:16 Hey, you want me to take the pumpkins away?
0:30:19 We’ll happy to do it, but we’ll charge you extra for that.
0:30:21 It was funny, we read Trader Joe’s with the kids
0:30:24 a couple of weeks ago and this lady in front of us in line,
0:30:27 she, her entire cart, no food, only pumpkins.
0:30:30 And, you know, maybe, maybe she’s the local version
0:30:31 of porch pumpkins of Heather.
0:30:34 I was just, what are you gonna do with so many pumpkins?
0:30:36 But maybe she’s doing it as a sign business.
0:30:38 We’ll go decorate some people’s porches.
0:30:39 – And this is such an interesting,
0:30:42 I mean, we obviously, she’s doing at so much scale,
0:30:44 but you can start off by just tapping your network.
0:30:46 And then this would probably also do really well
0:30:48 on social media, you know, TikTok, Instagram,
0:30:50 Instagram posting about this.
0:30:52 You could probably build up enough of a head of steam
0:30:55 just throughout the year by showing you,
0:30:57 by showing this process over and over again,
0:30:58 adding some personality to it.
0:30:59 Like this feels like a business.
0:31:00 You don’t have to have like SEO skills
0:31:03 and necessarily have a, you know, we talked about
0:31:05 like getting your, your vending machine placed
0:31:05 in certain places.
0:31:07 I bet you could just rely on your network
0:31:09 and social media to really get it off the ground.
0:31:12 – Yeah, it sounds like it primarily is social driven
0:31:13 for her.
0:31:14 Hey, I’m gonna open up orders in July.
0:31:16 I’m sold out by August.
0:31:19 And now it’s just time to go find the pumpkins,
0:31:21 do the design work, set them up.
0:31:22 I don’t know, that was crazy.
0:31:23 – That’s probably where she spends most of her time
0:31:26 is driving over trying to find all the pumpkins she needs.
0:31:29 – Yeah, go to the buy out a segment of the pumpkin patch
0:31:31 and make sure they got only the good looking ones.
0:31:33 Porchfumpkins.com, you can find her over there.
0:31:35 We’ve got more Halloween themed side hustles,
0:31:37 scary good side hustles with Jared coming up
0:31:38 right after this.
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0:34:18 All right, we’re back with Jared from 201 Creative End,
0:34:19 the weekend growth newsletter,
0:34:22 doing some scary, good side hustles.
0:34:25 And this was a really interesting one that I found.
0:34:27 It was selling digital clothes.
0:34:31 And this just blows my mind ’cause my son is,
0:34:33 the first thing he gets a new game,
0:34:34 I wanna change my avatar.
0:34:37 Or he was very into what his character is wearing
0:34:41 in whatever game it is, if it’s Minecraft
0:34:43 or it’s like Nintendo Switch sports.
0:34:46 Like, oh, I got this upgraded jacket.
0:34:47 Or like, who cares?
0:34:48 Like, I just wanna play the game.
0:34:50 Like, spend so much time on this stuff,
0:34:52 but there’s a huge market around this.
0:34:55 So this is Kiesia Watson, 22-year-old,
0:34:58 selling Roblox clothes.
0:35:01 And I did not know this was a thing,
0:35:05 but she does freelance clothing design for some big brands
0:35:07 who wanna get their brand into this game.
0:35:08 Like, hey, where are people spending their time?
0:35:09 They’re spending some time in this game.
0:35:10 We wanna be everywhere.
0:35:13 We wanna get our clothes and designs in front of there.
0:35:15 And so she’d been doing it for years and years,
0:35:18 selling her own designs and clothes.
0:35:20 It’s a cool side hustling that it’s something
0:35:21 that you create once, so over and over again,
0:35:24 like an app or a piece of software or a piece of content.
0:35:27 But, you know, it’s two cents per sale.
0:35:29 Like, it was definitely a volume game
0:35:30 until she went out and started to get, like,
0:35:32 freelance design contracts from some bigger brands.
0:35:35 – I think I saw that she made in her first year,
0:35:38 which was 2023, over $110,000,
0:35:42 according to, like, it was verified by CNBC, I suppose.
0:35:44 And, I mean, this piggyback stuff,
0:35:47 when I first saw this story on our list here today,
0:35:48 I thought it was gonna be, like,
0:35:52 hey, the classic Halloween costume rental place, you know?
0:35:53 Like, be a little local boutique.
0:35:55 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, like a spirit Halloween, yeah.
0:35:57 – Yeah, you know, especially if you know how to sew,
0:35:58 or, you know, you can just, like,
0:36:01 I was thinking in my head how great that idea is.
0:36:02 Even not even if you know how to sew,
0:36:04 it’s just, like, go out to all your friends
0:36:04 on November 1st and be like,
0:36:06 “Hey, can I buy all your old costumes
0:36:09 “you guys just got done with for like a dollar each off yet?”
0:36:11 And you can just start building up a whole supply of costumes
0:36:14 just by buying all your friends used Halloween costumes
0:36:15 the day after Halloween.
0:36:16 But this puts a whole new spin on it.
0:36:18 I mean, this is all digital,
0:36:19 so it opens up all these avenues,
0:36:21 and it also kind of highlights, you mentioned it,
0:36:24 like, using that skill set and that expertise you built up
0:36:27 to then go out and get contracts that are outside of that.
0:36:29 That seems to be where she earned a lot of her money.
0:36:30 – Yeah, this is an interesting one.
0:36:33 It’s trying to go, you’re already part of this ecosystem,
0:36:34 you’re part of this community,
0:36:36 you know how the game is played,
0:36:37 you know what’s gonna play well.
0:36:41 But then playing that game the way you’ve been doing it
0:36:42 is not gonna become a full-time thing.
0:36:45 It’s like, you gotta go higher market,
0:36:47 you gotta go find those corporate clients
0:36:51 that really have budget to spend in a digital world,
0:36:52 in this case.
0:36:54 – Yeah, I think this is a good time to mention,
0:36:55 like, with every side hustle,
0:36:57 you gotta understand how scalable it is
0:36:59 and how scalable you want it to be.
0:37:02 And for a lot of us, we kind of land into a side hustle,
0:37:03 and then it goes well,
0:37:04 and then we start thinking about what’s next,
0:37:05 but you don’t necessarily think about what’s next
0:37:07 until you have that first initial success.
0:37:09 But it’s a great example, like you said,
0:37:12 kind of going upmarket and not getting kind of confined
0:37:14 by just the limitations of what she started with.
0:37:16 – Yeah, the parallel would be, you know,
0:37:17 like stock photography shows up
0:37:19 on a bunch of different lists of side hustles,
0:37:21 but the people who have success doing it
0:37:24 have thousands, hundreds of thousands of images.
0:37:26 And okay, we’re gonna play this volume game,
0:37:29 and it can work, like it’s passive once those things sell.
0:37:31 But the near-term thing is like,
0:37:34 why don’t I go do portraits, weddings, senior photos,
0:37:36 family photos, corporate events,
0:37:39 and charge three, four, 500, you know,
0:37:41 up to several thousand dollars for that event.
0:37:43 And so it’s kind of a similar play here,
0:37:45 where it’s like, yeah, I can make these things
0:37:47 and they’ll sell, and I can build up my portfolio,
0:37:49 but I gotta go find the corporate client.
0:37:51 And I’ve been thinking, ’cause some people have approached,
0:37:55 like could we, you know, license your side hustle curriculum,
0:37:58 or could you create a side hustle curriculum?
0:38:01 Like who’s the bigger, who’s the bigger fish
0:38:03 that already would be interested in what you know?
0:38:06 And that’s something that’s kind of been on my mind lately,
0:38:07 where it’s like, okay, you could sell, you know,
0:38:10 onesie twosies, or you could go license this to somebody.
0:38:13 We had a guy who was doing a book summary service,
0:38:15 that was his side hustle.
0:38:16 And yeah, you could sell it,
0:38:17 you could go to the website and buy it,
0:38:20 but like for him, it was like, we’re gonna go to Zappos,
0:38:21 we’re gonna go to these companies
0:38:26 that have proven to make investments in employee learning,
0:38:28 like continuing education, like they care about this stuff.
0:38:31 Like as a benefit of working here,
0:38:34 you also get access to this book summary service.
0:38:36 It was like, oh, that was a great pitch.
0:38:39 – This reminds me in equal parts, like to your point,
0:38:42 this reminds me of a story that I heard a while back
0:38:43 about a friend of a friend, so I don’t know them,
0:38:44 but they kind of built something
0:38:46 that kind of reminds me of this
0:38:47 for the Minecraft community.
0:38:48 And then, you know, caught popularity.
0:38:50 They weren’t making a ton of money off of it.
0:38:51 It was just truly like a little side hustle,
0:38:53 more of a passion project than anything.
0:38:55 But years later, landed a job at Minecraft
0:38:57 as a result of getting on their radar
0:38:59 and one thing leads led to another.
0:39:00 And so they ended up, yes,
0:39:02 they didn’t have a side hustle anymore.
0:39:02 Now they had a job,
0:39:04 but they were doing a job in an industry
0:39:06 they absolutely loved and was built on
0:39:08 the fact that they built a side hustle on it.
0:39:11 – Yeah, there’s some cool stuff you can do in Minecraft.
0:39:14 I think some friends of ours bought Disneyland,
0:39:16 basically a Minecraft version of Disneyland
0:39:19 where they’ve recreated the entire park, all the rides,
0:39:22 and, you know, probably paid five bucks for it or something.
0:39:26 But if this guy sells Disneyland to thousands of people,
0:39:27 and it was kind of a cool,
0:39:30 something he probably wanted to create anyway, you know?
0:39:33 It’s like, if you can find that kind of space to play in,
0:39:35 I think you’re gonna have some fun.
0:39:38 – I agree, especially if you already are in that space anyways.
0:39:40 I mean, shoot, what’s the downside?
0:39:42 – All right, next one is one that has come
0:39:44 across my desk a few times this year.
0:39:48 And I know nothing about gambling or sports betting.
0:39:50 Now it’s like, what do these numbers mean?
0:39:53 Like the plus 120 or the minus,
0:39:54 I don’t know, I had to ask my friends this weekend,
0:39:57 like what does it mean when it says like plus 1300 or something?
0:39:59 But the side hustles that’s come across my desk
0:40:01 is arbitrage sports betting.
0:40:03 Yeah, are you bet on football games or anything?
0:40:04 – Nope, not at all.
0:40:06 – All right, so this will be a great segment
0:40:07 to complete rookies.
0:40:11 So my understanding of this is different sports books
0:40:13 are gonna have different odds on different games.
0:40:16 And the arbitrage opportunity is to find one
0:40:18 where this sports book says, you know,
0:40:20 the Yankees are gonna win
0:40:23 and this sports book says the Yankees are gonna lose
0:40:26 and you find the, so you make two bets
0:40:28 and you know you’re gonna lose one
0:40:30 but you know you’re also gonna win one
0:40:32 and that cancels out the loss
0:40:34 and you make a little bit of margin on it.
0:40:36 Like it sounds tedious, sounds impossible to do
0:40:38 without software and that’s why there’s a bunch of software.
0:40:40 Like, you know, I don’t wanna plug any of them
0:40:41 and can’t speak for them
0:40:43 but there’s a bunch of softwares that’ll help you do this.
0:40:44 You just have to have accounts
0:40:47 at every different sports book imaginable.
0:40:50 And I don’t know how frowned upon this is
0:40:52 if this is like just a known thing that happens.
0:40:55 Like I guess they’re taking their cut or their fees
0:40:55 or they probably don’t care
0:40:56 but it’s an interesting one.
0:41:00 – I mean, if you’re like a data nerd, a math nerd,
0:41:02 maybe this is something to look into.
0:41:04 Obviously, sports betting has grown quite a bit.
0:41:06 I was reading here, I think it was in 2018
0:41:08 kind of opened up a lot more legalization.
0:41:10 I think I saw a stat in here again.
0:41:14 35% of Americans are betting on sports now.
0:41:17 So, you know, growing market, growing, that sort of thing,
0:41:18 I think you described it pretty well.
0:41:20 I’ve never bet on a sporting event
0:41:22 that I can think of in my entire life.
0:41:23 But from, I am a math nerd.
0:41:26 Like I did kind of major basically in college in math.
0:41:28 And so the process does kind of make sense.
0:41:31 You know, you’re kind of arbitraging different sports betting
0:41:34 books and the way that they set lines
0:41:35 and the way these things can change dynamically.
0:41:39 You know, these numbers can change like leading up to a game
0:41:41 or one sports book, like somebody gets injured
0:41:43 and one sports book looks at that differently
0:41:44 than another one, right?
0:41:45 And so-
0:41:47 – Yeah, or they haven’t all updated in real time.
0:41:49 Like there’s some lag and that’s kind of my understanding
0:41:50 is like-
0:41:52 – Yep, or you get inside information that this guy’s
0:41:54 injured and you know before the sports book finds out
0:41:56 or so there’s a lot of stuff there where like,
0:41:59 I can see how there would be arbitrage opportunities
0:42:01 every weekend, every week on different sporting events
0:42:05 depending on where you land in terms of the way
0:42:07 your mind works and in terms of how interested you are
0:42:08 to kind of get involved in that.
0:42:11 – Yeah, I was really surprised when we were watching
0:42:12 football last weekend, you know,
0:42:15 there was a lot of gambling related commercial.
0:42:18 And the first one was like, you know, when you have a hunch
0:42:21 you want to be able to place that bet like right now.
0:42:22 I thought it was a joke effort.
0:42:24 They were like, oh no, they’re like seriously promoting
0:42:26 fan duel or whatever, you know, what it was.
0:42:28 It was kind of surprising.
0:42:30 It’s like, oh, I guess this is, this is a big deal.
0:42:33 And if you are going to do it, maybe there’s some
0:42:36 arbitrage opportunity, the thing with any arbitrage
0:42:38 opportunity is like, it’s usually short-lived.
0:42:41 It’s usually kind of a narrow window,
0:42:42 but there’s got to be some people making this work.
0:42:44 – Might as be the movie 21, right?
0:42:46 Where, you know, blackjack and learning to,
0:42:50 if you’re smart enough at a time, like you said,
0:42:52 which is short-lived because they’ve caught onto that now
0:42:56 and casinos don’t allow you to kind of get that advantage,
0:42:58 but they were able to count cars and then use their
0:43:00 brilliance to work the system.
0:43:02 And that’s basically like a form of arbitrage, right?
0:43:05 So, you know, to some degree that loophole has been closed
0:43:07 now, but perhaps this one still reigns supreme.
0:43:12 – Yeah, I love me a underdog taking down the casino story.
0:43:14 I will read those, I will watch those all day long.
0:43:16 – I don’t think anybody was reading for the casino
0:43:18 in that movie. (laughs)
0:43:19 – Yeah, and maybe since this is all online,
0:43:21 like you’re just, you don’t have the, you know,
0:43:24 backroom brass knuckles type of risk.
0:43:26 You know, if you, they find out you’re an advantage player,
0:43:29 like, I don’t know, we’ll throw that out there.
0:43:32 Not Halloween related at all, but just something
0:43:34 I thought was interesting that’s come across.
0:43:36 – It’s the first time I’ve heard about this approach to it.
0:43:38 I think it’s a very interesting approach, again,
0:43:39 ’cause of my mathematical background,
0:43:40 I like the idea behind it.
0:43:43 – Yeah, if there’s ever risk-free profit like that,
0:43:45 that lane tends to get crowded right away.
0:43:48 There’s probably risks associated, risks in anything,
0:43:50 but it doesn’t last forever, so it’s gotta be one of these,
0:43:52 you know, get in while the gettin’s good.
0:43:54 All right, what’s next on this list?
0:43:57 – Well, you know, kind of, we’ve talked about topics
0:43:58 like this already at this point.
0:44:02 This one is a bicycle ice cream business.
0:44:04 It’s Catherine O’Brien, and she’s the owner
0:44:05 and the founder of Cream Cruiser.
0:44:07 Now this one has a little bit of a different twist to it,
0:44:08 so hang with it here.
0:44:11 What she did is, yes, she created a,
0:44:14 like an ice cream bike business where she’s gonna,
0:44:16 I think she said she started local farmer’s markets.
0:44:18 She got into weddings, corporate events, college events.
0:44:19 She just has a bike.
0:44:20 I don’t know, she actually just straight up
0:44:23 rode the bike to it, or she took it on a truck,
0:44:24 and it was more of a gimmick.
0:44:26 But it’s got ice cream in the back of it,
0:44:27 you know, ice cream sandwiches and all that.
0:44:29 I think she’s making like 10 grand a month
0:44:30 or something she was saying, but what she then did,
0:44:32 and this is what’s kind of fascinating,
0:44:34 we haven’t had this yet, is that she then went on
0:44:37 to make basically bike business university,
0:44:39 and that’s at bikebusinessuniversity.com,
0:44:42 and that is basically like teaching people
0:44:43 how to start these businesses, right?
0:44:45 And so this is a tried and true model,
0:44:49 and she makes $20,000 per month passive
0:44:51 from what it sounds like, and she said something about
0:44:54 doubling by the start of summer 2024 at last update.
0:44:55 She’s got a lot of followers on Instagram,
0:44:58 made 2,000 followers, ice cream bike lady,
0:45:00 so she’s made a business, a side hustle business
0:45:02 out of a service, but then she’s also made
0:45:03 a bigger side hustle business
0:45:05 how to teach you people how to do that service.
0:45:06 – The side hustles on side hustles,
0:45:08 one thing leads to the next.
0:45:09 There’s somebody doing this in our neighborhood,
0:45:12 and again, you know, very seasonal.
0:45:13 I think she’s in Baltimore, you know,
0:45:15 it’s gonna be equally seasonal there,
0:45:17 but we always are calculated.
0:45:18 You do, the guy comes by, you know,
0:45:21 once a week after school when the weather’s good,
0:45:24 you see him pop by the, you know, swim meets
0:45:25 when the community swim meets are going on,
0:45:26 and he just kind of has this rack,
0:45:28 and we’re always like, what kind of, you know,
0:45:31 the calculations, how many do you think he sells a day,
0:45:34 you know, what kind of go, very low overhead.
0:45:37 I mean, he’s got a bike with like a cooler attached to it.
0:45:38 Sure, there’s a custom build out on there,
0:45:41 but pretty impressive that she’s able to do that.
0:45:44 And again, going after the bigger ticket,
0:45:46 you know, weddings, corporate events,
0:45:48 rather than just, you know, onesie choosy ice cream sales,
0:45:50 I think is an interesting play on that too.
0:45:54 And then the age old playbook, do the thing, get the result,
0:45:57 and then obviously it’s, you know, kind of a,
0:46:00 I think it’s sold as being like a fun, outdoorsy,
0:46:02 money-making business.
0:46:04 And it’s like, yeah, I attracted 80,000 followers
0:46:06 for other people who want to learn how to do this.
0:46:07 So Catherine’s doing really well.
0:46:09 – I misspoke, by the way, I said $10,000 a month.
0:46:11 Geez, I looked back at it because I was looking to see,
0:46:13 my point was going to be like, the overhead is so low,
0:46:15 like even the startup costs, like,
0:46:17 you think about the classic ice cream, you know, vendor,
0:46:19 and they got to buy that big truck,
0:46:20 and you got to maintain this truck.
0:46:22 It always looks like it’s about to break down
0:46:24 and never start again, you know, and all that.
0:46:26 But this is so much easier, like the investment.
0:46:30 She said she invested under $10,000 to get it going.
0:46:31 So that was a $10,000 reference.
0:46:33 But I mean, to your point, like,
0:46:34 I think there’s so much versatility here,
0:46:36 like probably driving around, selling, you know,
0:46:38 in neighborhoods is not as profitable
0:46:40 as getting that wedding gig, that corporate gig,
0:46:43 you know, the summer fair, whatever it is,
0:46:44 that’s probably where, you know,
0:46:45 you can make a substantial amount of money.
0:46:46 It is a bit seasonal.
0:46:48 So I do go back to that seasonality thing,
0:46:49 like in Baltimore in the winter,
0:46:51 I’m wondering how much bike riding she’s doing,
0:46:52 selling ice cream cones,
0:46:53 but certainly a good spring, summer,
0:46:54 maybe early fall thing.
0:46:58 – Yeah, it turns into the hot chocolate bike vendor,
0:47:00 the hot coffee bike vendor.
0:47:02 – Turn it, flip it on its head.
0:47:03 – Oh, here it is.
0:47:06 Okay, 100 grand in five months out of the year
0:47:08 with 75% profit margins.
0:47:11 What else could you sell out of the back of a bike?
0:47:12 I think this is kind of, you know,
0:47:14 first it was food trucks,
0:47:16 and it’s like, well, even that’s too much overhead, right?
0:47:18 Like how do we shrink this down even further?
0:47:19 So pretty cool.
0:47:21 – Yeah, I think it’s great, especially again,
0:47:23 like I’m thinking about where I live, you know,
0:47:25 I live about 45 minutes out of San Diego,
0:47:27 but tons of tourists come here in the summer, right?
0:47:29 So I mean, you could just ride that thing
0:47:30 up and down the boardwalk.
0:47:32 I don’t even know if you’d have to have a permit
0:47:33 up and down all day.
0:47:35 I think you could probably make a killing.
0:47:38 – Yeah, these are the little ideas
0:47:40 that I absolutely love because it’s like,
0:47:42 doesn’t cost you anything to get it started.
0:47:44 And then hopefully, I mean, do your due diligence
0:47:46 on what kind of regulations and requirements
0:47:48 you’re gonna have to be a food vendor,
0:47:52 but pretty quick to get off the ground and, you know,
0:47:54 sell an ice cream on a hot day is a pretty easy sell.
0:47:55 So I’m doing good.
0:47:58 The last one on this list, number 10 is,
0:47:59 I don’t know how real this is.
0:48:02 This is a real life wedding crusher
0:48:04 that’s been written up in a few different sources.
0:48:07 One, one recent one was in the New York Post.
0:48:09 This is Ernesto Reynarres Vareja.
0:48:13 He lives in Spain and he is a professional wedding crusher
0:48:17 for a base fee of 500 euros, roughly $550.
0:48:20 Ernesto says he’s gonna, I’m gonna come
0:48:21 and I will crash your wedding.
0:48:25 I’m gonna pretend to be the bride’s long lost lover
0:48:27 and, you know, run away with her.
0:48:29 And I guess the primary target,
0:48:32 the target audience is the bride who’s got cold feet
0:48:36 and like wants to break it off in a really dramatic way.
0:48:39 At the altar, it was really interesting,
0:48:42 but Ernesto says he’s booked up through December.
0:48:44 – When I first saw this,
0:48:47 I really thought this was going to be an ode to,
0:48:48 when you say like wedding crashers,
0:48:51 like hiring someone to be like the life of the party, right?
0:48:52 Like if you want your wedding to be awesome,
0:48:56 hire someone who like super outgoing, super funny,
0:48:59 super loud and will show up and like dance the night away
0:49:00 and get the party going, right?
0:49:02 I didn’t expect it to be somebody who’d show up
0:49:05 and crash your wedding in with the intent to break it up.
0:49:07 And so there’s enough details in here.
0:49:09 It feels pretty legit, but I was like, there’s no way,
0:49:11 but he says he’s booked up and he’ll basically show up
0:49:13 and like for a cool 500 euro,
0:49:15 you can just kind of guess if that’s the way
0:49:17 you want to go about solving your wedding cold feet.
0:49:19 Like, I guess that’s the thing.
0:49:20 – This is proof that you don’t,
0:49:22 you only need a certain number of clients.
0:49:23 You don’t need to sell to the entire world.
0:49:25 – Yeah, there’s a market for anything.
0:49:28 And we talked to Jen Glance from Rides Mades for hire.
0:49:29 Is this a real thing?
0:49:31 And she’s like, yeah, you know,
0:49:34 people will hire me to be their maid of honor,
0:49:36 to help kind of be a shoulder to cry on,
0:49:39 to be a friend for them on this day.
0:49:43 And she built a really interesting business around that.
0:49:45 So the part that was like, got me was like,
0:49:47 is this for real?
0:49:48 It was at the end of the article.
0:49:51 He says, I get paid extra if I get hit.
0:49:53 Like if the groom or the groomsmen are like
0:49:56 punching me or slapping me on my way out,
0:49:58 you know, I get 50 euros for every extra hit.
0:49:59 So like, obviously I don’t want to get hurt,
0:50:01 but I kind of want to take my time too,
0:50:03 because that’s why I made my money.
0:50:04 I was like, is this for real?
0:50:06 – I mean, I would think maybe he put that in there
0:50:08 just as a job hazard, you know?
0:50:10 It’s like, if I have to go to the hospital to get,
0:50:12 you know, stitches, like that takes away
0:50:13 from my 500 euro iron.
0:50:16 So I’ve got to upcharge every time I get hit.
0:50:17 And then he’s like, well,
0:50:18 as long as I can play that card properly,
0:50:20 like don’t end up in the hospital,
0:50:22 maybe put away a couple hundred more euro
0:50:23 on the way out, you know?
0:50:24 – Yeah.
0:50:25 – I was a wedding photographer in my first career.
0:50:27 I did that for a decade.
0:50:30 And so I have definitely seen the other side of that,
0:50:31 which is people showed up at weddings
0:50:34 and we actually proved it one time.
0:50:35 I shot a wedding on a Friday night
0:50:39 and then my business partner shot a wedding on a Saturday night
0:50:40 and we were editing the weddings the next week
0:50:44 and we saw the exact same person in the exact same outfit
0:50:45 at one wedding and the next wedding.
0:50:46 We actually went and asked the bride and groom
0:50:48 when we saw them next, like, “Do you know that person?”
0:50:49 They’re like, “No, no, I don’t know that person.
0:50:50 I thought that was me.”
0:50:51 And both of them had the same story.
0:50:52 Like, “No, I didn’t know that person.”
0:50:54 Same venues in town.
0:50:57 So there are definitely people who crash weddings.
0:50:59 I didn’t know anybody was hired to crash weddings.
0:51:02 – There’s there for the free food and drinks.
0:51:04 – Yeah, yeah, I think so, the social aspects.
0:51:05 I mean, there’s some nice weddings out there,
0:51:08 but to do it professionally, that is next level.
0:51:09 I will tell you, that is next level.
0:51:11 – Yeah, there’s a niche for everything.
0:51:13 There’s a side hustle for everything.
0:51:14 Jared, this has been awesome.
0:51:18 These are 10 scary, good, loosely Halloween-related,
0:51:20 some more than others, and I appreciate you hanging out
0:51:21 and sharing this with us.
0:51:24 So you got the agency, you got 201creative.com.
0:51:26 You’re hosting the Niche Pursuits podcast.
0:51:28 You got the Weekend Growth newsletter
0:51:31 at weekendgrowth.com/newsletter.
0:51:33 You’ve got the Amazon influencer business.
0:51:34 You got a lot of stuff going on.
0:51:36 A man of many online side hustles.
0:51:37 What’s got you excited these days?
0:51:41 – I do, I do, yeah, the marketing agency is my day job.
0:51:44 That’s what I do, but I just feel so stimulated
0:51:46 and I love doing side hustles.
0:51:47 I love trying them.
0:51:48 I love seeing what works.
0:51:49 I love just getting that inspiration.
0:51:51 You mentioned it, I write about it every week
0:51:52 at the newsletter and that’s free
0:51:53 if people want to just see what I’m doing.
0:51:54 What am I working on right now?
0:51:56 Yeah, Amazon influencer, I’ve been doing that
0:51:57 for about a year and a half now.
0:51:58 That was really successful out of the gate.
0:51:59 That one really caught fire.
0:52:01 And so I share about that all the time
0:52:02 and we’re coming up into Q4.
0:52:04 So that’s the fun time on Amazon influencer.
0:52:05 – How many videos have you made?
0:52:06 – 1,250 now.
0:52:08 I’m actually gonna go make some videos
0:52:09 right after this podcast.
0:52:11 The house is empty, my wife and the kids are gone.
0:52:13 I’m gonna go make some videos right after this podcast.
0:52:14 I’m trying to get to about 1,350
0:52:17 before the Black Friday sale season hits.
0:52:21 – Okay, you can’t have bought 1,300 things off of Amazon.
0:52:23 Where are you getting the stuff to film about?
0:52:25 – So yeah, we buy probably a good amount on Amazon
0:52:27 but we bought nowhere near 1,300.
0:52:29 But first off, you can make different types of videos
0:52:30 about a single product.
0:52:33 Maybe you have like several cell phone cases.
0:52:34 So you can make a video about your cell phone case
0:52:36 and you can kind of compare your old cell phone case
0:52:37 with your new cell phone case.
0:52:39 And that’s another video, right?
0:52:42 You can also get creative and go to neighbor’s houses
0:52:43 and film.
0:52:44 If you can go down to your neighbor’s house,
0:52:44 you can like sit there.
0:52:46 You can use your coffee machine for a couple minutes,
0:52:48 couple, maybe an hour or however long it takes
0:52:49 to figure it out and then make a video on that.
0:52:50 I have not done this.
0:52:53 I’ve done it once where I was at an Airbnb
0:52:54 and I actually had used a lot of the stuff
0:52:55 in the kitchen all week.
0:52:57 And then I was like, oh, last day I made a bunch of videos
0:52:59 about all the stuff I’d used in that Airbnb.
0:53:01 But a lot of people will actually make that their model
0:53:02 and go out to the Airbnbs and rent them
0:53:03 and then film all the products there.
0:53:05 – Okay, okay, nice.
0:53:08 – So that’s how you can get more videos than what you have.
0:53:10 Usually you wanna start with at least a base of stuff.
0:53:11 And hopefully you have some stuff,
0:53:12 but you don’t have to have bought on Amazon
0:53:14 as long as it’s available on Amazon.
0:53:15 So that’s another key factor.
0:53:17 – Right, do you find that it is just a factor
0:53:22 of creating the content and building that library
0:53:26 of a thousand plus videos that that’s what drives revenue
0:53:29 or is there other specific tactics that go into it?
0:53:30 – Honestly, no, not really.
0:53:31 Not that I’ve figured out.
0:53:33 I mean, it is a side hustle for me.
0:53:34 So I haven’t like sat there.
0:53:35 But they don’t give you many metrics.
0:53:36 They don’t tell you a lot.
0:53:37 It’s really about, you know,
0:53:40 you’re trying to make a good video
0:53:42 and make as many of them as you can.
0:53:44 ‘Cause I found no correlation to the ones
0:53:45 that end up making me most of my money.
0:53:47 And it is the 80/20 rule, by the way.
0:53:48 Like almost everything else in life.
0:53:49 – Totally.
0:53:51 – I don’t make the same amount off every video.
0:53:53 I make 80% of my revenue
0:53:56 or more off of probably less than 20% of my videos.
0:53:57 And so it’s really just about taking those swings
0:53:58 at the plate to try to figure out
0:53:59 which ones you’re gonna connect on.
0:54:02 – Yeah, this is, we started doing some of the kids
0:54:05 like Lego videos and trying to make them,
0:54:07 you know, their first passive income on the internet
0:54:09 is like, I remember giving them that 20 bucks
0:54:11 like over Christmas season last year.
0:54:14 And they’d be like, cool, like pause right there.
0:54:16 You just made passive income on the internet.
0:54:17 I don’t think you have an appreciation
0:54:19 for like how cool this is, you know?
0:54:21 And how easy this was for you.
0:54:24 So I will back you up that the influencer program
0:54:26 is probably the easiest money that I’ve ever made online.
0:54:29 I’ve uploaded very, very few this year
0:54:32 and I’m looking at 669 bucks so far this year.
0:54:34 And I probably have less than 50 videos live.
0:54:36 So it’s, it works.
0:54:40 So it’s a really cool program that they’ve got.
0:54:42 Like anything, does it stay easy forever?
0:54:43 Does it last forever?
0:54:46 Probably not, but if you can get accepted into it,
0:54:48 they still haven’t said like what level
0:54:50 of social following you need.
0:54:52 They just make sure you apply with your YouTube
0:54:55 or Instagram or they want some link to a social platform
0:54:57 even though you don’t have to post any of your videos
0:54:58 on that social platform.
0:54:59 – Correct, yeah.
0:55:01 And it’s also based on engagement.
0:55:03 So it’s like this combination of how many followers you have
0:55:05 but they want to see accounts that actually
0:55:08 get some engagement but a lot of us have Instagram accounts
0:55:11 that have over a thousand followers just from friends
0:55:13 and family and work colleagues over the years.
0:55:15 And so you can flip that into a business account.
0:55:18 It doesn’t really change the outward account itself
0:55:19 and a lot of people will have success
0:55:20 with something like that
0:55:22 or maybe a TikTok account they started.
0:55:23 So it’s worth applying.
0:55:24 It’s definitely worth applying.
0:55:25 – Very good.
0:55:27 Well, check him out 201creative.com.
0:55:29 John Dykstra gave you a plug last month.
0:55:31 So appreciate that.
0:55:33 And weekendgrowth.com/newsletter
0:55:35 to stay in touch with everything
0:55:36 that Jared has got going on.
0:55:38 If you liked this episode,
0:55:41 I know you get a kick out of our annual Thanksgiving series
0:55:43 of creative side hustles.
0:55:45 I think there’s a Spotify playlist for that.
0:55:48 If not, I’m happy to make one
0:55:49 and link that up in the show notes.
0:55:53 This coming Thanksgiving I think will be our seventh annual
0:55:54 on that 10 creative side hustles.
0:55:55 Like the most interesting stuff
0:55:58 that I’ve come across over the course of the year.
0:56:00 Now that’s kind of the shotgun approach.
0:56:02 So if you’re looking for something a little more curated,
0:56:04 what you do is go to hustle.show.
0:56:07 You answer a few short multiple choice questions
0:56:09 and it’ll build you a personalized playlist
0:56:12 of eight to 10 recommended episodes based on your answers.
0:56:14 Again, hustle.show for that.
0:56:16 Big thanks to Jared for sharing his insight.
0:56:17 Big thanks to our sponsors
0:56:19 for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:56:22 You can hit up side hustlenation.com/deals
0:56:25 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:56:27 Thank you for supporting the advertisers
0:56:28 that support the show.
0:56:29 That is it for me.
0:56:30 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:56:31 If you’re finding value in the show,
0:56:33 the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.
0:56:35 So fire off that text message
0:56:38 to somebody who loves creative business ideas,
0:56:39 somebody who loves Halloween and making money.
0:56:42 There’s gotta be somebody on that Venn diagram of yours.
0:56:43 So I appreciate you sharing that.
0:56:45 Until next time, let’s go out there
0:56:46 and make something happen
0:56:48 and I’ll catch you in the next edition
0:56:49 of the side hustle show.