657: 19 Business Ideas Free for the Taking

0:00:02 (upbeat music)
0:00:04 Hey, it’s time for another round of Business Idea Giveaways.
0:00:06 And to help me out is a longtime friend
0:00:08 and friend of the show.
0:00:10 You know him as the entrepreneur
0:00:13 from mywifequitherjob.com, Steve Chu.
0:00:15 Welcome back to The Side Hustle Show.
0:00:16 – Happy to be back, Nick.
0:00:18 I always enjoyed recording these episodes
0:00:20 and they do well on my podcast as well.
0:00:21 – Awesome, it’s become a tradition.
0:00:24 I think this is our third round of-
0:00:25 – Third time, yeah.
0:00:26 – Business Idea Giveaways.
0:00:28 If you like this format, make sure to go back
0:00:29 and check out the other two.
0:00:32 We’ll link up those episodes in the show notes
0:00:33 for this episode.
0:00:37 Now I wanna pitch you an idea that came to mind recently.
0:00:41 This is a household item that I can almost guarantee
0:00:44 you have several of in your house
0:00:48 that experts recommend you replace probably more often
0:00:49 than you do.
0:00:54 This item experts say can contain up to 16 different species
0:00:58 of fungi and up to 10% of the weight of this item
0:01:01 is now dust mites and their waste.
0:01:02 Do you have a guess of what this is?
0:01:04 – Is it a water filter or air filter?
0:01:07 – Neither of those, this is your pillow on your bed.
0:01:08 – Oh, no way, okay.
0:01:12 – So the idea that I wanna pitch is pillows as a service,
0:01:14 pillow subscription service.
0:01:18 You would take some quiz, determine are you a back sleeper,
0:01:20 are you a side sleeper, okay, what density,
0:01:23 what thickness is gonna be perfect for you.
0:01:25 And then we’re just gonna ship you a new one of those
0:01:27 every three to six months, whatever the cadence is
0:01:31 that turns out to be optimal for cleaning this thing
0:01:34 and having a less gross sleeping experience.
0:01:35 – I kind of like that.
0:01:37 So is it the pillow or the pillow case or both?
0:01:41 – I think it’s the pillow itself that, obviously,
0:01:44 wash your pillow case as often as you care to,
0:01:48 but the pillow itself collects all of this nasty stuff
0:01:51 that just is difficult to get rid of.
0:01:52 – Interesting, I kind of like that idea.
0:01:55 I’m very particular about my pillow though.
0:01:56 So I like it temperpating.
0:01:57 It’s very personalized.
0:01:59 But once you find one that you like,
0:02:01 it’s like, okay, I’ll just keep getting that one.
0:02:02 – I like that idea, actually.
0:02:04 I never thought of that ’cause come to think of it,
0:02:06 one of my buddies cannot sleep at night
0:02:09 and then he started, well, changing his sheets
0:02:12 like three times a week and that actually fixed it.
0:02:14 So this is similar, I think.
0:02:15 – Interesting.
0:02:18 Yeah, we spend, we’re supposed to spend
0:02:20 eight hours a day sleeping.
0:02:21 And so you spend a lot of time,
0:02:24 a third of your hours on top of this thing
0:02:26 and you start to think about like,
0:02:28 oh, this is kind of gross dead skin cells
0:02:31 and everything else is going on in there.
0:02:33 You’re like, yeah, we should probably
0:02:35 replace this more often than we do.
0:02:37 I can’t remember the last time I got a new pillow.
0:02:39 – You know why I like recording these episodes with you, Nick,
0:02:41 is we have completely different ideas.
0:02:46 So mine are kind of very e-commerce focused, selling focused.
0:02:48 – Yeah, well, there’s an e-commerce angle to this.
0:02:50 – There is, there is, there is.
0:02:54 So my idea was, ’cause right now I run an e-commerce store
0:02:57 and a lot of us don’t wanna be doing customer service,
0:02:59 meaning like answering phones and whatnot.
0:03:01 And you know how AI is all the rage right now.
0:03:04 And so a lot of stores are having these chat bots,
0:03:06 just being like the first line of defense.
0:03:07 – Yeah.
0:03:10 – It’s really easy to just train your chat bot
0:03:12 to know your products.
0:03:13 And so I was thinking of service.
0:03:15 And again, you have to figure out how to do all this stuff,
0:03:18 which is not surprisingly not that complicated.
0:03:20 Train them up and then offer it as a service
0:03:22 to just create one of these bots,
0:03:26 a customer service bot for an online store or any store
0:03:28 that just knows the products and can answer simple questions.
0:03:31 – And so this would be a process of feeding in
0:03:34 all the product details and–
0:03:35 – Exactly.
0:03:36 – Kind of like the frequently asked questions,
0:03:38 basically like the database of knowledge.
0:03:40 And you could probably feed in chat transcripts
0:03:44 from like the previous 10 years of human customer support
0:03:47 representatives and say, well, how did they respond to this?
0:03:49 – I mean, the least techie way to do this
0:03:51 is to literally just create a spreadsheet
0:03:53 of all the products, product descriptions, and everything.
0:03:56 And then just send them into an AI bot
0:03:59 and train it just for that store as a service.
0:04:00 – Yeah, okay.
0:04:01 The question is like,
0:04:05 would you just send cold pitches to people on Shopify?
0:04:07 Do random product searches see what stores show up?
0:04:09 – What I would do is I would just go
0:04:11 through the Shopify database of stores
0:04:13 and just start reaching out to them
0:04:14 through their contact forms.
0:04:16 There’s a lot of demand for this, I know,
0:04:18 because I’m a member of all these forums
0:04:20 and people are asking how to do it.
0:04:24 And then there’s like ridiculously overpriced services
0:04:26 that offer more than this, obviously.
0:04:29 At the base level, it’s a very simple thing
0:04:31 that an individual can do for other companies.
0:04:34 – Okay, so you sell it as a service and the pitch being,
0:04:36 we’re gonna save you so many human hours
0:04:39 of customer support time or like that first line
0:04:40 of defense, right?
0:04:42 If we can reduce the number of inquiries
0:04:44 and you see this on so many tech support
0:04:46 where it’s like, you know, check out our knowledge base
0:04:47 or check out our frequently asked questions.
0:04:49 You know, do you still want to submit a ticket?
0:04:51 Did this question, did your question get answered?
0:04:53 Like sometimes it’s not even clear
0:04:55 that you’re gonna get something
0:04:57 that a human is gonna read your question.
0:04:59 – Yeah, and oftentimes like if you look
0:05:01 at our most commonly asked questions
0:05:04 is where’s my order and what should I buy?
0:05:05 Like I’m looking for this, what should I buy?
0:05:08 And you can answer that question really easily
0:05:10 with an AI buy ’cause that knows your products.
0:05:11 – Yeah, that’s interesting.
0:05:13 It helped people on their decision-making,
0:05:16 not just tech support, troubleshooting triage,
0:05:18 but like actually on the front end of well,
0:05:20 this is my situation, help point me in the right direction.
0:05:21 – Pretty much, yeah.
0:05:23 – I’ve got one that I’ll throw out.
0:05:25 This is probably under the umbrella
0:05:28 of smart home automation.
0:05:31 I’m gonna call it the second guess remover
0:05:33 ’cause how many times have you pulled out of the house
0:05:35 and it’s not until you, you know,
0:05:36 turn the corner out of the neighborhood
0:05:39 that you start to think, did I close the garage door?
0:05:40 – I do that all the time.
0:05:42 – And now that you’ve planted that seat of doubt,
0:05:44 your wife is like, I think we did,
0:05:45 but I’m not really sure.
0:05:47 Why don’t we just go back and check?
0:05:50 And so the second guess remover is, you know,
0:05:51 maybe it’s an app on your phone,
0:05:54 maybe it’s some way to either remotely close it
0:05:57 with some smart device or it just, you know,
0:05:59 some way to double check, like, yes,
0:06:00 in fact, we did close it.
0:06:02 And you turn around and nine times out of 10,
0:06:04 of course you closed it ’cause you always do.
0:06:06 But one time, the one time that I can remember
0:06:08 where we didn’t actually close it
0:06:10 was when we were starting our 13 hour drive
0:06:12 from California back up to Washington
0:06:14 and it turned around and we were like,
0:06:15 oh, crap, we were gonna be gone for a couple of weeks.
0:06:17 So this thing was wide open.
0:06:18 So it’s like that.
0:06:20 For that reason, we always do turn around and go check.
0:06:21 – How did you know that it was open?
0:06:23 – It was just that seat of doubt,
0:06:25 like, we better turn around and we better go check.
0:06:26 – Oh, that seat of doubt.
0:06:29 Yeah, so actually, I haven’t talked about this publicly,
0:06:32 but our house got broken into a couple of weeks back.
0:06:35 And so now we’ve got like cameras everywhere.
0:06:38 So I guess that would accomplish the same thing as this.
0:06:40 – Yeah, I guess if you had the camera pointed
0:06:41 at the garage, you could check.
0:06:42 – But yeah, I like that idea.
0:06:44 I do that all the time, actually.
0:06:46 I second guess myself all the time.
0:06:47 – That’s bad, it’s bad.
0:06:49 Yeah, it is like, of course you closed it
0:06:50 because that’s just part of like the
0:06:51 pulling out of the driveway process.
0:06:54 But sometimes it’s like, did I hit the button?
0:06:55 I don’t know.
0:06:57 Another one, you know, while we’re on the topic of,
0:07:00 you know, theft deterrent kind of in this ballpark,
0:07:03 a neighbor of ours has, you know how people have
0:07:06 the yard signs, like this home protected by, you know,
0:07:10 Xfinity monitoring or ADT or even like,
0:07:12 simply safe where you see all the stuff.
0:07:14 This guy went a different route
0:07:16 and his signs had something like,
0:07:18 this home protected by, you know,
0:07:21 a trigger happy second amendment voter or something.
0:07:23 I was like, hey, that’s a bold move.
0:07:24 I don’t know if this guy’s armed or not,
0:07:28 but it’s enough if I’m a prospective criminal to be like,
0:07:30 I’m gonna go to the next house.
0:07:33 – I think that would work in 49 out of the 50 States.
0:07:35 And in California, that would not fly.
0:07:36 – You don’t think so?
0:07:38 – I don’t think so, but you’re right.
0:07:39 I mean, yeah, they might think twice.
0:07:41 I mean, it’s all about being less appealing
0:07:42 than the next house, right?
0:07:45 – Right, right, again, how can I make myself
0:07:47 less of an easy mark, less of an easy target?
0:07:49 – So my next idea also has to do with shopping,
0:07:53 but this is a trend that’s been happening all over Asia.
0:07:55 And I’m not sure if you watch TikTok or any of those,
0:07:57 but so there’s this one lady who’s,
0:07:59 who’s famous for this and made it all over the news.
0:08:03 She made $13.7 million and seven days live selling
0:08:05 on the Chinese version of TikTok.
0:08:08 And she’s just taking other people’s products and just,
0:08:10 – I thought TikTok was the Chinese version of TikTok.
0:08:11 There’s like a different.
0:08:15 – The Chinese version of TikTok has educational videos
0:08:17 and stuff, not the stuff that we have in America,
0:08:19 but it was just this lady holding up stuff,
0:08:22 holding up for like three seconds and then sliding it over.
0:08:23 – Okay.
0:08:26 – And so basically there’s a lot of e-commerce stores
0:08:28 that want exposure to this audience.
0:08:33 So you can offer live selling services.
0:08:35 And again, you don’t need an audience to do this
0:08:37 on TikTok, which is, which is the beauty of it.
0:08:41 But if you just go on, it’s a consistency thing.
0:08:42 And you go on, you sell.
0:08:46 There’s a whole like career of people doing this now,
0:08:48 but they’re not doing it for on a mass market,
0:08:51 trying to recruit other companies to list their goods.
0:08:54 – And so this would be I’m the micro influencer
0:08:55 selling random stuff.
0:08:58 – So basically you, you send me your product
0:09:01 and you reach out and then you will just live sell
0:09:03 on Facebook, TikTok, just stream all at once.
0:09:06 And you just be like a virtual salesman,
0:09:08 kind of like an affiliate in a different way.
0:09:10 Like remember we had affiliates in the web world
0:09:11 where you click on a link.
0:09:14 This is literally like the home shopping network.
0:09:16 – Okay, but if you don’t have any following, like who’s
0:09:18 – That’s the beauty of it.
0:09:20 You don’t need a following on these platforms.
0:09:24 As long as the, your selling style is appealing.
0:09:26 Over time, these platforms like TikTok
0:09:27 will find people that watch you.
0:09:28 – Okay.
0:09:31 So are you sending your wedding linens to people
0:09:32 doing this kind of thing?
0:09:34 I could see if we can move some product.
0:09:36 – Well, so what’s funny about all this,
0:09:38 the reason why I came up with this is like,
0:09:40 I was going to do this for our own products.
0:09:42 Like who wants to see a middle-aged Chinese guy
0:09:44 selling wedding linens, right?
0:09:45 I would want to find someone,
0:09:47 probably female for our products,
0:09:50 probably, you know, in the demographic
0:09:52 that we’re looking for, for doing this.
0:09:53 – Yeah.
0:09:55 – And so what’s funny is a lot of these ideas
0:09:56 that I’ve come up with here today
0:09:59 are things that I actually need for myself.
0:10:01 And I know stores are looking for this.
0:10:02 – Interesting.
0:10:04 – And TikTok affiliates have already been big.
0:10:07 It just hasn’t been organized as much.
0:10:09 – We’ve heard from some e-com sellers
0:10:11 that they’ve had some pretty good success
0:10:13 going after micro influencers in their niche
0:10:16 and even people kind of doing product reviews
0:10:18 and pointing towards a TikTok shop.
0:10:19 – I think the problem is you have to go out
0:10:22 and find these people, whereas if there’s someone
0:10:25 you know who’s very eloquent and good on camera
0:10:28 and you go to the store, more often than not,
0:10:29 they’ll be like, “Hey, sure.”
0:10:31 ‘Cause it’s all on consignment anyways, right?
0:10:33 You don’t have to pay the person until they make a sale.
0:10:35 – Okay, all performance-based
0:10:38 where you kind of set a target with cost of acquisition.
0:10:40 – Yeah, pretty much.
0:10:40 – That’s new to me.
0:10:44 I don’t spend any time on TikTok or these other ones.
0:10:46 – More business idea giveaways with Steve coming up
0:10:47 right after this.
0:10:51 – Running a retail business is no joke,
0:10:53 especially if you’re selling online and in-person,
0:10:56 and especially if you’re doing it as a side hustle.
0:10:59 But Shopify Point of Sale makes it simple.
0:11:01 Shopify POS is your all-in-one command center,
0:11:05 seamlessly connecting your in-store and online operations,
0:11:07 whether you’ve got one location or a thousand.
0:11:09 That means customers can shop however they want
0:11:13 and you’ve got the tools to help close the sale every time.
0:11:16 And here’s the kicker, acquiring new customers is expensive.
0:11:17 You already know that.
0:11:19 Shopify POS helps you keep customers coming back
0:11:23 with personalized experiences that people have come to expect
0:11:26 and the first-party data that give your marketing team
0:11:28 a serious edge, even if that marketing team
0:11:29 is just you right now.
0:11:30 Plus, the numbers don’t lie.
0:11:34 Businesses using Shopify POS see an average of an 8.9% boost
0:11:39 in sales and a 22% better total cost of ownership.
0:11:39 Want more?
0:11:43 Check out shopify.com/sidehustle, all lowercase,
0:11:46 and learn how to create the best retail experiences
0:11:51 without complexity, shopify.com/sidehustle.
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0:12:09 I’m still very much working in the business.
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0:13:10 – Do you have solar panels under your house?
0:13:11 – We do not.
0:13:12 – Okay.
0:13:13 This is something that we’ve been trying to figure out
0:13:15 and contemplate even though we live
0:13:17 at the great gray gloomy Northwest.
0:13:19 We have a South facing roof
0:13:21 and very like simple roof structure
0:13:22 where it’s like, okay, this would be,
0:13:26 it kind of pains me every summer when it does get hot out.
0:13:28 It’s like almost this greenhouse
0:13:31 where it’s like we’re just soaking up all this juice
0:13:33 and just absorbing it.
0:13:34 Like we’re not doing anything with it.
0:13:36 Like how can we harvest this in some way?
0:13:41 But the world of solar sales is pretty opaque
0:13:44 and sometimes a little bit shady
0:13:46 and people making all kinds of promises about,
0:13:49 well, this tax rebate
0:13:51 and then you can claim the depreciation on top of this
0:13:54 and other people are like, yeah, that’s not a thing.
0:13:57 Like who told you that and it’s just,
0:14:02 so the idea here is like the local consultant person
0:14:04 who can kind of play matchmaker,
0:14:06 analyze your situation and your needs.
0:14:08 And they might tell you like, look,
0:14:09 this is just not a fit for you,
0:14:11 but we’ve got relationships with local vendors,
0:14:13 the local installers and figure out, okay,
0:14:16 what is a realistic and good price
0:14:19 for this type of install?
0:14:20 And we also just had a few months ago,
0:14:23 the bomb cyclone 2024.
0:14:25 This was like a mass power outage event
0:14:27 where half a million people or something out of power
0:14:31 and we were down five days or something in the dark
0:14:33 and had to toss all the food out of the fridge.
0:14:35 Thankfully, no property damage in this storm,
0:14:37 but it was like, you got everybody thinking about like,
0:14:41 well, what is my home energy backup plan?
0:14:43 Like is this a battery system?
0:14:44 Is this a generator system?
0:14:46 Is it, what makes the most sense?
0:14:49 And this was a once in a generation event.
0:14:52 So I was like, well, maybe if I just allocate
0:14:54 what I would have spent on a battery towards, you know,
0:14:56 a hotel room or, you know, and restocking the freezer,
0:14:58 like, oh, I can survive the next several storms
0:15:00 and it would still be coming out ahead.
0:15:03 But it’s something that a lot of people were thinking about
0:15:04 in response to that.
0:15:07 So it’s kind of the home energy backup consultant.
0:15:08 I know on a previous one of these,
0:15:09 we talked about the,
0:15:11 you pitched the zombie apocalypse consultant
0:15:15 and it’s like in that same, in that same realm.
0:15:17 – Yeah, yeah, same thing, same thing.
0:15:18 You know, since we’re talking about solar,
0:15:21 there was this article that I was reading where,
0:15:23 like within like the first couple of years,
0:15:27 the effectiveness of your solar panels degrades dramatically
0:15:30 because dirt gets accumulated on this.
0:15:32 So how about like a service where you just go around
0:15:34 and clean people’s solar panels?
0:15:36 – Yeah, we can boost the efficiency.
0:15:37 Yeah, yeah, we can get you back up.
0:15:38 – Exactly.
0:15:39 I mean, that wasn’t one of the ones I had on my list,
0:15:41 but your idea made me think of that.
0:15:42 – Yeah, we’ll put it down.
0:15:45 – All right, here’s one that literally I just thought
0:15:48 of the other day as I was eating at a restaurant.
0:15:50 So I was ordering from a Chinese restaurant
0:15:52 for Chinese New Year, which just passed.
0:15:56 And I noticed that the company that I was ordering from
0:16:01 was offering to pay $3 per photo of their food
0:16:03 so that they could populate the app
0:16:06 with like authentic pictures of their food.
0:16:08 And these photos are meant to be casual.
0:16:10 So they come across as authentic, right?
0:16:12 Not like a stage shot.
0:16:13 – Okay.
0:16:15 – And so I was thinking, my business idea
0:16:17 is to just go around to these restaurants,
0:16:18 clearly there’s this need
0:16:21 and offer to just take organic pictures of their food.
0:16:22 And maybe in the beginning,
0:16:24 you just do it in exchange for a free meal just for kicks,
0:16:27 but maybe over time you could turn this into a real business
0:16:31 ’cause restaurants want people taking pictures
0:16:33 and making videos of their food and posting them,
0:16:36 whether it be on the app or are on their own accounts.
0:16:38 – So they’re trying to incentivize
0:16:41 like a crowd sourced image gallery, basically.
0:16:43 Like, oh, of course we’re gonna have our fancy
0:16:45 professional product photographer come in
0:16:46 and take these shots.
0:16:49 But it looks more legit, looks more official
0:16:52 if it’s just random customers posting pictures
0:16:53 of their food.
0:16:55 – Yeah, if it’s a customer like holding up the plate
0:16:57 or the food or eating it or whatever,
0:16:59 instead of like a stock photo.
0:17:02 And so they’re willing to pay $3 per photo.
0:17:03 – Wow.
0:17:03 – And of course we did this, right?
0:17:05 – Yeah, you take some pictures.
0:17:06 – Yeah, you just take a picture of the food
0:17:08 that you just got, like eating it.
0:17:10 So clearly there’s a demand here
0:17:12 and maybe you can do this on a mass scale.
0:17:14 – And it only takes one to get a toehold
0:17:15 and then you start going to the neighborhood
0:17:18 or the restaurant down the street, like did you know?
0:17:19 These guys must be onto something.
0:17:21 Hey, they’re paying $3 a picture, you know,
0:17:24 to get these different, is it just to like populate Yelp
0:17:26 or where are they putting these things?
0:17:29 – So the one that I used, I can’t remember the service,
0:17:31 there’s a whole bunch of these delivery services
0:17:32 that they have.
0:17:34 So maybe like, we didn’t use DoorDash,
0:17:36 but DoorDash could be one of those, right?
0:17:39 It’s one thing to see like photos of just the food.
0:17:42 It’s another to see like real people enjoying the food.
0:17:42 – Okay.
0:17:45 – And so maybe that’s like a way to,
0:17:46 I don’t know the economics behind it,
0:17:48 but if they’re willing to pay $3 a photo,
0:17:50 clearly there’s the demand for this.
0:17:53 – Yeah, so that helps, that helps their average order value,
0:17:55 that helps their conversion rate of these apps or something.
0:17:57 – Conversion rate, probably, yeah.
0:17:58 – Interesting, okay.
0:18:03 I’ve got one that is related to software price increases.
0:18:07 I think you and me both share a frugality gene.
0:18:10 And so whenever some tool that I’m using
0:18:13 like jacks up the price, like it pains me a little bit.
0:18:16 And it pains me that the switching cost is so high.
0:18:19 It pains me that I feel like kind of powerless
0:18:19 to do anything about it.
0:18:22 And so it makes me want to like research alternatives,
0:18:24 like better, faster, cheaper alternatives.
0:18:27 The one that really hit me was lead pages recently
0:18:29 where to their credit,
0:18:31 they had not increased the rate in 10 years.
0:18:32 And so it was like, I understand like,
0:18:35 this is due for a rate, but it was such a shock
0:18:36 ’cause it was like, it almost doubled.
0:18:38 – Oh, did it, oh man.
0:18:40 – Really like, hey, I’ve been a customer for 10 years.
0:18:41 This is what you’re gonna do to me.
0:18:43 It was like spent the whole day researching alternatives
0:18:46 and try to migrate over to optimized press
0:18:47 for 25% of the price.
0:18:48 And so the service that I want to pitch
0:18:51 is like the software migration service.
0:18:53 And it didn’t have to be lead pages.
0:18:57 It could be anywhere you see people complaining
0:18:58 about a price increase.
0:19:00 It could be people looking for, you know,
0:19:02 fill-in-the-blank product alternative,
0:19:03 like Zapier did this a couple of years ago,
0:19:06 or they really increased their rates.
0:19:07 Anytime you see people complaining about that,
0:19:09 like there may be an opportunity to be like,
0:19:11 hey, you know, I’m a specialist in migrating
0:19:13 from this thing to this thing.
0:19:15 And maybe you build some tool to help you do it.
0:19:18 Like, I don’t know, there’s probably a way to do it faster.
0:19:20 And the thing is a lot of these are kind of proprietary
0:19:23 closed off software systems.
0:19:25 Like maybe it’s a little more challenging than that.
0:19:27 But if you get good at it,
0:19:29 I imagine you can knock these out pretty quickly.
0:19:31 – You know, it’s funny that you mentioned Zapier
0:19:33 ’cause I can’t remember how many years ago
0:19:34 when Zapier doubled their prices.
0:19:36 I moved everything over to make.
0:19:37 – Yeah, me too.
0:19:39 – Oh, you did? (laughs)
0:19:40 It wasn’t called make.
0:19:41 They make acquired the company.
0:19:42 I can’t remember what it was called.
0:19:43 It was some–
0:19:44 – Yeah, it was like Integromat first.
0:19:46 – Integromat, that’s what it was.
0:19:48 – But yeah, because, and the challenge is
0:19:49 there’s a learning curve.
0:19:53 It’s like, well, how do you know how Zapier works?
0:19:54 Do I really want to do this?
0:19:56 Is it worth the time?
0:19:57 But it’s like, well, if I’m gonna have this
0:19:59 for another five or 10 years, then yeah,
0:20:00 it adds up every month.
0:20:01 – I like that.
0:20:03 You would have to specialize in something.
0:20:05 But yeah, that’d be really easy to do
0:20:07 ’cause people tend to complain on Reddit, right?
0:20:08 – Right, yeah.
0:20:10 – You could say, hey, I just use this to migrate
0:20:11 and it’s like your own service.
0:20:12 – Yeah.
0:20:14 – Right, I love it.
0:20:15 I like that one.
0:20:16 I like that one.
0:20:19 – Can I go again while we’re on the topic of Reddit?
0:20:22 So as you know, like the world of SEO has kind of been turned
0:20:25 upside down in the last year, year and a half or so
0:20:28 with Google really prioritizing both AI search results
0:20:30 but also sites like Reddit and like Quora,
0:20:34 kind of these user-generated content type of sites.
0:20:37 And so, and I’ve actually met somebody doing this,
0:20:40 but they’re providing Reddit marketing services
0:20:43 where we’ll create these different accounts
0:20:46 and we’ll kind of build up their Reddit credibility.
0:20:48 So it’s not like they’re just coming in and spamming links
0:20:50 but they’re kind of like strategically
0:20:52 and intentionally highlighting your brand
0:20:57 in kind of an organic Reddit approved way in a lot of cases
0:20:59 where you could start, well, if Reddit is, you know,
0:21:01 all of a sudden siphoning off a bunch of my traffic,
0:21:03 like how can I get in front of that traffic
0:21:06 in a way that at least from the outside looking in
0:21:09 appears to be authentic and playing by those roles?
0:21:12 – Yeah, you know, those gamification services
0:21:15 started happening almost immediately after.
0:21:18 Have you been approached by the Reddit services?
0:21:19 – Not by anybody serious that I can tell.
0:21:21 – I mean, I’ve been approached
0:21:22 and I always thought it was spammy,
0:21:26 but like the people who’ve approached me, but yeah,
0:21:28 there are companies paying lots of money for this service.
0:21:30 So yeah, absolutely.
0:21:32 – I mean, it’s basically a ghostwriting service
0:21:34 where they’re taking your content, your ideas
0:21:35 and putting it up there.
0:21:37 Like you’re probably not going to get the same traffic,
0:21:38 the same traffic value,
0:21:41 but it’s a way to get your message.
0:21:43 – It’s funny, our mutual friend, Spencer Hawes,
0:21:46 I think tried one of these services.
0:21:47 And he had some good results.
0:21:49 I know you probably had him on this podcast at some point.
0:21:51 – Yeah, we’ll have to catch up with Spencer for sure.
0:21:54 – Okay, so my next idea has to do with the fact
0:21:57 that we recently moved my mom into our neighborhood
0:21:59 and she was moving from a gigantic house
0:22:01 to a little teeny tiny house
0:22:03 ’cause you know, housing is so expensive over here.
0:22:05 Anyway, she had to get rid of a lot of stuff.
0:22:09 And you know, if you go to these estate sale people,
0:22:12 it’s all like a super sketchy industry.
0:22:15 Like they can’t give you prices on anything
0:22:17 and they just kind of give you this check
0:22:20 and they don’t even give you like an itemized list
0:22:22 of what was sold and for how much.
0:22:24 They just kind of hand you this check at the very end,
0:22:25 which I found really sketchy.
0:22:28 And we interviewed a whole bunch of these services.
0:22:31 But so I was thinking, there’s a lot of people moving, right?
0:22:32 And they need to get rid of their stuff.
0:22:36 So why not just put like an above board
0:22:39 sort of selling service where you’ll offer
0:22:42 to just eBay all of their stuff.
0:22:43 And it’s completely transparent.
0:22:46 You show them the auctions, you just go in, you take photos.
0:22:48 For some reason, I could not find a service
0:22:51 that was willing to come to my mom’s house,
0:22:53 take a full inventory and just list everything on eBay.
0:22:54 – Oh, okay.
0:22:55 No, I like this.
0:22:58 Lots of, it taps into the trend of, you know,
0:23:01 empty nester, baby boomer, baby boomer is downsizing.
0:23:04 And it’s typical, I mean, what’s it a state sale fees?
0:23:08 They take 40, 50% of everything they sell.
0:23:09 – Yeah, they pretty much take half,
0:23:12 but it’s the lack of transparency that bugged me.
0:23:13 Like they can’t make any promises
0:23:16 and they don’t even give you the itemized list
0:23:18 of everything, at least the ones that I interviewed
0:23:19 in Maryland.
0:23:21 And I could not find a place that was just willing
0:23:23 to eBay everything and come to the house.
0:23:25 Like you can bring all your stuff to them
0:23:26 and they’ll eBay, I found those services.
0:23:28 – I had met a guy a couple of years ago
0:23:31 who was doing something similar.
0:23:32 It wasn’t, maybe some of it was eBay,
0:23:35 but another segment of his business was like
0:23:38 a dedicated auction site,
0:23:40 like almost a dedicated estate sale type of site.
0:23:41 It’s like, I’ll manage the whole thing for you.
0:23:43 Partnered with local real estate agents
0:23:46 who kind of knew the customers as they were selling
0:23:48 their house and knew they were gonna need to get rid
0:23:49 of some of this stuff.
0:23:51 And it was all on consignment, it was all on performance.
0:23:53 Like, well, whatever sells, we’ll take a cut
0:23:55 and we’ll pass on the rest.
0:23:57 – Yeah, I mean, the key for me was transparency.
0:23:58 – Yeah.
0:24:00 – I like to see the auctions and whatnot
0:24:01 and sure, you can take your cut,
0:24:03 but at least in Maryland, the estate sale people
0:24:07 that I went through, it just felt like kind of dirty to me.
0:24:09 – Mm-hmm, yeah, I really like this one.
0:24:12 And then I do that realtor partner angle
0:24:14 or start with friends and family
0:24:15 who are going through this process,
0:24:18 get a few reps under your belt and figure out
0:24:21 how to streamline that process and then provide that.
0:24:23 It’s kind of the anti-positioning.
0:24:26 It’s like you position it as we’re transparent,
0:24:31 we’re the homeowner advocate, there’s different ways.
0:24:33 It’s like, when you see cruelty free
0:24:36 on a shampoo or any product or something,
0:24:39 you’re like, well, now I automatically assume
0:24:42 that every other thing is filled with cruelty.
0:24:43 – Right.
0:24:44 – And you’re like, well, that’s an interesting
0:24:45 anti-positioning.
0:24:47 – Yeah, just the fact that you can see the auctions
0:24:50 that they’re conducting and what the actual selling price is,
0:24:51 that’d be good enough for me.
0:24:52 – Cool, cool, cool.
0:24:53 Do you have an aura ring?
0:24:54 – No, I do not.
0:24:55 – Yeah, me neither.
0:24:58 And the reason I don’t is I believe the sleep score
0:25:00 is largely irrelevant where it’s like,
0:25:03 I’m gonna wake up today and I gotta be the best version
0:25:06 of myself, you know, whether I slept well
0:25:08 or whether I slept poorly, I still gotta show up,
0:25:11 I gotta be a dad, I gotta do all the things,
0:25:12 I gotta go crush the day.
0:25:14 And so it’s like, you know, maybe there’s an opportunity
0:25:16 for the aura ring that just shoots back, you know,
0:25:19 98s, 99s, like all the time.
0:25:21 It’s like, you nailed it last night, you know,
0:25:24 you might feel tired, but no, the data says you did great.
0:25:26 You might as well, you know, go out and crush your day.
0:25:28 Something that’s kind of been on my mind.
0:25:30 It’s like, you know, sleep is getting a lot of attention
0:25:33 lately with recognizing like how important it is
0:25:36 for brain recovery, like, you know,
0:25:38 all sorts of different health consequences.
0:25:40 And it’s like, yes, do all the things to make sure
0:25:43 you try and get the best night’s sleep possible,
0:25:45 but it’s kind of silly, like, oh, I’m not gonna do
0:25:47 what I plan to do because I only got a 73.
0:25:49 You’re like, well, really?
0:25:50 Like you still have to go do your day.
0:25:54 So this is like a positive reinforcement type of ordering.
0:25:55 – Yeah, I like that.
0:25:56 – That cheers you on.
0:25:57 – You don’t have to be connected to any data.
0:25:59 Like it just has like fake looking Bluetooth
0:26:01 or something, gag, gag gift.
0:26:03 – You know, I’d considered getting the aura ring
0:26:05 because I know like what you eat has a lot to do
0:26:07 with how well you sleep.
0:26:10 So by just eating certain things and then taking,
0:26:13 you know, the score, you can, ’cause I know like,
0:26:15 for example, if I eat something super greasy,
0:26:18 like Chinese food, for example, like the night before,
0:26:19 I don’t sleep that well.
0:26:21 And it’s taken me years to figure that out.
0:26:24 Whereas maybe something like that ring could have told me.
0:26:27 So maybe more like an application-specific type of ring
0:26:30 where you enter in what you ate and then you get the data,
0:26:32 you know, to see if there’s any correlations.
0:26:34 – Some of those simple things,
0:26:36 and maybe it’s just like a reminder in the morning,
0:26:37 Carpe Diem, you know, it could be something simple,
0:26:39 like a simple push notification, like,
0:26:40 hey, today’s the day, go get it.
0:26:42 You’re not getting any younger.
0:26:44 We had some guys on the show years ago,
0:26:46 that was their app, I think it was called We Croak.
0:26:49 It was just like a daily death reminder.
0:26:52 And it was, you know, like the Memento Mori thing,
0:26:55 it was like, hey, just a, you know, I don’t know,
0:26:58 1 27 PM, hey, just a heads up, you’re gonna die someday.
0:27:01 And it’s like, well, shoot, I better go get after it.
0:27:02 – Nice, nice.
0:27:05 So this next idea is, I hope Tony doesn’t get mad at me,
0:27:07 but what was funny about this next idea
0:27:10 is I got it from her during Seller Summit.
0:27:12 So Seller Summit’s the annual e-commerce conference
0:27:15 that I run, and hilariously, at the last event,
0:27:17 she was actually helping some attendees
0:27:20 optimize their dating profiles.
0:27:22 ‘Cause there’s these guys that they come to Seller Summit
0:27:23 every year and they’re still single.
0:27:28 And we just struck up this conversation like, yeah, you know,
0:27:30 how do I improve my dating efficiency?
0:27:32 So Tony looked at their profile and they’re like, oh,
0:27:35 okay, you need to change this, this, this, this, right?
0:27:36 – Yeah.
0:27:40 – So now, with a whole bunch of these AI image tools
0:27:43 and whatnot, and AI just in general to help with the copy,
0:27:45 you can easily put together a profile
0:27:47 that at least gets your foot in the door,
0:27:49 and then it’s up to you to screw up the date or whatnot.
0:27:52 But so Tony was helping people with their dating profiles
0:27:53 for at least two or three people at the event.
0:27:55 I was like, Tony, you should do this for a living.
0:27:57 – To our next business, to our next side hustle.
0:27:58 – Exactly.
0:27:59 And there’s all these AI tools that can touch up
0:28:01 your existing photos to make you look better
0:28:04 from an existing photo that you upload too.
0:28:07 – Yeah, no, I had a friend who recently did an AI
0:28:10 LinkedIn headshot, kind of they fed in
0:28:11 a bunch of existing pictures, like, hey,
0:28:13 this was a lot faster and cheaper
0:28:14 than hiring a photographer.
0:28:16 I mean, of course, once people all start doing this,
0:28:18 you’re not gonna be able to believe anyone’s profile,
0:28:21 but at least it gets you in the door.
0:28:23 – Yeah, I mean, how many of these dating profiles
0:28:26 are completely honest and truthful to begin with?
0:28:27 – That’s true, that’s true.
0:28:29 But it’s very easy to screw up one of these too,
0:28:31 ’cause certain people are looking for certain things, right?
0:28:36 – Yeah, my brother’s role was anybody who had,
0:28:39 anything Seahawks related was like an automatic out.
0:28:40 He’s like, I don’t care about football.
0:28:43 Anybody who’s like holding a beer is like automatic out.
0:28:44 He’s like, is he sober?
0:28:46 And it was just, you know, it’s kind of interesting.
0:28:48 Like everybody has their own different filters
0:28:50 and criteria where for somebody else who’d been like,
0:28:52 hey, you know, you’re drinking beer,
0:28:54 watching football, it sounds like my kind of person.
0:28:55 – Exactly.
0:28:56 But the conference shows that a lot of people
0:28:57 need help in this department.
0:28:59 So there’s clearly a demand for it.
0:29:02 – I mean, that taps into some other trends too of,
0:29:05 you know, people postponing a lot of major life decisions,
0:29:07 getting married later in life, having kids later in life,
0:29:10 like, you know, the loneliness epidemic,
0:29:11 like this is a real thing, like help people
0:29:13 find their partner.
0:29:14 I mean, that taps into a big, big market.
0:29:16 – That is until AI becomes that partner,
0:29:18 but that’s a topic for a different episode, Nick.
0:29:19 – That’s another episode.
0:29:21 Recently it was like, I interviewed my AI self,
0:29:26 like RoboNik, it just prompted ChatGPT to respond as me.
0:29:29 And it did surprisingly well.
0:29:32 It was like, hey, that’s kind of the answer I would’ve given.
0:29:35 And you know, it only made up a few facts,
0:29:37 which were a little weird, but it did surprisingly well.
0:29:39 I was like, are you trying to take my job?
0:29:40 – You published it on your podcast?
0:29:41 No, I haven’t tried that yet.
0:29:42 That sounds like a very interesting episode.
0:29:44 – Yeah, I mean, ’cause you’ve got, you know,
0:29:46 this 10-year body of work out on the internet too,
0:29:48 where, you know, it absolutely could respond to Steve.
0:29:51 – Link that episode up, I wanna listen to that one.
0:29:53 That sounds like a great idea, by the way.
0:29:53 – Yeah, love it.
0:29:55 – All right, I’ll send that one to you.
0:29:57 – We’ve got more business idea giveaways with Steve
0:30:00 coming up right after this.
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0:32:05 All right, what’s next?
0:32:06 Is it my turn?
0:32:07 – It’s your turn, but I got a couple more too.
0:32:12 Next one for me is in the world of content creation.
0:32:14 And I’m calling this, I’m feeling lucky
0:32:17 for podcast editing.
0:32:19 And so what we’ve learned over 10,
0:32:21 almost 12 years of podcast editing,
0:32:25 it is at least as much about what you don’t say
0:32:28 as what you say, like what you don’t air.
0:32:31 And so my job as the host is to cut the fluff,
0:32:33 cut the stuff that doesn’t add to the conversation
0:32:35 or like, you know, we went off this tangent
0:32:37 and didn’t really go anywhere
0:32:40 or that question kind of landed with it, like, okay, fine.
0:32:42 And so my job after recording
0:32:43 is been to go through the transcript
0:32:45 and find those little sections, you know,
0:32:47 just to try and tighten that up
0:32:49 and maybe we’ll record for an hour
0:32:51 and try and find the best 50 minutes.
0:32:53 And maybe there’s a sliding scale on this,
0:32:55 you know, I’m feeling lucky editor.
0:32:57 I think this is going to rely on AI.
0:32:58 You feed in the transcript,
0:33:03 you feed in examples of past episodes that you really like.
0:33:06 And my thought is this is going to make suggestions
0:33:08 on where to trim the fat.
0:33:10 What could you cut out of this
0:33:13 and not lose the overall message and takeaways,
0:33:15 but just make it a tighter listening experience?
0:33:18 – I’ve been waiting for a tool like that
0:33:19 as long as I’ve been podcasting.
0:33:21 (laughing)
0:33:23 I think the closest thing that I’ve used for that
0:33:26 is a tool called Opus Clip.
0:33:27 Have you tried that tool?
0:33:31 – No, this is like the, we’ll make AI shorts for you.
0:33:32 – Yeah, it’ll make shorts for you,
0:33:34 but it actually does a reasonably good job of picking out
0:33:36 like something that you can just cut to the front,
0:33:38 you know, to get that hook and the attention.
0:33:39 – Okay.
0:33:40 – But something like that,
0:33:44 more along the lines of what you just described,
0:33:46 I would definitely pay for a tool like that.
0:33:47 No questions asked.
0:33:50 – This is where I love being a podcast guest
0:33:52 where I just show up and as soon as the recording is done,
0:33:53 like my work is over,
0:33:55 but as the host, it’s like, well now,
0:33:57 now I gotta review this whole transcript
0:33:57 to figure this out.
0:33:58 – I know.
0:34:00 – And you thankfully have an editing service
0:34:02 to help you to perform those actual cuts,
0:34:04 but even just a starting point, you know,
0:34:05 maybe that’s what it is.
0:34:08 It’s like, okay, we want to end the sliding scale is like,
0:34:09 you know, I want to, you know,
0:34:10 how strict did you want it to be?
0:34:13 And like, okay, it’s only going to keep the best 15 minutes.
0:34:14 I think that would be really, really hard.
0:34:17 But if you’re just, I want to trim 10%, you know,
0:34:19 give me the bottom 10% of this episode
0:34:20 and maybe it will make suggestions on that.
0:34:23 – So all these ideas that I’ve given you
0:34:24 are just ones that I’ve come up with
0:34:26 as a result of things that have happened in my life.
0:34:28 So as I mentioned before,
0:34:30 my mom just moved in our neighborhood.
0:34:31 And, you know, as you get older,
0:34:33 you want to spend more time with your parents, right?
0:34:35 And what I’ve discovered just hanging out
0:34:38 with my mom a lot more is that she has all these stories
0:34:40 to tell that you don’t know about,
0:34:41 that you probably wouldn’t have asked
0:34:43 when you were younger, right?
0:34:44 – Yeah.
0:34:47 – And so there was this service that we used a while back
0:34:50 where the company basically just emails your mom
0:34:52 or your parent a list of questions,
0:34:54 and then they compile their answers in a book for you,
0:34:55 right?
0:34:57 But I was thinking of taking that one step further.
0:34:59 So this is a book that sits on my shelf that I treasure now
0:35:01 ’cause it’s all stories, but.
0:35:02 – What service did you use for that?
0:35:04 – I forgot what it was called,
0:35:06 but I can find out for your listeners if they want.
0:35:07 – Okay.
0:35:08 – The problem with that service though,
0:35:11 was like the parent or whatever has to do a lot of writing.
0:35:12 – Yeah.
0:35:13 – And it’s actually quite burdensome for them,
0:35:15 especially if English isn’t their first language.
0:35:18 So what I was thinking about doing
0:35:20 was taking that one step further.
0:35:21 All you have to do is you come with the questions
0:35:24 ahead of time and then you just take a film crew
0:35:26 and you just go interview that person.
0:35:27 That way you have it on video.
0:35:29 I think that would be much more valuable.
0:35:31 I love the book, don’t get me wrong,
0:35:34 but it was just kind of hard to make sure it got written in.
0:35:36 Whereas with video, if you send a film crew there,
0:35:38 you know, it’s just off the cuff
0:35:40 and it’s actually your parents speaking,
0:35:42 which is a valuable keepsake for anyone to have.
0:35:44 – Yeah, and then they can turn it
0:35:46 into like a documentary style.
0:35:48 – Yes, yeah, and maybe that could be an extra service.
0:35:50 You turn it into, you do the editing
0:35:52 and you turn it into a documentary type thing.
0:35:53 – I think this would be really cool
0:35:55 ’cause you’re exactly right.
0:35:57 You’ve looked into some of these parent story
0:36:00 capture services and you’re exactly right.
0:36:02 It’s like, it’s a gift.
0:36:03 That’s what we were looking at for Christmas gifts,
0:36:05 but it’s like, no, this is just a lot of work.
0:36:06 Like, you know, all of a sudden every month
0:36:08 you got to answer all these questions
0:36:10 and you know, for what real benefit,
0:36:12 like you already know these stories.
0:36:15 This is more of a gift for us, but it was challenging.
0:36:19 And it kind of first came to mind with my grandpa
0:36:20 on my dad’s side.
0:36:22 So listen to the hardcore history,
0:36:24 like 18 hour saga of, you know, World War II
0:36:25 in the Pacific.
0:36:26 And I know we served there.
0:36:28 Is there like, you know, Navy quarter master
0:36:30 or something in Northern Australia?
0:36:32 You know, that’s like all I know,
0:36:35 but it’s like, what else, you know,
0:36:36 what was your level of involvement here?
0:36:38 Like, did you see combat?
0:36:39 What was it like being shipped off
0:36:41 in 20 years old across the world?
0:36:44 Like, all that kind of stuff is gone now.
0:36:46 And I think this is a really powerful one
0:36:47 to potentially capture some of that
0:36:48 for future generations.
0:36:50 – And this is instantly why I interviewed
0:36:52 my mom for the podcast.
0:36:54 It wasn’t for my listeners, you know,
0:36:56 it was more so I could have her on the episode.
0:36:59 So you could do the same thing just audio wise too,
0:37:00 just over zoom.
0:37:02 It’d be, you know, kind of informal.
0:37:03 And if you’re good at asking questions
0:37:05 and getting extra information out,
0:37:07 like me and you are, for example,
0:37:09 we could turn this into a service.
0:37:11 – This is on SNL, like with the son is interviewing the dad
0:37:14 and then they, you know, get super vulnerable, you know,
0:37:15 just have these conversations
0:37:18 because all of a sudden you put mics in front of their faces
0:37:20 and then they turn to the camera
0:37:22 and do like a Squarespace ad read.
0:37:27 – I haven’t seen that episode off to check it out.
0:37:28 – It was, okay.
0:37:31 So that’s kind of the end of life or approaching end of life.
0:37:33 How do we capture some of these stories?
0:37:35 You know, it’s like the movie Coco, you know,
0:37:37 and Ector is fading away.
0:37:38 Like, oh, he’s being forgotten, right?
0:37:40 How do we, how do we remember the people who came before?
0:37:42 I think that’s a really cool idea.
0:37:45 And like that, you know, professional filmmaking.
0:37:48 So like to rent out even freelance professionals
0:37:49 to do this for a day, it’s not going to be cheap,
0:37:52 but it’s not going to be like over the moon expensive.
0:37:54 Then the one I have is the opposite of that,
0:37:56 not end of life, but beginning of life.
0:37:59 I’m going to call this the digital baby service.
0:38:02 We’re going to secure your kid’s domain name.
0:38:04 We’re going to claim their social media handles.
0:38:08 We’re going to register their Gmail account.
0:38:10 And for this, we’re going to charge you,
0:38:11 I don’t know, a hundred bucks a year.
0:38:14 Like, you know, there’s going to be a decent margin
0:38:15 because basically the domain,
0:38:16 all this stuff is free except for the domain,
0:38:19 which maybe costs 10, 12 bucks a year to renew.
0:38:21 But we’re just going to secure this for you
0:38:23 so you don’t have to worry about it.
0:38:26 And so when your kid becomes old enough
0:38:27 that they care about this, you know,
0:38:30 all of a sudden we have that lockdown for you.
0:38:32 This is something that I did when the kids were born.
0:38:34 I would better go, you know, register their domain names.
0:38:36 Just in case, you know, we wouldn’t want anybody else
0:38:37 to have that.
0:38:40 So it’s something that would probably be,
0:38:42 there might be a market for that as a service.
0:38:45 – Yeah, actually there’s a lot of things that you could do.
0:38:47 But yeah, it would be a service where you just locked down
0:38:49 the names for any relevant service
0:38:51 that you might not be able to think about, right?
0:38:53 Besides the obvious ones.
0:38:54 – Yeah. – Yeah, I like that idea.
0:38:56 – Kind of along those same lines.
0:38:58 My next idea is a little bit,
0:39:00 well, it more caters to like the personalities
0:39:02 of the younger folks these days.
0:39:05 So I kind of got this idea after reading an article
0:39:09 about how people are paying money to rent venues
0:39:11 for social media.
0:39:14 So for example, a lot of these make money online guys
0:39:17 literally rent a jet set.
0:39:18 So it looks like you’re on a private jet
0:39:20 when you’re really not. – Okay.
0:39:22 – And I think that’s just like a reflection
0:39:23 of where society has been going.
0:39:25 But you could profit from it by just creating
0:39:28 a bunch of these sets, whether it be a private jet
0:39:32 or a luxury hotel suite or a botanical garden
0:39:35 or just something cool where it’s literally just the set
0:39:38 for Instagramming or doing lives from
0:39:40 and then just rent that time out to people.
0:39:41 – Wow. – I might have a problem
0:39:43 with this one, but I thought of it
0:39:45 ’cause people are paying for these services.
0:39:48 – Yeah, I think there’s probably something to that.
0:39:50 And yeah, you have a warehouse space
0:39:52 where you have like four or five of these set up.
0:39:53 – Yeah. – Have people come in
0:39:55 or you’re two hour block, you know,
0:39:57 they come in and knock out a bunch of reels
0:39:59 or a bunch of videos and you’re set.
0:40:02 – This is very pervasive in China actually.
0:40:05 So if you see like a TikTok video of a factory,
0:40:08 of someone like, you know, making stuff,
0:40:10 chances are it’s fake.
0:40:11 Like literally it’s just like a table
0:40:14 and just like the backdrop of it with this machine
0:40:16 and like rotating the same products over and over again.
0:40:18 – Okay. – So I’ve been just seeing
0:40:21 a lot more of those, you know, debunked.
0:40:24 ‘Cause you know, people wanna look like they’re successful
0:40:25 or doing these things.
0:40:27 And maybe it’s just like a sad reflection
0:40:29 of where we’re going, but you know,
0:40:32 there’s a market there for renting out these services.
0:40:34 – Yeah, this was a speculation for years
0:40:36 or certain influencers like, oh, you know,
0:40:39 they’re standing in front of the rented Lamborghini.
0:40:40 They don’t really own that.
0:40:41 Like that’s not really their life.
0:40:44 It’s like, I don’t know, I guess maybe a certain demographic
0:40:46 that appeals to, it’s like, who cares?
0:40:48 – It’s the younger folks.
0:40:51 ‘Cause we’re old and crotchety now, Nick, you know.
0:40:52 – Get off my lawn.
0:40:54 No, but this is cool.
0:40:56 And I do love me a rental business.
0:40:59 We’ve talked about, you know, the photo booth business.
0:41:01 We’ve talked about renting mobility scooters.
0:41:03 We had a guy renting out, you know, reusable,
0:41:05 like moving boxes or, you know, plastic storage bins,
0:41:06 basically.
0:41:09 And so here’s another example of something.
0:41:11 Hey, build it once or build that set once
0:41:12 and get paid for it over and over again.
0:41:13 – What do you got?
0:41:14 You got a couple more?
0:41:17 – I’ve got, I think one more.
0:41:20 And this is around a personal pain point of mine.
0:41:23 And I’m, you know, curious to get, you know,
0:41:25 your take on this as a prolific YouTuber these days.
0:41:29 What I struggle with is the scripting, right?
0:41:30 That’s kind of the bottleneck for me.
0:41:33 And we’ve got this huge body of content we’ve seen
0:41:37 in my mind, like people stating very obvious things.
0:41:39 Like, hey, have you ever thought about this as a side hustle?
0:41:41 Like, really?
0:41:43 Like that is getting a hundred thousand views.
0:41:45 Like, that’s like the most basic idea ever.
0:41:47 But it’s like, it’s all in this scripting.
0:41:51 It’s some sort of video scripting service or, you know,
0:41:53 maybe it’s an AI or maybe it’s a human
0:41:55 where it’s like, just, just tell me what to record.
0:41:58 Like do it in my voice, you know, load it up.
0:41:59 I could fire up the teleprompter or I could just do
0:42:01 the voiceover and we’ll, you know,
0:42:02 lay over some other imagery.
0:42:05 But just that’s like the big bottleneck
0:42:07 in producing more video content for me.
0:42:09 – If you find such a service,
0:42:11 I would sign up in a heartbeat.
0:42:12 You’re absolutely right.
0:42:15 The scripting is where it’s the most time consuming.
0:42:17 I’ve got it down now where I can script something
0:42:19 with the help of AI in about 90 minutes
0:42:21 for a 10 minute video, right?
0:42:23 – Yeah, that’s still 90 minutes though.
0:42:25 That’s helpful to hear that it’s not instant for you.
0:42:26 – Well, if you think about it this way,
0:42:28 I used to spend a lot more time on a blog post.
0:42:31 I used to spend like three or four hours on a blog post.
0:42:33 And what I like about YouTube scripting
0:42:35 is it doesn’t have to be grammatically correct
0:42:38 nor does it have to have the proper punctuation either.
0:42:39 And so that’s why it’s faster for me.
0:42:41 But yes, I’ve tried so many things, Nick.
0:42:44 Training AI to talk like me.
0:42:45 And we have enough body of work
0:42:49 between the two of us now that it’s pretty easy to do that.
0:42:53 But I don’t think it’s just hard to find that replacement
0:42:54 from what I’ve seen.
0:42:57 – What’s a typical process for you going from
0:42:59 something that you maybe have written about.
0:43:02 It could be years ago, but it’s still relevant
0:43:04 to turn that into a video version.
0:43:05 ‘Cause it’s like, there’s a different formula, right?
0:43:07 You can just read off the blog posts
0:43:09 and have that be compelling.
0:43:10 – You know what’s funny is
0:43:11 that’s how I started my YouTube channel.
0:43:13 I just read the posts and you’re right,
0:43:15 that doesn’t work well.
0:43:18 I can corroborate that.
0:43:22 So you can just feed it into chat you BT or Claude.
0:43:24 And I have a prompt for this,
0:43:25 ’cause I do less of this now,
0:43:30 but I had a process for this where you give it a prompt
0:43:31 and since we have enough workout
0:43:35 that you can say in the voice of Nick Lover or Steve Chu.
0:43:36 And it comes out with something
0:43:38 that you can modify into a script.
0:43:40 And then you also have to make changes to it.
0:43:42 So it’s not, it still takes time,
0:43:45 but it makes things much faster.
0:43:46 ‘Cause there’s a whole big difference
0:43:50 between SEO written blog than there is,
0:43:51 a compelling YouTube video.
0:43:52 – Well, speaking of YouTube,
0:43:55 you’re closing in on half a million subscribers
0:43:57 over on the My Wife Quit Her Job channel.
0:44:00 Well, what kind of videos do you find do well?
0:44:01 Like help me out on the,
0:44:03 I’m gonna pick your brain for some free coaching here.
0:44:04 – I can, yeah.
0:44:07 It’s been a struggle, it’s been a struggle, Nick.
0:44:11 So I teach e-commerce and what I found is that
0:44:14 if I just go and teach e-commerce on that channel,
0:44:16 it gets like no views, right?
0:44:17 Because that’s not what people want.
0:44:21 Like the common folk does not want e-commerce strategies,
0:44:23 which is unfortunately my specialty.
0:44:26 I mean, that’s what I like creating content about.
0:44:29 So the struggle is mixing that content,
0:44:31 my teaching content with something
0:44:34 that the mainstream viewer actually wants to see.
0:44:37 So it’s basically dumbing down the content.
0:44:39 Maybe that’s not the right word.
0:44:42 Making it more appealing to the masses, that’s the secret.
0:44:45 – Any videos that have done particularly well for you?
0:44:46 – I mean, I have a whole bunch of videos
0:44:48 that have gotten over a million views
0:44:50 that when I published the time were topics
0:44:51 that were in the news too.
0:44:54 So recency helps too, what people are searching for
0:44:56 and wanting to look about, read about.
0:44:57 And right now, if you think about it,
0:44:59 I feel like the world is in chaos right now,
0:45:01 at least the US is in chaos.
0:45:02 There’s tons of topics that people
0:45:03 are searching for right now.
0:45:05 – Any criteria you use, like a TubeBuddy
0:45:07 or a vidIQ to come up with?
0:45:09 – I use vidIQ.
0:45:10 – What’s the metric you’re looking for?
0:45:13 Like minimum search volume or minimum score there?
0:45:15 – I don’t actually even look at search volume anymore.
0:45:17 I mean, I do as a last step.
0:45:19 I should say, I shouldn’t say I don’t look at it at all.
0:45:21 But I’m just trying to create topics
0:45:25 that I know I can do a good job writing a good hook for.
0:45:27 And then keyword research is actually secondary.
0:45:29 It didn’t start out that way, but now that’s how I do it.
0:45:30 – Hook first, keyword research?
0:45:32 I got one more idea for the audience before we go.
0:45:35 This is something that once again,
0:45:37 I got from talking to with my mom,
0:45:38 ’cause we hang out a lot more now
0:45:39 if she lives right down the street.
0:45:42 This is what I call like a forgotten skills
0:45:43 online course series.
0:45:47 So my mom, you know, back in the old days,
0:45:48 she was telling about all these skills
0:45:50 that she had to do from first principles.
0:45:53 Like there’s a lot of things we take for granted now, right?
0:45:55 That everything’s machine made and whatnot.
0:45:57 But back in the day, they did stuff by hand.
0:46:01 And so we’re talking about skills like Asian calligraphy,
0:46:03 Morse code, how to read a map.
0:46:05 Like, I don’t know if…
0:46:07 I don’t think my kids know how to read a map, right?
0:46:08 ‘Cause it’s a skill that you don’t need anymore
0:46:10 ’cause you have GPS and whatnot.
0:46:12 Metalworking, old school photography
0:46:14 where you’re developing photos with the chemicals
0:46:16 and everything, just a way to document
0:46:18 and teach all those old school things
0:46:19 and put them in one place.
0:46:22 – I mean, what’s the point of learning Morse code
0:46:23 at this point?
0:46:24 You try to send somebody a telegram?
0:46:27 – Well, so the idea is there’s a bunch of people
0:46:30 out there that, like for me, as an example,
0:46:32 who would wanna just learn these things
0:46:33 from first principles.
0:46:36 Like my personality is such that I don’t like,
0:46:39 depending on services handling everything for you.
0:46:40 – Yeah.
0:46:42 – Because once something goes down, you’re in trouble.
0:46:44 So I actually would like to learn these things
0:46:47 from first principles and I can’t be the only one out there.
0:46:47 – Fair enough.
0:46:49 How to read a map I’m on board with.
0:46:53 Metalworking has not been relevant to my life
0:46:54 ever since like Metalworking, Merit Badge
0:46:55 or something when I was 12.
0:46:58 – Well, these are just examples for me, right?
0:46:59 Like Asian calligraphy, you know,
0:47:02 artistic things that are not as big of a deal now,
0:47:04 but they’re still beautiful.
0:47:06 And I think the art should be carried on
0:47:08 to future generations, that sort of thing.
0:47:09 – That’s fair.
0:47:11 All right, those are all the ideas that I’ve got.
0:47:12 You got anything else?
0:47:14 – I think that’s pretty much it.
0:47:16 Yeah, we’ve covered a lot in this episode actually.
0:47:17 – Yeah, this was a ton of fun.
0:47:20 Some really good ones out there that I hope
0:47:22 you as a listener will go and run with.
0:47:23 Like I mentioned, this is our third round
0:47:25 of business idea giveaways.
0:47:28 If you like this format, go check out the other two.
0:47:32 Those are numbers 530, episode 530
0:47:35 and episode 563 in your archives.
0:47:38 You’ll be able to scroll down in your podcast app
0:47:39 and find those.
0:47:41 Again, my wife quitherjob.com.
0:47:42 You can find Steve over there.
0:47:45 Check him out on YouTube by the same name.
0:47:46 My wife quit her job.
0:47:48 Big thanks to Steve for sharing his insight once again.
0:47:51 Being a repeat guest, big thanks to our sponsors
0:47:53 for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:47:55 You can hit up sidehustlenation.com/deals
0:47:59 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:48:00 That is it for me.
0:48:01 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:48:03 If you’re finding value in the show,
0:48:05 the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.
0:48:08 So fire off that text message to that friend of yours
0:48:10 who’s always kicking around new business ideas.
0:48:12 I know you got somebody like that in your life.
0:48:13 Until next time, let’s go out there
0:48:14 and make something happen.
0:48:16 And I’ll catch you in the next edition
0:48:18 of The Side Hustle Show.