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0:01:04 Here’s an oldie but a goodie from the archives from the Side Hustle Show Greatest Hits Collection.
0:01:05 What’s up?
0:01:05 What’s up?
0:01:06 Nick Loper here.
0:01:11 Welcome to the Side Hustle Show because your idea of success might not coincide with your
0:01:12 bosses.
0:01:17 Awesome show for you today with another example of an unconventional rental business.
0:01:23 Yes, there are assets other than traditional real estate that can cash flow pretty nicely
0:01:25 with lower upfront investments.
0:01:30 This week’s guest is a high school history and economics teacher in New York and a listener
0:01:36 of the show who reached out after our Thanksgiving episode, which touched on briefly renting out
0:01:41 attic space and even camper vans and semi trucks as potential sources of recurring revenue.
0:01:46 Steve Nadramia said that he had a side hustle that definitely checked the unconventional
0:01:47 rental box.
0:01:49 Portable hot tubs.
0:01:50 How awesome is that?
0:01:56 Steve wrote that lihottubrentals.com has been a life-changing side hustle.
0:02:01 He’s got 25 to 30 of these things in his, quote, fleet, delivers them with his pickup truck,
0:02:04 and is doing thousands of dollars in bookings every month.
0:02:10 Stick around to learn how Steve got this idea, how he’s marketed and grown the business, and
0:02:12 the logistics of how it all works.
0:02:17 Notes and links for this episode are at sidehustlenation.com slash hot tub, all one word.
0:02:22 While you’re there, be sure to download the free list of 24 other unconventional things you
0:02:24 could start a rental business around.
0:02:29 You can also grab that through the link in the episode description of your podcast player app.
0:02:32 I’ll be back after this chat with Steve.
0:02:32 Ready?
0:02:33 Let’s do it.
0:02:40 There’s a product out there that’s kind of like a high-density foam hot tub.
0:02:45 So the tub weighs about 200 pounds and has a detachable motor pump unit.
0:02:46 So they’re pretty portable.
0:02:48 They’re also circular, so they roll.
0:02:50 That’s the product that we use.
0:02:54 In the United States, there’s a handful of people who are doing this business.
0:03:01 But if you look up hot tub rentals on the internet, what you’ll find is probably 100 or 200 companies
0:03:07 in England, in Ireland, and in Central Europe, where it is just absolutely a huge industry,
0:03:11 a very normal, popular type of recreation for every holiday under the sun.
0:03:13 So there’s huge operations there.
0:03:18 And I’ve kind of tried to observe and learn a little bit from what they do.
0:03:19 So very popular in Europe.
0:03:25 Was it on a Europe trip that struck the light bulb for you?
0:03:27 Or I’m curious, how did this get on your radar?
0:03:28 It got on my radar.
0:03:30 I’m a high school teacher.
0:03:34 As my primary career and occupation, I teach high school history and I teach high school economics.
0:03:40 And I had had for many years a summer job where I worked in parks and recreation.
0:03:45 I was responsible for running the beaches and summer operations for a local town.
0:03:47 That job was absolutely amazing.
0:03:51 I had a lifeguard job there as a kid and then a management job.
0:03:53 And then when I got this teaching job, I was running the whole operation.
0:03:55 And it was just like a dream come true.
0:03:57 And it was like that for years.
0:03:58 And it was fantastic.
0:04:02 And as things often happen, things change.
0:04:04 The management there changed.
0:04:09 I ended up, for the first time in my life, having a boss that I just could not find common ground with.
0:04:11 Just a really difficult, difficult person.
0:04:16 I started looking for something new, thought about a rental business as a good opportunity.
0:04:21 A lot of people rent tents and chairs around here on Long Island for parties.
0:04:23 Inflatables was an idea.
0:04:25 It was really a saturated business.
0:04:32 I just found a guy in upstate New York in the Syracuse area who was renting hot tubs.
0:04:36 He’s like in a big college town, kind of in a ski town area.
0:04:40 And I just got in touch with him, sent him an email, talked to him on the phone.
0:04:42 Guy was awesome.
0:04:46 I went up there, bought the first three units from him, spent the day with him, learned all about his business.
0:04:51 He was super helpful, supportive, and it just kind of balloons from there.
0:04:57 Was there any research into, is anybody looking for hot tub rentals near you?
0:04:59 Or you say, hey, he’s making it work.
0:05:01 He’s not too far from me.
0:05:02 There must be some demand here.
0:05:05 I kind of felt like he was making it work in central New York.
0:05:07 We’re on Long Island.
0:05:12 And we just knowing our population here, we’ve got the Hamptons.
0:05:13 It’s kind of 20 miles in one direction.
0:05:17 We’ve got pretty affluent suburbs 20 miles in the other direction.
0:05:21 There’s over a million people on Long Island alone.
0:05:26 And I thought, you know, like, look, I’m making $10,000 a summer in this summer job.
0:05:33 If I could make $1,000 a month over the course of the year renting these hot tubs, I think that’s really doable.
0:05:35 I’d have a lot more free time.
0:05:38 And I think at that level, it’s worth a shot.
0:05:38 Okay.
0:05:41 So you meet this guy in Syracuse.
0:05:45 You say, okay, I’m going to buy my initial inventory from him.
0:05:47 He was unloading stuff or he was also a dealer?
0:05:53 Yeah, he was a dealer, you know, did hot tub service, sold this one brand of hot tub that we use, which was portable.
0:05:55 So he had, you know, like units everywhere.
0:05:56 It was like a hot tub graveyard.
0:05:58 So we picked out three good units.
0:05:59 But he was great.
0:06:12 He put together like really like a nice starter pack of stuff that I would need and parts and things that he uses and gave me a lot of info, gave me some of the documents that he uses, his insurance policy.
0:06:13 I mean, he was really, really helpful.
0:06:16 You know, I’m about three, I’m three, I’m three, 400 miles away.
0:06:19 So he was just a helpful and friendly guy.
0:06:24 Maybe he was hoping to, you know, sell stuff over a longer term relationship, which was cool.
0:06:24 Yeah.
0:06:26 You’re not gonna be stealing market share from him.
0:06:27 You’re far enough away.
0:06:29 No, not at all.
0:06:30 So got along well.
0:06:31 And, and that’s how things started.
0:06:32 Okay.
0:06:38 And so there was nobody doing this currently on Long Island, but you’re confident that the demand was there.
0:06:40 It was just unfilled demand.
0:06:45 What did it cost for these initial three tubs worth of inventory to put up for rent?
0:06:49 Yeah, the three tubs, two of them, the plan was two of them are in real good shape.
0:06:50 You know, didn’t need anything.
0:06:52 And then one was a spare.
0:06:54 It was functional, but, but maybe didn’t look so great.
0:06:56 So we’d have the two and we’d have a spare.
0:07:00 So we didn’t get jammed up with any, you know, problems if any, if anything went wrong.
0:07:03 I think I paid 6,500 bucks for those three tubs.
0:07:06 Beyond that, I had a pickup truck.
0:07:06 I had a trailer.
0:07:08 So there was no investment there.
0:07:12 We spent a little bit of money on website development.
0:07:13 I got Squarespace.
0:07:16 I started working on it myself, basically on my lunch breaks.
0:07:21 But in the end, I took what I had and what I could build on my own, having never built a website before.
0:07:22 Okay.
0:07:27 And, and basically just got a freelance helper to come in and say, this is what I’ve got.
0:07:28 Tune it up.
0:07:28 Help me out a bit.
0:07:33 We sat down for about three or four hours and made it, I think, really presentable to roll out.
0:07:40 So we had a little bit of expense there and some initial signage for the truck, some printed material.
0:07:40 And that’s it.
0:07:41 That’s it.
0:07:42 Okay.
0:07:45 So I’m at lihottubrentals.com now.
0:07:50 If I navigate over to packages, I can see the pricing there.
0:07:57 And then it’s just a, is it an online reservation system where people call you to say, hey, I’m looking for a hot tub for this weekend.
0:07:58 How does it work?
0:08:02 Yeah, we get a lot of phone calls through Google Voice, which we use.
0:08:05 We get a lot of emails through the website.
0:08:09 We get a lot of Facebook and Instagram inquiries, really Facebook.
0:08:14 I could not imagine growing this business in the way that we have without Facebook.
0:08:22 And we’re trying to bring Instagram in, you know, as a parallel, because I feel like in my day job, I work with high school students, 11th and 12th graders.
0:08:25 Not one of them has a Facebook account, from what I can tell.
0:08:32 They all have Instagram and they’re our future customers, you know, 10 years down the road when they’re in their mid, late 20s and beyond.
0:08:35 So we’re trying to grow that at the same time.
0:08:39 But Facebook has been tremendous and mostly free.
0:08:44 Anything specific that you did on Facebook to gain traction, to gain customers?
0:08:55 I mean, so our product is great in that it’s really visually presentable, you know, so you get lots of good organic pictures that we take, that our customers take, send to us, that we can post.
0:08:59 You know, it really looks inviting and lends itself to that.
0:09:08 It also seems to really get good traction on local groups, whether they’re buy and sell groups, which are free to post on Facebook Marketplace.
0:09:11 We found a way where we can post on there without having a problem.
0:09:13 And that’s been really helpful.
0:09:22 And the local kind of like school groups, moms groups, community groups, they get a hold of some of our posts and that has really taken off.
0:09:23 Oh, interesting.
0:09:28 So you can put rental stuff up on Marketplace.
0:09:28 I didn’t know that.
0:09:30 Yeah, you can.
0:09:34 At one point, I thought we were having trouble with that because it was like, hey, you’re not selling a product.
0:09:35 Boom, we’re going to shut it down.
0:09:37 But we’re forthcoming with what we’re doing.
0:09:39 You know, we post it as a price.
0:09:43 We say, you know, it’s $249 or $259 for the week.
0:09:45 But, you know, we just list it as $259.
0:09:47 And then in the details, it’s exactly what it is.
0:09:48 Rent a hot tub for a week.
0:09:50 We can put it right on your back deck, on your patio.
0:09:50 Give us a call.
0:09:51 Okay.
0:09:52 And it gets a ton of traffic.
0:09:53 Okay.
0:09:58 I’m looking at Amazon for, I searched, I think, portable hot tub.
0:09:59 These are the inflatable models.
0:10:09 So would this work because these are kind of in the price point of, you know, say $500 to $800 versus you’re talking about picking up used ones for $3,000?
0:10:10 Yeah.
0:10:14 So the inflatable tubs are cool for what they are.
0:10:21 They definitely work, but they don’t function below 50 or 60 degrees and, you know, or at least don’t function efficiently.
0:10:23 So you can’t use them in the winter.
0:10:25 Like the pump or the heater isn’t strong enough.
0:10:30 When it starts to get cool, kind of like New York fall temperatures, they work, but they run constantly.
0:10:38 Then once you hit around the 40, 50 degree mark, they can no longer, you know, create heat in a sufficient way that you can use them.
0:10:39 They’re also not really durable.
0:10:44 So, you know, you’re looking at a season or two or three if you use it carefully.
0:10:54 But if you’re not going to have this tub for a long period of time, they’re, you know, it’s like you ever have an air mattress, you take it out of the box, you lay on it, and it’s like this thing is garbage and throw it away.
0:10:56 It’s kind of like that.
0:10:57 They’re not repairable.
0:10:57 They’re not serviceable.
0:11:00 They’re, you know, it’s a different animal.
0:11:04 So for some people, that’s what they want, but that’s not what we, not what we offer.
0:11:04 All right.
0:11:11 So you’re going a little bit more premium quality on the inventory in the hopes that number one, it functions during a New York winter.
0:11:14 And number two, it lasts a little bit longer.
0:11:20 And, you know, once it’s paid for, paid off, once you’ve broken even on it and it’s all gravy, it’s just your labor in the pickup and delivery and stuff.
0:11:21 Yeah, exactly.
0:11:26 How did you figure out how much to charge for the service?
0:11:32 Yeah, I’d like to say that, you know, I really studied the market and looked at, you know, all kinds of data.
0:11:39 Really, I looked at what I needed to make to get rid of this summer job, which was becoming kind of a burden to me.
0:11:48 And like I said, I was looking at that $1,000 a month, $12,000 a year to kind of cover my $10,000 salary that I was trying to replace.
0:11:50 I thought that was doable.
0:11:55 I think we started at a $199 for a week, so $200 a week.
0:12:05 You know, if I had two tubs, could I get five rentals, basically a 50% capacity, right, you know, per month between the two tubs?
0:12:09 Could I do that on average over the course of a year and make $12,000?
0:12:10 I thought I could.
0:12:24 It also seemed like a price that I would pay my friends who are kind of in the same middle-class neighborhood lifestyle would pay for their vacation, for their kid’s birthday party, for something like that.
0:12:28 There’s a lot of alternatives that are around $200, $300.
0:12:30 I’m going to rent a tent.
0:12:32 I’m going to rent a water slide.
0:12:33 I’m going to rent a bounce house.
0:12:36 They’re all around that same price point.
0:12:37 So I thought we’d just go in there.
0:12:37 Okay.
0:12:39 Yeah, that makes sense.
0:12:46 Was it a matter of just scoring the initial inventory, putting up the website, and then the phone started to ring?
0:12:49 Or did you do anything else proactive to market this thing?
0:12:54 The challenge, which has been really rewarding, is that there’s really two sales that have to be made, right?
0:13:02 You’ve got to, in this case, introduce the idea to the customer because no one is really out there looking for this, or they certainly weren’t four years ago.
0:13:05 So no one is thinking like, I got a week off.
0:13:07 Maybe we’re not going anywhere.
0:13:08 Let’s rent a hot tub.
0:13:09 Nobody’s thinking that.
0:13:19 So you’ve got to introduce that idea, and then they will call, and then make the sale of your hot tub for $200 on this day.
0:13:23 So we had to do that, and that took a little bit of time.
0:13:27 Social media with the images have helped a lot.
0:13:31 And then word of mouth, we’ve done about 700 rentals now.
0:13:36 In any given month, half of our rentals are returning customers.
0:13:43 Another chunk of our customers have come as a word of mouth referral, friend, neighbor, parent.
0:13:46 And now we are filling in the rest with brand new organic business.
0:13:47 Okay.
0:13:50 So somebody is proactively searching for it.
0:13:55 They are likely to find you by virtue of there not being that many other options out there.
0:14:06 But it was a matter of this boots on the ground, social media in the marketplace, in the community groups, in the local buy-sell groups, letting people know this was a thing.
0:14:07 This is an option.
0:14:12 And, hey, it’s not that expensive for what is kind of a cool, like, novel thing to have at your house.
0:14:13 Yeah.
0:14:17 Now, we do get calls all the time, and I always ask, you know, how did you find us?
0:14:20 And I do get a lot of customers who said, oh, I just typed it in Google.
0:14:21 I was just searching online.
0:14:23 There really is no one else doing it.
0:14:36 So if you type in not even Long Island Hot Tub Rentals or Hot Tub Rental Long Island, even if you type in Long Island Hot Tub, I think we’re pretty visible, even with those pretty basic generic terms.
0:14:37 And that’s been helpful.
0:14:39 So you’re teaching high school history.
0:14:42 The phone rings during the day.
0:14:44 You’re in the middle of class.
0:14:46 Like, how are you handling the customer inquiries logistics?
0:14:52 So I try to keep my two worlds separate a bit.
0:14:53 I certainly don’t.
0:14:55 The calls go to our Google Voice.
0:14:57 A lot of times the calls will go to voicemail.
0:14:58 Lindsay gets them.
0:15:00 She’ll take care of it or send it to me.
0:15:05 I’ll see the emails come in, and I’ll respond to them over the course of the day just because I like to.
0:15:09 And, you know, so I’m able to kind of balance it.
0:15:15 You know, we will get back to a customer that same day 100% of the time.
0:15:17 So usually within a few hours.
0:15:20 And that’s helpful because a customer is interested in this.
0:15:21 They’ve called us.
0:15:23 We get back to them.
0:15:25 And, you know, a lot of times that’s it.
0:15:26 Closes right there.
0:15:28 They say, what’s the first available?
0:15:30 Or we want this date or we want this week.
0:15:31 And that’s it.
0:15:32 Oh, okay.
0:15:34 So you get somebody on the phone.
0:15:35 You book them.
0:15:37 Do you take credit card information over the phone?
0:15:39 What we’ll do is we’ll send them a three-square.
0:15:45 No matter what you’re doing, whether you’re doing a three-month rental or a two-day rental, our deposit is 50 bucks towards the total.
0:15:53 That small amount is basically enough to stop 99% of the cancellation schedule changes, anything.
0:15:55 And we’re pretty flexible.
0:15:57 I mean, you can change a reservation up to a few days before.
0:16:05 But that small deposit basically locks it in and eliminates all the headaches that you might have with customers making changes.
0:16:12 Okay, so a little bit of a deposit up front, 50 bucks up front, and then balance due upon delivery.
0:16:13 How does that work?
0:16:15 Yeah, delivery and setup, yes.
0:16:15 Okay.
0:16:26 More with Steve in just a moment, including the customer setup process and how he thinks about the return on investment math for each new hot tub coming up right after this.
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0:18:51 So you roll this 200-pound thing into the back of the pickup truck and say, all right, we’re making a delivery today.
0:18:55 So you roll it up to somebody’s backyard and then it’s there.
0:18:57 They fill it with their own water supply.
0:18:58 They plug it in.
0:18:59 Yeah, I’ll do the setup.
0:19:00 That’s part of it.
0:19:04 So we leave you with a hot tub that’s up and running, show you how to use it, give you written instructions.
0:19:07 I put in the initial chemicals, and that’s really important.
0:19:12 So when it’s full, the chemical proportions are going to be correct when it’s full.
0:19:17 The customer will have to maintain – it’s usually just the chlorine level, so just like a pool.
0:19:18 So we give them a test strip.
0:19:21 They match up the color, add really small amounts.
0:19:26 I mean, if you had this thing for a week, you’re talking about ounces of chlorine that you would really need to maintain it.
0:19:27 And that’s it.
0:19:29 Plug into a standard outlet, 110.
0:19:34 So there’s no wiring or electrical issues or anything like that.
0:19:36 It comes with a cover, locks up.
0:19:38 It’s a really nice, really nice unit.
0:19:40 Heats up to 104 degrees.
0:19:41 Set the thermostat.
0:19:42 Forget it.
0:19:50 Okay, and after 10 or so rentals, you’ve broken even on the – I mean, depending on the length of the rental.
0:19:59 But if it’s just $2.59 for a week, after 8 or 10 of those, you’re kind of in the black on that unit, not counting delivery time and stuff like that.
0:20:07 Is there a metric that you’re shooting for in regards to ROI or anything on that math front?
0:20:09 My mentality is I get this hot tub.
0:20:11 I’m thinking – I buy a car.
0:20:12 I buy a hot tub.
0:20:13 I buy a house.
0:20:15 I’m thinking – not breaking even.
0:20:21 I’m thinking like how many years – which child of mine is going to be using this hot tub 20 years from now?
0:20:21 Okay.
0:20:32 So my strategy has really been to find a product that is really reliable but is also like refurbishable, that is also serviceable, and we can prolong the life.
0:20:36 I have hot tubs that are from 2001, 2002, 2003.
0:20:37 They’re 15 years old.
0:20:42 This one particular brand, you can buy and replace motor parts, pump parts, the liners.
0:20:48 I’ve actually gotten this type of hot tub off Craigslist for $50, for $100.
0:21:00 I’ve gotten out of the trash that needs to be completely refurbished, but I can do it, and I can have a fully functional tub that looks brand new sometimes for $1,000, $1,500, buy a brand new cover.
0:21:02 They look fantastic.
0:21:08 I’ve had someone pay me to remove it from their home because they didn’t want it anymore.
0:21:16 It was in a basement, and they had the dealer bring it in eight years ago, and we just want to get it out of here.
0:21:20 We’re not using it, but they didn’t know how to take the door off the hinges.
0:21:21 They didn’t know how to get it up the stairs.
0:21:23 I said, I’ll come and take it for free.
0:21:24 I ended up taking it.
0:21:25 The guy gave me $100.
0:21:27 Gladly, I’ll take it off your hands.
0:21:27 Jeez.
0:21:28 The tub was in great shape.
0:21:33 You know, I brought it home, ran it, cleaned it, replaced a couple of little fittings and things on it.
0:21:35 That was a couple of months ago.
0:21:43 That tub went out after being with me for about a week, and it’s been out for $350, $400 a month for four months.
0:21:44 Okay, nice.
0:21:51 So this is the Soft Tub brand, and you must have just Google alerts, Craigslist alerts.
0:21:56 Anytime somebody posts one of these used for sale, it’s like, I got to jump on that.
0:21:58 Yeah, I’ve gone, so I’m on Long Island.
0:22:04 I’ve gone everywhere from Montpelier, Vermont, all the way to really South Jersey.
0:22:06 So about 300 miles in any direction.
0:22:10 If I can get one of these at the right price, I’ll go and scoop it up.
0:22:14 The goal is to have them all rented, and so there’s not a lot of storage issues.
0:22:24 But, you know, they got to come back for repairs, or if there’s a low, and you got a bunch of these sitting around in a storage locker or in the side yard of your house.
0:22:25 I’m just curious.
0:22:27 It’s a big, bulky thing.
0:22:33 It is times 25 or times 30, but by the summer, it’s a massive amount of foam.
0:22:41 But, you know, that’s a problem that we started thinking about when we first started this business, and I figured as soon as it becomes a problem, we’re going to have to broach that.
0:22:42 We’re going to have to deal with that.
0:22:44 We’re going to have to rent space, and we’re going to have an issue.
0:22:45 Now I’ve got 25 tubs.
0:22:48 I have zero inventory right now.
0:22:51 I had picked one up yesterday, brought it home, cleaned it.
0:22:52 It was out today.
0:22:55 You know, I got one coming back tomorrow.
0:22:57 It actually comes back, gets serviced, goes back out tomorrow.
0:23:00 We have no slack.
0:23:02 We’ve got a spare, which we keep as our own.
0:23:06 Is winter like the high time for you, high season?
0:23:11 Well, winter, the holidays, is a huge season.
0:23:14 My initial thought when we started this as a teacher was this is a summer thing.
0:23:16 You know, pool parties, barbecues.
0:23:17 We’re going to be hanging out in the summer.
0:23:22 I’ll be a little bit busy, you know, and make money during the summer, part-time.
0:23:26 I’ll be maybe a little busy over the course of the year, and it’ll kind of come together.
0:23:30 Turns out there is that, but there’s also this huge winter.
0:23:33 As soon as it gets cold, the winter market just explodes.
0:23:34 This is fascinating.
0:23:40 As a matter of fact, I will – there’s a snowstorm coming, right, or some crazy winter weather.
0:23:46 I’ll just take a screenshot of the Weather Channel five-day forecast and just post that as the ad,
0:23:49 and I’ll just put some text across it like, perfect hot tub weather on tap.
0:23:51 Boom.
0:23:52 Lights up the phone.
0:23:52 Snow day.
0:23:54 Your kids are going to be home from school.
0:24:01 Basically, the insinuation, do you want to be occupying your kids for the one or two days that they’re going to be off
0:24:03 because we’re going to get six inches or a foot of snow?
0:24:05 The answer that every parent has is no.
0:24:12 If a solution to that is $200, that’s a very easy sell to make.
0:24:14 Yeah, this is fascinating.
0:24:19 So it sounds like the bottleneck isn’t necessarily the marketing right now.
0:24:20 It’s the inventory.
0:24:26 So you’re like, hey, you know, because it’s kind of like a hotel, there’s a sweet spot for occupancy, right?
0:24:33 It’s like, well, you know, at the price point and, you know, the occupancy rate versus like, did I undercharge and could I have sold more?
0:24:40 It’s an interesting one where you’re kind of still in this inventory growth mode to meet the existing demand,
0:24:43 which I, again, you have helped create, but I didn’t know was a thing.
0:24:45 So it’s very impressive.
0:24:47 I also try to depress supply.
0:24:51 So if you want to buy, my customers, they love these hot tubs.
0:24:53 How can we get them?
0:25:00 Now they could buy them new, you know, and that’s pretty expensive at the retail level with no discounts for buying a bunch of them or anything.
0:25:03 They’re looking at maybe $5,000 to buy this unit.
0:25:11 But if they’re on Craigslist or eBay or Facebook Marketplace, and I’ve told them this, you’re competing with me to buy this used tub.
0:25:18 The other thing, and maybe this was your next question, we were busy, you know, up until a year ago, just doing our thing.
0:25:20 And we’d have busy times.
0:25:21 We’d have a few come back.
0:25:23 We try to extend our current customers.
0:25:25 That was always the idea, right?
0:25:26 Somebody has it for a week.
0:25:31 If we’re not busy, call them halfway through and be like, how about next week for half price?
0:25:33 You know, just keep it out.
0:25:33 Keep it rolling.
0:25:34 Oh, okay.
0:25:36 We’ve already made the delivery, right?
0:25:38 And I’m looking at availability for next week.
0:25:46 And I kind of do this mental supply and demand graph of where’s that price that this customer is going to say, yeah, I’ll keep it.
0:25:47 Okay.
0:25:47 I like that.
0:25:53 That’s interesting because it’s incremental, you know, almost nothing for you if it wasn’t already going to be rented to somebody else.
0:25:53 Right.
0:25:55 And you only get one chance to make that offer, right?
0:25:57 You can’t offer $150 and say, you know what?
0:25:58 It’s been great, but no thanks.
0:26:00 I don’t then go, well, what about $110?
0:26:01 Right.
0:26:02 Now you look desperate.
0:26:04 Right.
0:26:11 So it’s, you know, and you don’t want to be completely seem like this price is this just completely flexible thing between zero and infinity, right?
0:26:18 You know, so like, but based on what next week looks like and how busy you are, yeah, I have that little supply.
0:26:19 I’m an economics teacher.
0:26:21 I have that little supply and demand graph in my head.
0:26:29 And I’m trying to find that equilibrium based on my availability, also my knowledge, informal knowledge of the customer and that kind of thing.
0:26:42 But COVID has really changed the game in a way that I never could have predicted in terms of the demand side for this with customers being at home and travel plans being canceled.
0:26:45 It’s really just blown my mind.
0:26:46 Yeah.
0:26:50 So I take it that has been a very positive thing for your business.
0:26:51 Yeah.
0:27:02 You know, when we started, when the whole COVID situation began, you know, this involves going to different people’s houses, being on the highways, putting yourself, I wouldn’t say in danger, but things can happen.
0:27:09 And here in New York in March and April, things were not not good and hospitals were full and pretty scary.
0:27:16 My wife and I, especially my wife, was very concerned about me being out there just doing things, even though it’s not a real close contact thing.
0:27:24 And she said, if you’re going to do this, you got to do long term only, you know, two month minimum.
0:27:34 That way you’re not going into 15 houses or yards and customers and cash exchange and trips on the road a week, two months.
0:27:35 I said, you’re nuts, right?
0:27:38 Somebody calls, they want something that’s $199.
0:27:41 You say, well, we can’t do that, but here’s something for a thousand bucks.
0:27:42 You know, I would hang up on me.
0:27:44 That’s what I always say if somebody made that offer.
0:27:48 And I was 100% wrong.
0:28:02 Once the kind of lockdowns hit and work from home became the reality and school at home and trying to balance all of that, the hot tub just became the hottest commodity that I could ever have imagined.
0:28:09 If you wanted to order one brand new and pay five grand for it, you were looking at four months of lead time if you even wanted to buy one.
0:28:11 The market just exploded.
0:28:15 I’ve got my Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace fired up.
0:28:16 You got me looking for these things.
0:28:19 I’m kind of, yeah, there’s one for a couple of grand.
0:28:21 Oh, no, this is somebody who wants one.
0:28:25 I’m willing to pay up to two grand, depending on condition.
0:28:26 Here’s one for free.
0:28:28 It says it has a slow leak.
0:28:29 Maybe somebody can salvage it.
0:28:31 So where is it?
0:28:32 I probably have seen it.
0:28:35 It’s near Richmond, California.
0:28:37 So it’s probably 45 minutes from me.
0:28:39 It’s not too far.
0:28:40 Okay.
0:28:42 The leak is the tricky one.
0:28:48 If it’s internal on these tubs, which is rare, you really have a major issue that probably can’t be fixed.
0:28:52 But if it’s the liner or the motor, it’s very easily kind of serviceable.
0:28:54 I’ve made a couple of bad purchases.
0:28:57 I’ve got a couple of tubs that I thought I could repair that I couldn’t.
0:29:01 I’ve made a couple of repairs that I’ve screwed up and took a little bit of a bath on.
0:29:02 No pun intended.
0:29:14 But, you know, in the grand scheme of things and in the realm of, you know, mistakes I made in my side hustle business, it’s been pretty low downside.
0:29:25 I was going to ask about any horror stories with the thing, I don’t know, exploding all over somebody’s yard or garage or rolling off the back of the truck or I don’t know what else could go wrong.
0:29:27 But I imagine there’s some things.
0:29:29 Had a few things fall off the truck.
0:29:35 Not a tub, but we offer it as an extra, a few pieces of woodwork that can go with the tub, which is really popular.
0:29:37 They’re like these little cedar benches that go around.
0:29:42 You get like $100 for the month for those or $50 for the week just to add it on.
0:29:43 People love that.
0:29:47 Sent one or two of those sailing off into the shoulder of the expressway.
0:29:50 OK, stay safe, stay safe.
0:29:51 Yeah, yeah.
0:29:55 But other than that, no, I’d say the craziest thing that ever happened.
0:29:58 We do get some New York City business, which has to be a long term rental.
0:30:00 But I really love it.
0:30:02 I actually just did one in Brooklyn yesterday.
0:30:06 I just love something about getting this into somebody’s apartment building.
0:30:12 You know, if they have that outdoor space, I just think it’s so cool that their neighbors and their friends are going to see this.
0:30:17 Nobody for blocks and blocks and blocks around has this amenity and we’re doing it.
0:30:19 You know, I just think that that’s a huge market.
0:30:21 Haven’t really exploited it too much.
0:30:25 If that’s a little bit of a hike for you, do you charge like extra delivery fee to get it there?
0:30:32 Yeah, unless it’s going to be, you know, three months or more, you know, I’ll definitely charge a delivery fee on it.
0:30:32 Yeah.
0:30:36 Yeah, if it’s a long term thing, they’re going to pay you six, seven hundred bucks.
0:30:38 Like, OK, I can I can drive over there.
0:30:46 And it sounds like you’ve gone down kind of the Southwest Airlines model of like just having one type of plane, just having one type of tub.
0:30:50 So it just makes repairs and parts interchange.
0:30:54 It makes life easier from that front rather than starting from scratch every time something does go haywire.
0:30:55 Yeah.
0:30:58 I mean, part of that is and I’ve researched it.
0:31:06 I don’t think there’s another brand of tub that would really work as well, which in a way scares me a little bit because I’m really beholden to this one brand.
0:31:08 They’ve been around for a long time.
0:31:09 I think they’re a healthy company.
0:31:13 But, you know, there’s not a lot of options for me if they went out of business or stop making what they’re making.
0:31:15 But it is what it is.
0:31:16 That’s that’s what I’m using.
0:31:20 The long term rental is kind of my bread and butter.
0:31:25 You know, it’s four ninety nine for a full month right now as opposed to two fifty for a week.
0:31:29 So we’re really basically saying you’re getting a full month for two weeks cost.
0:31:34 Part of that is just because I like that idea of giving a good value.
0:31:41 It’s making money for us and it’s not really pushing everything to the red line of how many times we can get this thing rented.
0:31:45 The other thing is I don’t foresee myself leaving my full time job.
0:31:51 So how many of these I can do in a week after work or on a Saturday is kind of limiting.
0:31:58 So there’s more money in doing thirty one week rentals in a week if you could do that.
0:32:07 But that’s six sixty jobs, thirty deliveries, thirty pickups, cleaning in between, supply store, Home Depot hardware.
0:32:10 You know, you need a staff to do that.
0:32:11 It’s just you and your wife right now.
0:32:12 Yeah.
0:32:12 Yeah.
0:32:14 And I’m really doing all the deliveries.
0:32:17 We had three small kids, nine, six and two.
0:32:24 So she helps me tremendously with the schedule, figuring out where we’re going to go, putting things in a logical order.
0:32:29 So, you know, Long Island’s 30 miles wide, 20 miles wide, but one hundred and twenty miles long.
0:32:37 OK, so, you know, you need to be a little bit judicious about what’s getting dropped off where and picked up where on any given day.
0:32:41 I was good with this until we had about four hot tubs.
0:32:45 And then she saw my whiteboard in the basement and papers that I was taping to it.
0:32:48 And she said, you know what, I’m going to help you out with this.
0:32:52 And she does tremendously every day, basically tells me where I’m going.
0:32:57 Is there a software system that she’s using or some sort of spreadsheet tracker?
0:32:58 I don’t even know what it would look like.
0:32:59 Yeah, that’s the thing.
0:32:59 Yeah.
0:33:03 We’ve looked at that trying to just create something on Excel.
0:33:08 You know, basically, we were just taking what we’re doing on a paper calendar and putting it on the computer.
0:33:20 We’ve looked at some different software for things like real estate, you know, like somebody maybe has an Airbnb kind of situation and they’re managing units or a hair salon booking program or something that we looked at.
0:33:25 But we just haven’t quite found something that fits.
0:33:27 So basically, we take a reservation.
0:33:30 Either if I take it, I’ll email it to her.
0:33:31 She’ll email it to herself.
0:33:35 She puts it on the calendar, assigns it a tub.
0:33:36 We have the tubs numbered.
0:33:37 So she’s assigning that.
0:33:43 We’ve got about 99% accuracy, which, you know, it sounds terrible, right?
0:33:45 Because, I mean, that means there’s a screw up in there.
0:33:54 But, yeah, very rarely have we had a situation where we couldn’t cover a rental on the day we were supposed to or forgot about somebody or something.
0:34:02 The Airbnb option is an interesting angle to potentially partner with owners or hosts.
0:34:03 Yes.
0:34:05 To say, like, would you like that?
0:34:11 I don’t know if there’s capability, but, like, to have this as a little checkbox upsell add-on for their guests.
0:34:15 I have had that experience a couple of times with Airbnb hosts.
0:34:19 I’ve had to find them just kind of randomly, organically.
0:34:22 At first, I guess I was kind of naive.
0:34:24 I just kind of created an Airbnb account.
0:34:29 I started looking at, you know, the local vacation rentals and, you know, emailing the hosts.
0:34:31 And that’s how you get banned from Airbnb, apparently.
0:34:34 That’s how I would have gone about it.
0:34:34 Okay.
0:34:36 That’s a good way to get in trouble.
0:34:43 Some people, I guess, weren’t appreciative of being sold something when they were expecting their emails to be conveying reservations.
0:34:44 I get that.
0:34:45 I do.
0:34:50 But I actually, you know, I guess like everybody, I think my service is so valuable to them.
0:34:57 Because, look, you can take your rental and charge more for it because you’re offering this amenity, right?
0:34:58 And you don’t have to buy it.
0:34:59 You don’t have to maintain it.
0:35:02 You don’t have to have it there when your guests are not there.
0:35:11 You can target off-season periods and say, okay, we’re going to offer this amenity and maybe get some more guests.
0:35:12 You can charge more again.
0:35:14 And they have to do literally nothing.
0:35:20 So I have three Airbnb hosts that I’ve worked with on an on-again, off-again basis.
0:35:23 One has a tub right now on kind of a permanent basis.
0:35:26 The others kind of call when they need it.
0:35:32 When you were getting into this or since you’ve gotten into this, anything that has surprised you about the industry?
0:35:35 Well, I can tell you about my customers.
0:35:37 I have all different types of customers.
0:35:43 One question that we had was, you know, are we going to have rich customers who are like, let’s get a hot tub this weekend, you know?
0:35:44 And there is some of that.
0:35:57 We have the Hamptons and New York City suburbs, you know, people who could very easily buy the hot tub that I’m delivering probably with the money that they have on their person in some cases.
0:36:00 They could buy my hot tub, the truck, and everything, you know?
0:36:06 And then they’re smart people who’ve made financial decisions that have afforded them a $5 million home.
0:36:12 And I’m thinking, you know, you’re paying me $500 to deliver this $1,500 hot tub to you, and I’m going to take it away in a month.
0:36:14 What’s up with this?
0:36:32 The convenience factor is so important to some people that if you go and you provide this experience that’s really seamless for them, you show up on time, you set it up, talk to them about it, tell them how much fun it’s going to be, deal with any problems that they have, answer the phone, take it away when they’re done.
0:36:53 It is absolutely worth it, and this just makes my head explode from where I’m coming from, from a financial mindset of I just can’t imagine if you can get – I can’t even explain how far it is to me because even if I wasn’t renting the hot tubs, I’m looking – if I wanted one, I’d be scouring Craigslist to find something that’s repairable.
0:36:56 I get a charge out of that.
0:37:01 And then on the other end, you have a lot of your regular families, and they’ve got a week off.
0:37:02 They’ve got a kid’s birthday.
0:37:03 They’ve got guests coming into town.
0:37:10 And at that exact same price point, I mean, there’s no change in the price based on your address, you know, not at all.
0:37:20 And you’ve got basically people from vastly different backgrounds, spots on the economic ladder, you know, enjoying the same exact experience the same way.
0:37:21 It’s actually kind of interesting.
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0:39:49 I mean, is it just like a Clorox wipe type of cleaning situation, like in between rentals?
0:39:50 No, it’s not.
0:39:50 It’s not.
0:39:53 I know somebody’s going to be asking about, like, what do you do to clean these things in between?
0:39:54 Yeah, absolutely.
0:39:59 So when we pick up the tub, what we’ll do is we’ll pump out three quarters of the water.
0:40:00 So they’re 300-gallon tubs.
0:40:05 We probably bring it down to 75 gallons, you know, just a foot of water in there.
0:40:09 And we superchlorinate that water and run the tub.
0:40:16 So this superchlorinated solution runs through all of the internals of the hot tub, all of the motor units.
0:40:18 It gets all over all of the surfaces that you touch.
0:40:21 So that’s a sanitizing solution.
0:40:28 We pump that out, hose it down, bring the tub home where it’s filled with fresh water.
0:40:36 Get all those harsh chemicals out, wash the tub with soap and water then after, and then bring it to the next customer whenever that is.
0:40:36 Okay.
0:40:38 That’s just a little bit of a process.
0:40:40 It’s a process.
0:40:50 You know, also when the tub is delivered, and this might be getting a little too in the weeds, but when the tub is delivered, we put the full dose of the sanitizing chemicals in when we first get there.
0:40:54 So you’ve got 10% of the water, all of the chemicals, and then that’s kind of like that fail safe.
0:40:57 That tub is, again, getting a chemical treatment of cleaning.
0:40:58 Okay.
0:41:01 Like re-sanitized just to be doubly safe there.
0:41:09 The thing that, you know, when customers ask that question, and I try always to really comfortably answer that question, never balk at it because I think that’s a question I’d be asking, right?
0:41:11 I just kind of relay the experience here.
0:41:13 If we’re a family business, we’ve got three kids.
0:41:16 When we’re using a hot tub, it’s kind of one of these.
0:41:19 And, you know, we put our own kids in there, our own families.
0:41:21 It’s the whole business.
0:41:27 If we’re not cleaning these tubs and, you know, providing a nice, clean, sanitary product, we’re not in business.
0:41:31 And I send them a few pictures of my young kids in the tub, and that’s it.
0:41:34 And then the fears go away.
0:41:40 Have you had to do anything on the insurance or liability front just to protect yourself from – I don’t know.
0:41:42 I imagine there’s some liability involved here.
0:41:43 Yeah.
0:41:48 You know, water and electricity is definitely a cocktail that, you know, you want to keep separate.
0:41:57 The business is formed as an LLC, and we keep the finances, you know, to the best of our knowledge done properly to protect ourselves from liability there.
0:42:04 And we do have liability insurance for property damage, for personal injury, for – to the best of our knowledge, everything that we can do to protect ourselves.
0:42:10 And, you know, we just approach every day trying to do the right thing and go from there.
0:42:20 During this setup and takedown, how much time are you spending at the house, like, for this kind of, like, setup and then this chemical cleaning process each time?
0:42:23 At the house, the initial setup is probably about 40 minutes.
0:42:24 Okay.
0:42:29 And that is just like filling it with a hose, or you kind of let them do that on their own afterwards?
0:42:40 If I can get a fraction of the water in there, if I can get six, eight inches of water in there, I can get the tub running, show them how everything works, test for any leaks, make sure everything is cool, and then let that tub fill.
0:42:45 It’s going to take a half hour, 45 minutes to fill after I leave, but that’s all good.
0:42:47 They can just do that and turn off the hose when they’re done.
0:42:51 One thing we do is fill it often with hot water.
0:42:56 You know, the tub’s going to take a full day, really, to heat if we fill it with the hose, especially this time of year.
0:43:05 So we tell customers, if you want to hook up to where your washing machine connects in the house, or if you want to hook up to a sink, we’ve got all these crazy adapters we can get on sinks and showers.
0:43:06 Fill with the hot water from your house.
0:43:07 Run it really slow.
0:43:10 When that tub fills, you might be in there when it’s full.
0:43:12 Oh, okay.
0:43:16 Yeah, burn some hot water instead of the electricity to heat it, but okay.
0:43:17 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
0:43:17 Yeah.
0:43:19 Fair enough, fair enough.
0:43:20 Well, Steve, this has been awesome.
0:43:25 Like you said, you can get me searching the marketplaces to see if there’s any of these nearby.
0:43:26 I don’t know where I would keep it.
0:43:27 No, there’s nothing there.
0:43:28 You shouldn’t look.
0:43:28 Maybe I’ll stick it.
0:43:30 I’m across the country from you.
0:43:32 I’m not a competition.
0:43:34 I’ll stick it on the patio or something.
0:43:36 I think the kids can have a great time.
0:43:41 Okay, you don’t see yourself leaving your teaching career to do this full-time.
0:43:42 Where do you want to take it?
0:43:49 Right now, I think what needs to happen is when we get to that 30-tub mark, to have some part-time help.
0:43:54 That’s just a step that has to be taken because I’m maxed out 100% right now.
0:44:04 So I think if we could get some help to do even exclusively the pickups, so the customers had the whole experience, everything is good, I did the setup, but now it’s done.
0:44:07 Someone else comes to their home, pumps out the water, cleans it out.
0:44:13 I mean there’s definitely responsibility there, but the customers already had their hot tub experience, and hopefully they’re already happy.
0:44:20 And now somebody else is doing what really – if it’s not half of the work, it’s close, and that would be a really big help.
0:44:23 Now, beyond that, we’ve toyed with different ideas.
0:44:35 I have thought about taking a year off from work and trying to grow this thing or creating other locations, either as a franchise model or ones that we would operate ourselves in other cities.
0:44:47 We get calls from all over the place, Boston, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, New Jersey suburbs, upstate New York, or northern suburbs that are too far.
0:44:57 If I could replicate what I’m doing, maybe not quite as big, but if I could have a couple of subsidiaries with five to ten tubs in three locations, four locations, it would be a home run in a week.
0:45:01 Yeah, that’s an interesting path, the franchise model.
0:45:06 It sounds like you’re an early mover in the space, so I don’t know.
0:45:11 I also think, like, for a teacher, it’s really a sweet thing.
0:45:14 You know, teachers have a pretty regular schedule.
0:45:17 They have some time off at different times, especially around the holidays.
0:45:25 Teachers are pretty intelligent, right, are personable, can answer people’s questions and kind of deal with different types of people, difficult situations.
0:45:38 I think that the teacher, who also maybe is looking to make extra money, which is something, especially in other parts of the country, that, you know, you hear from teachers all the time, I’ve got to work two jobs, that this could be, like, a really cool side gig.
0:45:41 And we’re not talking about, you know, tutoring for 50 bucks.
0:45:49 You could really legitimately do a couple hundred bucks, 500 bucks a week, you know, without too much trouble, I don’t think.
0:45:50 There you go.
0:45:57 Maybe there’s the – I mean, that’s a perfect segue to the, you know, here’s my online course about how to start a hot tub business.
0:45:58 Is that coming down the road?
0:46:00 You know, I listen to this show.
0:46:02 That’s why I’m here, right, because I love it.
0:46:07 And so many of the things I find interesting, but so much of it is about, yeah, the book, the online course, the app.
0:46:09 I really like the business.
0:46:10 You know, we’re selling this product.
0:46:11 It’s this thing.
0:46:13 I talk to the customer.
0:46:16 So, like, that’s kind of the direction that I want to see it go in.
0:46:22 If it was a franchise, which is something that I’d love more information on, how to just kind of navigate that.
0:46:23 Like, how does that even happen?
0:46:25 How would I be involved, you know?
0:46:29 Would I be involved with all the bookings come through us?
0:46:35 Would I be involved in helping to show the business to these people around the country?
0:46:39 Or would I be leasing the equipment to them and they’d be doing whatever they can do with it?
0:46:41 You know, these are all really cool options.
0:46:46 No one ever comes to me and says, man, I want to do that too.
0:46:47 They tell me it’s awesome.
0:46:48 They think it’s fun.
0:46:49 They think it’s cool.
0:46:57 Nobody wants to do maybe three or four pickups in a night after getting up at five in the morning and teaching.
0:47:00 41, I can still do it.
0:47:01 I get a kick out of it.
0:47:04 You know, I sleep well at night, but I get a charge out of it.
0:47:07 Well, I hope you get some calls after this because you definitely got my gears turning on it.
0:47:09 It sounds like a really cool operation.
0:47:17 It sounds like you’re just accumulating these assets that can turn into long-term cash flow down the road.
0:47:19 It’s like, it’s a very exciting thing.
0:47:23 And do it much faster than with a traditional rental real estate model.
0:47:28 Like, you know, lower startup costs, you know, quicker cash flow, lots of cool stuff going on there.
0:47:33 StartupRentals.com for Long Island Hot Tub Rentals.
0:47:37 Steve, let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation.
0:47:39 I mean, I gave this some thought.
0:47:43 And I think one thing that really helps us is talk to every single customer.
0:47:45 Right now, it’s early January.
0:47:48 Our next available rental is March 3rd.
0:47:49 Right now.
0:47:52 Customer that calls today, I call them back immediately.
0:47:54 I tell them what our next available is.
0:47:55 I tell them why we’re so busy.
0:47:56 Make that communication.
0:47:57 Establish it.
0:47:59 Have that conversation.
0:48:02 Even though chances are right now they’re not booking anything.
0:48:05 Or they’re saying, we’re going to wait and give you a call in a month.
0:48:07 Make that contact.
0:48:11 Don’t let auto-response on email do it or anything like that.
0:48:13 I make every single call back.
0:48:15 And I think that’s been real beneficial.
0:48:16 I said that was going to be the last question.
0:48:21 But are you maintaining a database of those, like, customer phone numbers or emails in some way?
0:48:21 Yeah.
0:48:22 Okay.
0:48:27 Any business that we actually do, anyone who reserves, yeah, we have their email and phone.
0:48:30 But, yeah, anything that we can’t fulfill goes on another list.
0:48:35 And in the past, yeah, when I’ve seen vacancies come up, you know, we put out an offer.
0:48:36 I call some specific people.
0:48:40 Or even if I’m going to, like, a far-flung location, right?
0:48:40 I’m going to the city.
0:48:44 I’ll put out an offer for a special deal of someone on the way.
0:48:45 Like, you can have this thing for $150.
0:48:48 I can get two on the truck, two or three.
0:48:52 Let’s make this ride $200 more, you know, or $150 more.
0:48:53 I’m already going there.
0:48:57 And I have been able to cultivate, you know, a pretty good following with that.
0:48:58 I like it.
0:48:58 Well, very cool.
0:49:05 I like the ability to remarket and do some strategic things, you know, based on just the physical logistics of the business.
0:49:09 Very inspiring to see what you’ve built, what you’ll continue to build, Steve.
0:49:10 Thanks again.
0:49:12 And we’ll catch up with you soon.
0:49:12 All right.
0:49:13 Thanks so much.
0:49:17 What a cool side gig.
0:49:19 I hope you enjoyed this chat with Steve.
0:49:21 Love the hustle.
0:49:26 Love the confidence to enter a market and then proactively help create the demand through social media.
0:49:28 I thought that was really cool.
0:49:33 And if hot tubs aren’t your thing, maybe they’re too heavy, they’re too bulky, too much maintenance.
0:49:36 Maybe there’s something else you can rent out in a similar fashion.
0:49:43 I’ve compiled a list of other potential, quote, unconventional rental products to help get your creative juices flowing.
0:49:50 You can download that at sidehustlenation.com slash hot tub or through the link in the episode description of your podcast player app.
0:49:53 That’s sidehustlenation.com slash hot tub.
0:50:00 And you’ll also find the full text summary of this chat with Steve, along with links to all the resources mentioned there as well.
0:50:02 That is it for me.
0:50:03 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:50:06 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen.
0:50:09 And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show.
0:50:10 I’ll see you then.
0:50:11 Hustle on.
You’ve heard of Hot Tub Time Machine, but how does Hot Tub Cash Machine sound?
That’s effectively the business model this week’s guest, Steve Nadramia.
Steve is a high school history and economics teacher in New York, and a listener of the show.
He reached out after our Thanksgiving episode, which touched on renting out attic space and even camper vans and semi-trucks as potential sources of recurring revenue.
His unconventional rental business?
Steve started a hot tub rental business to replace his summer job income, with the goal of earning $1000 a month. Today, he’s got 25+ tubs in his “fleet,” delivers them with his pickup truck, and is doing thousands of dollars in bookings every month.
Steve explained renting hot tubs is quite common in Europe, but doesn’t have much competition in the US yet.
Tune in to hear:
- how Steve got the idea for this business
- how he’s marketed and grown his business
- the logistics of how it all works
Full Show Notes: How to Start a Hot Tub Rental Business: Zero to $1000s per Month
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About The Side Hustle Show
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