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0:01:38 It’s the six-figure video game mom.
0:01:40 What’s up?
0:01:41 What’s up?
0:01:42 Nick Olover here.
0:01:43 Welcome to the Side Hustle Show.
0:01:44 It’s part of the Entrepreneur Podcast and Network where we’ve been helping make day jobs optional
0:01:48 since 2013.
0:01:49 Now, it’s my son’s dream to be able to play video games all day and make money doing it.
0:01:54 So he’s very excited for this interview.
0:01:56 Today’s guest isn’t a Twitch streaming celebrity or an eSports champ, but she does make great
0:02:01 money as a video game teacher and coach.
0:02:04 She’s really living breathing proof that she can monetize just about anything.
0:02:08 A mom of four with a super inspiring side hustle story.
0:02:12 We first connected a couple of years ago, which she was earning around $4,000 a month
0:02:15 doing this.
0:02:16 Today we’ve got the where are they now follow-up, as she’s more than doubled the business since
0:02:21 then from missdevin.com, Devin Ricks, welcome back to the Side Hustle Show.
0:02:26 Thanks for having me.
0:02:27 It’s so fun to be back.
0:02:28 So good to see you again.
0:02:29 It’s great.
0:02:30 Likewise.
0:02:31 I’m excited for this one.
0:02:32 Stick around.
0:02:33 You’re going to learn how to identify your profitable niche idea, how to connect with
0:02:36 customers and how to scale beyond hours for dollars.
0:02:40 So I want to start with, how did you happen upon video games as a niche?
0:02:44 It seems like a dream gig.
0:02:45 I love playing video games.
0:02:46 How can I make money doing this?
0:02:47 Yeah, it’s kind of a funny little world that I have found myself in.
0:02:50 So I’ve been in online education for the better part of 10 years now, and I started teaching
0:02:55 for outschool.com and started by teaching English creative writing classes.
0:03:00 But I’ve always loved video games, so I just put my video game twist on it.
0:03:04 We would do descriptive writing, but Zelda or like punctuation, but Pokemon.
0:03:09 And then my students just kept asking me for more classes on how to play the video games
0:03:13 or help them with places where they were stuck.
0:03:15 And so I started creating social clubs where kids could come and game in a safe online
0:03:20 space together and it just continued to grow and continue to grow.
0:03:25 And when you and I connected, like you said, I was making around 4,000 a month.
0:03:28 And since then I have hired on 14 teachers to teach with me.
0:03:32 And last year we broke six figures.
0:03:34 So a lot has changed.
0:03:37 That’s really exciting.
0:03:38 I didn’t realize outschool have been around that long.
0:03:40 So with all the online, starting with the English writing and stuff, was that all outschool
0:03:44 as well?
0:03:45 So prior to outschool, I was teaching kids in China how to speak English.
0:03:49 That was my first online kind of immersion.
0:03:52 I started teaching with outschool about four years ago, three years ago, 2021 is when I
0:03:58 started on the outschool platform with the video gaming and everything like that.
0:04:02 OK.
0:04:03 So prior to that, it was like a VIP kid type of service.
0:04:05 It was the VIP kid.
0:04:06 Exactly.
0:04:07 Rock in the orange.
0:04:08 Yeah.
0:04:09 Which was such a cool business and it worked well for a lot of folks in the States just
0:04:14 because like, hey, it’s early morning.
0:04:15 The time difference or time zone changes.
0:04:18 And then my understanding is the Chinese government said, no, we can’t do this anymore.
0:04:21 Like basically shut it down overnight.
0:04:22 And I was like, OK.
0:04:25 So but transitioning those skills, hey, look, I know how to engage with kids online.
0:04:29 I have some credibility and expertise and experience in teaching.
0:04:34 And maybe there’s a pivot here.
0:04:35 This is a new way to go.
0:04:36 So outschool is this online group classes for school age kids.
0:04:42 I think it says, you know, age five to 18 or something.
0:04:45 But like that sweet spot right in the middle there, starting with English writing, but
0:04:49 really any number of different subjects, like it’s become really, really broad, obviously
0:04:53 blew up during the pandemic when everybody was transitioning to remote learning, but
0:04:57 has remained popular.
0:04:59 I mean, have you seen demand fall off as you see people go back to school and back to playing
0:05:03 in person?
0:05:04 There’s always peaks and valleys in a business.
0:05:06 And so I think outschool was at a really, really high peak in 2020.
0:05:09 But I don’t feel like it fell off.
0:05:11 It has just shifted instead of parents trying to figure out how to keep their kiddos engaged
0:05:16 all day every day when they’re used to sending them to school.
0:05:19 Now it has become a supplemental learning.
0:05:21 So now parents are like, oh, my child is struggling with math or English.
0:05:24 I can find a one on one tutor on outschool or my child really wants to explore this part
0:05:29 of their learning experience, whether that’s gaming or cooking, you know, those extracurriculars.
0:05:35 And then they start to put them in those classes.
0:05:37 And so there’s still definitely that base of homeschool parents who use outschool for
0:05:42 a variety of things.
0:05:43 But I also see a lot of parents who still use it as supplement for their child’s learning.
0:05:48 Yeah, I’m just going through some of their top categories.
0:05:51 You may do the same to get inspiration of what you may be able to offer on here.
0:05:55 We’ve got everything from coding to languages to history to photography to, and then all
0:06:03 of the basic academic subjects of biology and geography and stuff like this too.
0:06:08 And so they’ve added, I didn’t know they had this like the tutoring and the one on one
0:06:11 stuff is before my understanding was it was all like group classes.
0:06:14 They have been putting more and more on this one on one tutoring because they’re starting
0:06:18 to see that parents really want that personalization with us teacher and a student.
0:06:23 So they still have tons of group classes.
0:06:25 Most of my things are group classes, but they do have the tutoring.
0:06:28 And yeah, I totally agree with you, Nick, if any of your listeners are wanting to teach
0:06:31 on out school, look through those popular classes and try a little bit of everything.
0:06:36 I kind of streamlined my process when I talk about how I grew on out school, but I was
0:06:40 teaching like basic cooking classes for kids that was like Oreo dipping.
0:06:44 I was teaching multiplication music classes where we would like sing our multiplication
0:06:48 tables.
0:06:49 I did like a dinosaur dance class.
0:06:51 So you kind of have to try a little bit of everything before you find what your real
0:06:55 favorite and your passion is.
0:06:57 Okay.
0:06:58 That’s helpful to hear.
0:06:59 So broad strategy number one, we call it the buy buttons theory, like go where the cash
0:07:03 is already flowing.
0:07:04 Here’s a platform example of where your parents know to go to look for this type of education,
0:07:11 training, coaching, tutoring for their kids, right?
0:07:13 So you can go and put your buy buttons up for sale, like make it easy for people to do business
0:07:17 with you rather than trying to reach customers, clients, parents, one on one, like much more
0:07:22 difficult.
0:07:23 Like here’s where they’re already congregating in a way.
0:07:24 And then the second thing, you’re testing out a bunch of different stuff.
0:07:27 You don’t know what’s going to stick.
0:07:28 The cooking classes, all this, everything, do you remember the first time where it was
0:07:31 like, because it doesn’t cost you anything to put up a class or sale, like see what kind
0:07:35 of reaction it gets?
0:07:36 What are some of the first ones that people signed up for?
0:07:39 When I first started teaching, I thought for sure I was going to be teaching Spanish classes
0:07:43 because I’m fluent in Spanish.
0:07:44 I lived in Spain for three years, lived in Argentina for three years.
0:07:47 And so I had Pokemon Spanish classes and I was like, this is going to be it.
0:07:51 This is what’s going to like be my big maker.
0:07:54 But what I found was as I started teaching them, I did not enjoy it.
0:07:58 I felt very stressed because it’s my second language.
0:08:01 I was like, I’m going to teach something wrong.
0:08:03 I am an expert-ish, like I’m expert enough to teach the basics, but I was so scared of
0:08:09 messing up.
0:08:10 I was so scared of teaching a child something wrong and then them repeating it forever that
0:08:14 I was like, I don’t want to do Spanish.
0:08:16 But that’s what I felt like.
0:08:17 I was like, that’s the only thing I can do.
0:08:18 That’s the thing that makes me special.
0:08:20 And so I was like, okay, maybe let’s try all of these other things and they were all things
0:08:24 I enjoy.
0:08:25 I love cooking.
0:08:26 I love music.
0:08:27 I love creative writing.
0:08:28 That’s the only way I got my degree in.
0:08:29 And that was when I really started to see it was with the creative writing and the Zelda
0:08:33 class.
0:08:34 I would have students come and it was a five day class where we would write about Zelda.
0:08:38 And I was like, wow, I can really use video games and I love video games.
0:08:42 I have my whole life.
0:08:43 And then I thought, I was like, okay, it’s definitely going to be writing.
0:08:46 That’s what it’s going to be.
0:08:47 I’m going to be teaching writing classes.
0:08:49 And I connected with another educator on out school who was more successful than I was
0:08:53 and still is more successful than I am.
0:08:54 And I said, this is kind of what I’m thinking.
0:08:56 What do you think?
0:08:57 She told me.
0:08:58 She said, you know what?
0:08:59 You’ve got to broaden this.
0:09:00 You are too little.
0:09:01 She’s like, you don’t just have to do writing.
0:09:03 She’s like, do everything with gaming.
0:09:05 And that really opened my eyes.
0:09:07 That advice was invaluable, just going to someone who had more expertise than me.
0:09:12 So then it just snowballed and grew into what it is now.
0:09:15 One thing that she mentioned, both with the Spanish and the creative writing, was kind
0:09:19 of this picturing like the Venn diagram or the concentric circles of, here’s a skill
0:09:24 that I have, like Spanish, and here’s another interest of mine like Pokemon or Zelda plus
0:09:28 creative writing and trying to make that a unique thing, like something that could help
0:09:34 you stand out in the marketplace.
0:09:35 And we see this with really lots of other service business.
0:09:39 If I do video editing for YouTubers or I do product descriptions for Amazon sellers,
0:09:46 something that just narrows it down a little bit and makes it stand out and say, oh, that’s
0:09:51 the one that my kid would be most interested in, in the case of this platform.
0:09:55 So let’s talk a little bit about the mechanics of, you know, putting up the class.
0:10:00 I think the caps out 10 or 12 people, right?
0:10:02 The max is 18.
0:10:03 I usually keep my classes around 10 personally because I don’t like the huge, huge classes.
0:10:09 Okay.
0:10:10 No, but this has been helpful in figuring out, okay, well, what kind of thing can I possibly
0:10:13 do?
0:10:14 And I’m thinking of those combining two things that may not seem initially to be connected,
0:10:19 but maybe there is a connection there and coming up with the niche that way.
0:10:21 Yes.
0:10:22 So you put it up for sale and say, this is creative writing for Zelda and then spinning
0:10:26 that off into just straight up, straight up Zelda.
0:10:29 Like, what’s so, what did that look like?
0:10:31 Well, it was really funny.
0:10:32 I still remember the day my husband and I were chatting and I was doing really well with
0:10:36 the Zelda class and I was like, these kids keep asking me for a Zelda class where we
0:10:40 just talk about Zelda, like no writing or anything.
0:10:43 And I think I’m going to do it and he kind of looked at me and he’s like, okay, what’s
0:10:47 the worst that could happen?
0:10:48 Like, yeah, what’s the worst that could happen?
0:10:49 No one enrolls or something and it’s fine.
0:10:52 Yes, it’s low risk.
0:10:53 We move on.
0:10:54 Yeah, it was super low risk, but the students loved it and it was very interesting because
0:10:58 early on in my teaching career without school, I did not feel like these classes had value.
0:11:04 I felt like it was just like fun fluff money that parents were using, but it’s been fascinating
0:11:10 as time has gone on, the things that parents have told me that their children are learning
0:11:14 from me and my teachers just from coming to class.
0:11:17 I have parents who are like, my child really has a hard time socializing at school and
0:11:21 when she comes to your class, she feels confident and she wants to socialize or my child, he
0:11:26 had a really hard time at school because none of the kids liked games as much as he did,
0:11:31 but then he came to your Pokemon class and he saw this community.
0:11:35 And so as time has gone on, I’ve really started to see this value of creating a place where
0:11:41 kids specifically gamers can connect safely with other gamers because we have this in all
0:11:47 sorts of different interests for kids.
0:11:48 We have sports clubs and book clubs, but there aren’t a lot of gaming clubs.
0:11:52 And so it’s kind of filled this little space that I didn’t even know I was feeling initially.
0:11:57 Yeah, now I’m looking through the library of classes.
0:12:00 I mean, there’s different game clubs on every game, like I don’t know, I don’t buy a video
0:12:07 game repertoire.
0:12:08 It’s a little bit limited, but in some of these are really complex, like you bring up
0:12:12 Zelda, like our neighbor let us borrow, I don’t know if it’s Breath of the Wild or one of
0:12:16 these other ones.
0:12:17 But there was a hardcover guidebook that must have been 250 pages.
0:12:21 It’s like, this is an incredibly in-depth, complex world that you have to go through
0:12:25 and solve to beat this game.
0:12:26 It’s like, yeah, it makes sense that if I can hang out with other people, go through
0:12:30 the same journey with me, whether it’s building a business or whether it’s trying to beat
0:12:34 a video game, it makes sense.
0:12:36 Yeah, and it’s amazing too because a lot of parents, when they see video games, they
0:12:39 think, oh, it’s a waste of time, but you bring up an excellent point that these games, especially
0:12:44 ones that are on out school, are very complex.
0:12:47 It’s a lot of math in Pokemon, which a lot of people don’t realize.
0:12:50 There’s a lot of world building and character building in most games.
0:12:53 There are some games where you are literally building a civilization, and so it is very
0:12:57 interesting the things that kids can glean just from playing video games.
0:13:01 Yeah, the boys are very into Minecraft, and at one point I’m like, well, I never played
0:13:08 this, it wasn’t around when we were kids versus, okay, Zelda, I have a basic understanding
0:13:12 of from being a kid and playing, but it’s like, well, this is like digital Legos in
0:13:16 a way.
0:13:17 It’s like some of the stuff that they build, some built this cool stadium with complete
0:13:20 with the football field goal uprights and the seats and the lights, this is pretty cool.
0:13:26 So they have a good time hanging out in those worlds.
0:13:29 What was the initial reaction to putting up the Zelda only class and what kind of enrollment
0:13:34 did you see?
0:13:35 It sounded like you have a little bit of a student body that you could promote it to
0:13:39 from the English writing or from the other classes that you had, so it wasn’t coming
0:13:44 in completely cold.
0:13:45 Do you have any to try the initial interest, the initial enrollments?
0:13:48 Well, that’s one of the best parts about out school is that I am not the first person
0:13:53 to do this.
0:13:54 I’m not the only person doing this.
0:13:55 That proof of concept already existed on out school, which definitely helped a lot was
0:13:59 parents knew this was a safe place for kids to game together, that it was an adult in
0:14:04 a verified space.
0:14:05 So that is a big part of it is that parents understood that this was something offered
0:14:10 on out school.
0:14:11 I definitely did a lot of my own internal marketing to my students who were in my writing class
0:14:15 and I said, “Hey, we were doing this in writing.
0:14:17 Would you like to come and try out the Zelda class where we play Zelda together?”
0:14:22 And it’s interesting because I still have some students who have been in the exact same
0:14:26 Zelda class.
0:14:27 It’s a group of like six students and they’ve been together for about three years now.
0:14:30 This group of six students, they meet twice a week, every week, going on three years and
0:14:35 just have this amazing friendship between them and it’s amazing.
0:14:39 Yeah.
0:14:40 That is really cool.
0:14:41 That was kind of the next question.
0:14:42 How sticky is it?
0:14:44 If it’s structured as it’s less like SAT prep tutoring, like after the test, it’s over.
0:14:49 I don’t need the service anymore, but it’s like here, you kind of come initially for
0:14:53 the content and then end up staying for the community is common theme amongst membership
0:14:57 type of businesses.
0:14:58 So it’s like, yeah, it seems like people do tend to stick around to the lifetime value
0:15:03 to put it in marketing speak like tends to be quite high here.
0:15:06 Exactly.
0:15:07 And it’s very interesting because with my business model versus a more traditional teacher,
0:15:11 I am constantly innovating and creating new classes.
0:15:14 So like Breath of the Wild that you mentioned is a Zelda game that came out in 2007.
0:15:19 Tears of the Kingdom came out last year.
0:15:21 And so I have to create a Tears of the Kingdom class, right?
0:15:24 And then Pokemon, the next generation of Pokemon comes out, I need to create a new Pokemon
0:15:27 class.
0:15:28 Whereas if you’re doing multiplication, multiplication is always the same.
0:15:32 So it is interesting because I do feel like I am constantly innovating and adding more
0:15:37 games that the students want to play.
0:15:39 But you’re absolutely right that they stay for the community even after students have
0:15:43 finished Zelda, because I guarantee those kids who have been in that class for three
0:15:46 years, they finished Zelda a long time ago.
0:15:50 But they want to stay together.
0:15:51 They just love the community and they love the teacher.
0:15:53 Like I can’t speak highly enough about my teachers.
0:15:55 They stay for the teacher and for that validation from their peers.
0:16:00 That’s why they stay.
0:16:01 More with Devin in just a moment, including how she prices her classes and how it’s worked
0:16:05 to bring on subcontracted teachers right after this.
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0:18:23 How do you decide on pricing here?
0:18:25 A lot of it is looking at the competition on out school.
0:18:29 When I started teaching on out school, my prices were significantly lower because I
0:18:33 was a new teacher.
0:18:34 I didn’t have any experience teaching on out school.
0:18:37 Then as my classes filled, as soon as there was that social proof with classes finished
0:18:42 and reviews, I could start to raise my prices little by little.
0:18:46 Then what ended up happening was my classes were so full that I continued to raise my
0:18:50 prices and then I thought, “Well, I can’t teach any more classes.
0:18:54 I need to start to build a team because there’s still a demand.
0:18:58 More parents want different times or different games and I can’t teach all of them.”
0:19:02 Then I started to build my team up.
0:19:05 Is there a target price that you’re at now per hour or per session?
0:19:09 I don’t know how they structure it.
0:19:10 Some of them seem to be 50 minutes, some of them seem to be a little bit shorter.
0:19:13 Right now, we’re charging about $17 or $18 for a 50-minute class per student is where
0:19:19 we’re at.
0:19:20 That’s pretty standard across out school.
0:19:22 They also have some recommendations that out school puts out.
0:19:24 They say, “This is our recommended pricing based on what we’ve seen in the market.”
0:19:28 We’re right in that point too, which helps.
0:19:30 It sounds like strategies start out a little bit lower to build up enrollment, make it
0:19:35 lower risk on the parent side, and then you can level up from there.
0:19:40 If I’m doing just basic math, $17 per class, say I have 10 kids in that class, $170 for
0:19:47 an hour.
0:19:48 Pretty great hourly rate.
0:19:49 Now, out school is taking 20, 30 percent.
0:19:51 What’s their fee?
0:19:52 30 percent.
0:19:53 30 percent.
0:19:54 Okay.
0:19:55 Even then, I knocked 30 percent off the top.
0:19:57 I’m still over $100 an hour teaching a video game.
0:20:00 This is pretty cool.
0:20:01 How do you have it set up with your subcontractor teachers?
0:20:05 This is what’s really cool.
0:20:06 It’s allowed you to go really broad on the catalog.
0:20:08 We can make classes about a ton of different video games and really cast a really wide
0:20:13 net there, which you wouldn’t necessarily either have the time to do or expertise to
0:20:17 like, “I don’t know all these different games.”
0:20:18 I think that’s really cool, but I’m curious how that is structured in terms of payment
0:20:23 and something else on that, but I’ll let you do that one first.
0:20:26 The way that it works is out school pays me and then I pay my subcontractors.
0:20:30 They are my independent contractors.
0:20:33 I have a payment structure.
0:20:35 The way I’ve done it is based on number of enrollments in a class, and so the more students
0:20:40 that are in a class, then the higher the teacher is paid versus if there’s fewer in the class,
0:20:44 the less they’re paid, and then it allows them to scale as much as they want because
0:20:49 some teachers are more comfortable with a bigger class or a smaller class, so it’s kind
0:20:52 of choose your own adventure in that way.
0:20:54 Okay.
0:20:55 So, they can earn more if there’s more students in that.
0:20:56 That makes sense.
0:20:57 It’s more work.
0:20:58 Yeah.
0:20:59 Exactly.
0:21:00 It’s more work when there’s more kids, more chaos.
0:21:02 You have to have more organizational skills, and it also matters what game it is.
0:21:06 There are some games like Fortnite, for example.
0:21:09 You really can’t have more than about eight total in the class because you’re in two groups
0:21:14 of four, whereas a game like Pokemon, you can kind of have a little bit more because
0:21:19 you can break off into smaller groups.
0:21:21 So a lot of it depends on the game, too, how many students we allow in each class.
0:21:25 Is there a minimum number of students?
0:21:27 You get one enrollment.
0:21:28 You still have to show up and do the thing for 17 bucks.
0:21:31 I’m a big believer in showing up for the one enrollment.
0:21:34 Not all teachers are, but what I have found is that even showing up for that one learner
0:21:37 where, obviously, you’re not bringing in a lot, right, 30% of 17 is not a lot, but it’s
0:21:43 worth it because the parent sees you showed up for my kid even though my kid was the only
0:21:47 one here, and those students usually stick around for a very long time, enroll in multiple
0:21:52 classes because the parents appreciate it, and sometimes parents will enroll and there’s
0:21:57 one kid, and then they say, “I don’t want my kid to be alone in the class,” and then
0:22:00 they withdraw their student from the class.
0:22:02 So it’s kind of a little bit of both.
0:22:04 Yeah, it’s like, “Well, shoot, this is like one-on-one private instruction for the price
0:22:07 of a group to get some.”
0:22:08 It depends on the parent and depends a lot on the student.
0:22:11 Yeah, if they were coming in for the social club aspect of it, well, it’s like, “It’s
0:22:14 no longer that social.”
0:22:15 Exactly, exactly.
0:22:16 So a lot of it just depends on the parent or on the student, but we do.
0:22:19 We teach the one student when they want to be taught, if they want that one-on-one even
0:22:23 at that group price because the other thing, going back to social proof, is a lot of times
0:22:27 we’ll get one student, and then over the next three or four weeks, another student comes
0:22:32 in, and then another student.
0:22:33 So sometimes it just takes a little bit of momentum to build it up anyway.
0:22:37 That makes sense.
0:22:38 It’s not everything is going to be sold out right out of the gate, and it’s interesting
0:22:43 that it sounds like out school gives you the flexibility to say, “Ah, sorry, we didn’t
0:22:46 have enough or we’re going to postpone this until we have more students,” where we did
0:22:50 an episode on Airbnb experiences.
0:22:52 It’s like, “I want to host a local walking tour or a guided meditation,” was the example
0:22:57 that we did on that show.
0:22:59 If one person signs up, you’re doing the thing, and it’s like, “Okay, I got to drive
0:23:03 out to Red Rocks in Sedona,” or I think it was just early on, you’re really putting
0:23:09 in that time.
0:23:10 Like you said, to build up that social proof, hopefully get a good review, create a raving
0:23:14 fan.
0:23:15 They tell us some people, and hopefully it’s snowballs, but yeah, I was just curious about
0:23:18 that.
0:23:19 Yeah, totally.
0:23:20 Is there any best practices that you found in creating your out school listing to make
0:23:25 it stand out?
0:23:26 I think it was interesting that you mentioned, “Well, there were other people doing this,”
0:23:30 which if I’m on the outside looking in, it’s like, “Well, that’s discouraging.
0:23:33 Somebody beat me to it.”
0:23:34 But you say, “I know, there’s still room to add my own unique flavor to this and stand
0:23:38 out and be able to compete.”
0:23:40 So I’m curious if you found any best practices in those out school listings or those game
0:23:44 descriptions or those class descriptions.
0:23:46 Well, it’s awesome because out school does have recommendations.
0:23:49 There’s a lot of on-site training with out school, and so a lot of these questions as
0:23:53 new teachers are coming in.
0:23:55 “Are these resources available?”
0:23:56 What I have found personally is building relationships in the class is the number one
0:24:02 thing you can do, connecting with the student.
0:24:05 That is where you’re going to have success because you’re right.
0:24:07 If you go on out school, there’s tons of Pokemon classes, all sorts of them, right?
0:24:11 There’s all sorts of Zelda classes.
0:24:13 And by connecting with my students– Were there three years ago?
0:24:16 Or is that a byproduct of you being like, “Hey, look, you can make money talking about Pokemon?”
0:24:21 Well, there definitely were three years ago, not all of the games that I teach.
0:24:25 That’s something else that is very unique about my business.
0:24:28 I don’t hire teachers, I hire gamers.
0:24:31 So parents know when their kids come to my classes that we don’t just know about Pokemon.
0:24:36 If your child is also playing this other game, chances are we know about it, right?
0:24:40 Or we know enough to talk about it.
0:24:42 So I think that’s one of the biggest differentiators between me and some of the other teachers
0:24:46 on out school is that I and my teachers, we live and breathe gaming, right?
0:24:51 We have gamed our whole lives.
0:24:52 We’re in the midnight line to get the game, like that’s us.
0:24:55 And the kids feel that.
0:24:56 That’s so cool.
0:24:57 Well, it’s Ms. Devin’s video game universe, right?
0:24:59 So it’s like under this umbrella, it gives you the freedom to go a lot of different directions.
0:25:05 And the brand makes a big difference.
0:25:06 When parents see that brand, and we have videos for each class, you have descriptions, you
0:25:11 have thumbnails, all of those different things, I try and make them cohesive so that parents
0:25:15 understand the experience that they’re going to get.
0:25:18 We are a very high energy, fun organization on out school, right?
0:25:23 And that their kids, more than anything, are going to be accepted in our classes.
0:25:26 I try and make that very apparent to parents that everyone, everyone is welcome in our
0:25:31 classes and we will make a space for every single child.
0:25:34 That’s a huge part of what makes us us.
0:25:37 Okay.
0:25:38 Building relationships, connecting with those kids as individuals, as members of this group
0:25:42 class, cohesive branding, thumbnails, anything else that you found that helps people give
0:25:48 you a chance for the first time.
0:25:50 When I have a brand new class that I’m trying to get momentum, there are groups where I
0:25:53 can post coupons, right?
0:25:54 And I can network with other teachers that I know have kids and I’ll say, “Hey, does
0:25:58 your kid don’t want to try this class and you can give me some feedback?”
0:26:02 So networking with other parents and other teachers on out school makes a huge difference
0:26:06 because they’ll pass your name along also.
0:26:08 I have a lot of good friends that are more on the educational side of out school.
0:26:12 And when they need a gaming class, they send them my way.
0:26:14 And when they need a math class, I send them their way.
0:26:16 So creating those relationships helps a lot too.
0:26:19 Is there a messaging platform where you could blast out to your, I imagine, hundreds and
0:26:23 hundreds of students at this point or rather their parents and say, “Hey, we’ve got a new
0:26:27 class coming out or I can promote my teacher friend who’s doing math classes.”
0:26:31 It’s not like to just do some on-platform marketing in that way.
0:26:36 Not in the way that you’re thinking.
0:26:37 There’s not an email system or MailChimp or Constant Contact where you can blast an email.
0:26:42 I can reach individual parents.
0:26:44 Out school owns the client book, right?
0:26:46 So they send out the big email.
0:26:47 So every time I list a class, out school sends out to all of my followers, “Hey, Ms. Devon
0:26:51 has a new class.
0:26:52 Here it is.”
0:26:54 But then I can then reach out individually and say, “Hey, your son Tommy was in my class.”
0:26:59 And he mentioned that he really wanted to learn how to play this game.
0:27:03 I now have a class for that game.
0:27:04 If Tommy would like to come, here’s a coupon off for the first class, see if he wants to
0:27:08 come.
0:27:09 That is what is really the successful thing, is connecting with parents and students individually
0:27:15 because we all know what a mass email looks like, right?
0:27:18 We all know when our name is just filled in and it doesn’t feel personal.
0:27:21 But when I can say, “I know your child likes this game, I created this class with your child
0:27:26 in mind.
0:27:27 Here is a bonus benefit for being my longtime client.”
0:27:32 Then the parents are like, “Wow, Ms. Devon really took the time to think about my child,
0:27:35 which I did.”
0:27:36 And then they’ll enroll in the class.
0:27:38 Okay.
0:27:39 That makes sense.
0:27:40 So, our school is handling the bulk automated messaging.
0:27:42 They see that you’ve had a new class.
0:27:43 We’ll go out and promote that on your behalf.
0:27:45 One of the benefits of being on the platform is trying to do this on your own.
0:27:49 But then still the kind of grassroots ground floor one-on-one gorilla marketing of like,
0:27:55 “Hey, I know this kid.
0:27:56 I think he’s going to enjoy this.
0:27:58 Thanks for being a loyal customer.”
0:27:59 And it’s interesting too that a lot of the classes are set up, they’re open-ended.
0:28:03 They’re recurring.
0:28:04 So, if you get that one-time enrollment, hopefully it turns into a multi-year relationship
0:28:10 with you.
0:28:11 The question that I had is if it’s Ms. Devon’s video game universe, people come in expecting
0:28:17 you or is the expectation set now?
0:28:18 Well, if it’s this other certain game, it’s going to be one of my other instructors.
0:28:22 How did you balance that early on if people were expecting you and your energy?
0:28:26 It was very hard early on because parents would come for me.
0:28:29 I was the brand, right?
0:28:31 Their students had only met me and seen me.
0:28:33 And so what I started to do when my teachers started teaching for me is I would have them
0:28:37 kind of come and piggyback in a class or shadow.
0:28:40 Once they were approved to teach on out school, had the background check and everything, I’d
0:28:43 let the students and the parents know, “Hey, I have this new teacher and I’m teaching them
0:28:47 how to teach on out school.”
0:28:48 And then they’d get to know that teacher.
0:28:50 And then I’d slowly start to try and send kids their way.
0:28:53 But you’re absolutely right that each teacher teaches differently.
0:28:57 And so there are still some students who will say, “If Ms. Devon’s not teaching it, I don’t
0:29:00 want to be there.”
0:29:01 And that’s totally fine because I also have students who say, “If Ms. Nance is not teaching
0:29:04 it, I don’t want to be there.”
0:29:06 So it takes time though.
0:29:08 And that was one of the hardest shifts from being a solo person to becoming a brand was
0:29:14 instilling in these parents the trust that I have found good people for their students.
0:29:18 Yeah.
0:29:19 I imagine that’s really hard.
0:29:20 This is really a challenge for a lot of freelancers too who start out selling their unique skills
0:29:25 and expertise.
0:29:26 And if they want to go and scale that business into more of an agency model like you have,
0:29:31 like you said, it’s that training, it’s that resetting expectations, it’s the trust and
0:29:35 the vetting of like, “No, no, no, I promise this person is as good or better than me.”
0:29:39 But you’re trying to get over that initial hurdle if you really hammered home that personal
0:29:44 brand.
0:29:45 Yeah.
0:29:46 And what I like to do too in my classes is I talk about my other teachers all the time
0:29:49 before in a class.
0:29:50 And one of my students mentions they like art.
0:29:52 I’m like, “Oh, I have a teacher who is fantastic at art.
0:29:54 I cannot draw a stick figure.”
0:29:56 But I talk about my other teachers.
0:29:57 I’m like, “Oh, you want to learn more about Pokemon strategy.
0:29:59 I have this teacher who is amazing at Pokemon strategy or you want to learn more about design.
0:30:03 I have this teacher who is fantastic at design.”
0:30:06 And so I think there’s a lot to be said about talking about your contractors and building
0:30:11 them up because then parents hear that even if they’re just in the other room and students
0:30:15 hear that and then they see that you trust these other people to take care of your classes
0:30:20 also.
0:30:21 Okay.
0:30:22 Gotcha.
0:30:23 Is there a target margin or percentage that you’d like to be at in a perfect world
0:30:29 for the subcontracted classes?
0:30:31 In a perfect world, more than margins, I look at it as like student numbers.
0:30:35 If I can see how many students are enrolled in a class, that’s kind of the number I like
0:30:38 to look at.
0:30:39 So right now, we have about 300 recurring students every single week.
0:30:44 I would love to have it be at like 400 or 500.
0:30:47 Okay.
0:30:48 Do you think that’s a factor of adding more inventory, adding more classes?
0:30:52 What do you think we’ll get you there?
0:30:54 Adding more classes, more times will definitely help because out school is an international
0:30:58 platform.
0:30:59 So I’m trying to put more times on the schedule for like Asia and Europe because we’ve got
0:31:04 a lot of like evening in the U.S. so I’m trying to branch out time-wise.
0:31:09 We are definitely adding more games, always adding more games to our catalog and also
0:31:13 doing more self-paced classes, which are prerecorded classes and trying to go into that academic
0:31:19 world with the video game twist a little bit more.
0:31:22 Okay.
0:31:23 Talk to me about those because that is potentially more scalable or less hours for dollar even
0:31:27 if you kind of built yourself out of that role in a lot of ways, where you know now
0:31:31 you’ve got other people showing up and doing these classes, but it still takes their time.
0:31:35 And so if you can do this prerecorded thing, that’s kind of an interesting angle.
0:31:39 And so that’s something else that out school allows you to do.
0:31:41 Yeah.
0:31:42 And it’s really cool because with the prerecorded classes, they’ve just revamped the whole,
0:31:46 it’s now called self-paced classes and they’ve revamped the whole thing, which makes it a
0:31:49 lot easier for teachers to upload content.
0:31:52 But if I were to do like my Zelda creative writing class that we’ve been talking about,
0:31:55 I can teach that live and I can also have it prerecorded for parents to purchase.
0:32:01 That way, if their schedule doesn’t fit with my schedule, it’s like, well, if you can’t
0:32:04 come Thursday at five o’clock, here is the course and you can do it whenever you would
0:32:09 like to do it.
0:32:10 What’s the price point on those?
0:32:12 So far what I’ve seen from the market is just like a couple of dollars less than the live
0:32:16 classes in my niche.
0:32:19 So I’m thinking around $15 per self-paced class per student.
0:32:23 But that’s another thing is that with pricing, you kind of have to play with it a little
0:32:27 bit.
0:32:28 You have to see where other people are at, what parents are willing to pay, and then
0:32:32 how much time it takes you to put into it.
0:32:34 So that’s something I’m still working on.
0:32:36 I haven’t put up any self-paced classes yet, but I’m hoping to do so very soon.
0:32:40 Okay.
0:32:41 Yeah.
0:32:42 It’s something, again, you can create something once, sell it over and over again, like I love
0:32:45 that model.
0:32:46 So that’s pretty exciting.
0:32:47 Yes.
0:32:48 More with Devin in just a moment, including her off-out-school marketing efforts, how
0:32:51 she got flooded with 6,000 teacher applications in the surprising new income stream she unlocked
0:32:57 right after this.
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0:35:33 Have you been tempted to branch out and say, I don’t know, because it’s like a technology
0:35:39 component to processing the payments and the enrollments and in this case, like streaming
0:35:44 the games and everything, like to build your own, because I’m looking at the 30% fee times
0:35:49 300 students.
0:35:50 It’s like, it adds up to a lot over the course of a year.
0:35:53 Is there a standalone, Ms. Devin, coming soon?
0:35:57 I’ve played with this idea a lot.
0:35:59 I have my own website, MsDevin.com, and I’ve played with this idea a lot, but the value
0:36:04 that outskool has, even though they’re taking 30%, is immense.
0:36:09 Every time I look at building my own platform, the amount of startup cost it would be, the
0:36:14 amount of marketing it would be, the amount of building that from absolute zero, it is
0:36:19 overwhelming.
0:36:20 I’m not an expert in that by any means.
0:36:23 I’m more than happy to give outskool the 30% for them to take on that really heavy lifting.
0:36:29 Now, what I think I may do one day is have a standalone website where people can purchase
0:36:33 my self-paced classes, rather than live classes, so I can upload the content, email it.
0:36:39 That’s something that I feel like I could do a little bit better.
0:36:42 I’m better equipped to do that, I guess, is what I’m trying to say, but I don’t know
0:36:46 if we will ever step away from outskool.
0:36:48 I don’t have any reason I would ever want to.
0:36:51 The clients are so good.
0:36:52 The client book is massive, and I’m happy to give them my 30% for the business that
0:36:57 they bring me.
0:36:58 I’m glad you said that.
0:36:59 I think it’s an important perspective to keep in mind, because it’s on the surface that
0:37:02 seems like a big percentage.
0:37:05 In exchange for, what would it take to build this on my own?
0:37:09 It might take a lot more than 30%.
0:37:10 It might take a lot longer than I think it’s going to take, because we’ve had other people,
0:37:14 freelancers on Fiverr, and I think Fiverr is 20, 25%, and it’s like, yeah, but they brought
0:37:19 me that customer.
0:37:20 My cost of customer acquisition is that 20%.
0:37:23 It’s flat.
0:37:24 It’s fixed.
0:37:25 Without that, I’d have zero business.
0:37:26 You’d have to invest a lot more time into going out and finding customers, especially
0:37:31 in this case, you don’t have access to that bulk email list that they do or similar to
0:37:35 Amazon or Amazon.
0:37:36 If you’re selling an e-commerce product, they’re not giving you that customer data.
0:37:40 It’s like, that’s ours.
0:37:41 We’ll do our best to promote you, but we own that customer.
0:37:44 Yeah, exactly.
0:37:45 I think as entrepreneurs, we very much have the mindset of, well, I could just do it myself,
0:37:50 and we can do it ourselves.
0:37:52 We can do everything ourselves, but at some point, you need to hire people who are experts.
0:37:57 I like to think of it as rather than building all of this on myself, I’ve hired out-school
0:38:01 to be my marketing expert and my client book management expert.
0:38:05 If I think about it in that perspective, I’m like, oh, well, this is great.
0:38:08 I’m only paying you 30%, and you are bringing all of this to the table.
0:38:12 Whereas if I were to do this on my own and hire my own person, who knows what that would
0:38:16 look like?
0:38:17 Yeah.
0:38:18 No, that’s a good perspective.
0:38:19 Anything else that you’re doing on the marketing front to drive people from outside of the
0:38:23 platform into your video game universe?
0:38:26 I do have a TikTok page where I talk about gaming and how parents can be more supportive
0:38:32 in their kids’ gaming and healthy gaming habits.
0:38:34 I use my TikTok platform a lot.
0:38:36 That has definitely helped bring some students over.
0:38:39 I love doing interviews like these.
0:38:40 I was on the Kelly Clarkson show and talked a lot about the video gaming universe and
0:38:44 everything like that.
0:38:45 Just reaching out to people and talking to people and connecting.
0:38:49 That’s really all it comes down to is finding people to connect with.
0:38:52 I just try and find a lot of different avenues where I can meet different people.
0:38:55 I’m going to an unschooling conference, and I’m speaking at that this summer, and I’m
0:38:59 sure I’ll connect with people there.
0:39:01 That’s really what it comes down to is you just have to find people to connect with.
0:39:05 Yeah.
0:39:06 That makes sense.
0:39:07 Playing both the social media game, breathing into the supportive community, like, who do
0:39:11 I want to reach?
0:39:12 Do I want to reach parents of kids who like to play video games?
0:39:16 How can I support them and encourage, like you said, healthy gaming habits doing the
0:39:21 media thing?
0:39:22 How did you end up connecting with Kelly Clarkson?
0:39:24 It started with my local news station here.
0:39:27 For any entrepreneur out there who wants more media exposure, you have to go and find it.
0:39:32 I kept waiting to be discovered.
0:39:34 I was like, “Oh, one day someone’s going to show up and be like, ‘Oh, you play video
0:39:38 games for a living.’”
0:39:39 I was like, “No one’s going to do that.”
0:39:40 I started, and this is how I connected with you, Nick, if you remember, I just started
0:39:44 sending out emails and I said, “Hey, I’ve got this story to tell.
0:39:47 I’d love to tell it to you.”
0:39:48 That went to my local news station, and then from there, someone at Fox saw it and they
0:39:53 put it on their website, did an interview with me, and then someone from the Kelly Clarkson
0:39:57 show saw that one and reached out to me when the Mario movie was coming out and said, “We’d
0:40:02 love to have you on the show.”
0:40:04 It’s just put yourself out there.
0:40:06 Yeah.
0:40:07 I’m digging through my archive emails here.
0:40:10 We have March 16, 2022, “Sharing My Side Hustle” is the subject line.
0:40:14 Doing this one-on-one, so-called media outreach and flatter at the side hustle show would be
0:40:18 considered media.
0:40:19 I currently make over $4,000 a month playing video games.
0:40:21 I only work around 20 hours a week, and we have $4 under the age of 10.
0:40:25 Yes, this is checking all the boxes, fantastic story.
0:40:29 That’s what it is.
0:40:30 To get on media radars, you’ve got to learn, speak the language of the stories that they
0:40:34 want to tell.
0:40:35 This is a perfect example of that.
0:40:37 Wait, you can make money doing this?
0:40:39 I never heard of this before.
0:40:40 Tell me more.
0:40:41 That’s the important thing.
0:40:42 As you reach out to media, you have to consider who you’re reaching out to.
0:40:46 That email I sent to you, I sent it to you very specifically because I knew what your
0:40:50 podcast was about.
0:40:51 I knew what interested you.
0:40:52 I sent a very different email to a different person.
0:40:55 You can’t just send out.
0:40:56 It’s like everyone says.
0:40:57 You have to tailor your resume.
0:40:58 That’s basically what I was doing in a unique way.
0:41:01 You have to understand who you’re speaking with because this is a connection.
0:41:05 This is a relationship.
0:41:06 I bring something, you bring something, and we connect, and then we both have a great
0:41:09 time with it.
0:41:10 For anyone trying to do media outreach, the worst that happens is nothing happens, and
0:41:14 that’s where you were before anyway.
0:41:16 Have you seen a spike in enrollments after some of the big TV exposure?
0:41:21 When they hit right away, yes.
0:41:23 After the Kelly Clarkson show, I had several enrollments, and parents would message me and
0:41:27 say, “I saw you on the Kelly Clarkson show.”
0:41:29 Or if I have a TikTok that does really well, I’ll have a kid who usually was like, “I saw
0:41:33 you on TikTok,” or when I’m posting my YouTube videos.
0:41:36 I was posting some playthroughs for a while, and I would mention my classes, and students
0:41:40 would say, “I was watching your Zelda playthrough, and I saw you teach classes, and I enrolled.”
0:41:46 They’re definitely not the bulk.
0:41:47 The bulk 100% comes from the out-school marketing team, but there are some who sprinkle in from
0:41:53 those other places for sure.
0:41:55 Do you have an example of a TikTok that has done really well?
0:41:59 My very best TikTok was actually when I was hiring.
0:42:01 I put out a TikTok when I was hiring my first wave of teachers.
0:42:05 It blew up.
0:42:06 It exploded on TikTok, which I was not expecting, and it led to 6,000 applications to teach.
0:42:10 Oh my gosh.
0:42:11 That’s a video game teacher.
0:42:12 How do you even filter through those?
0:42:14 Wow.
0:42:15 Nick, it was a beast.
0:42:16 I had a five-step process.
0:42:18 I had application one, application two.
0:42:20 They sent me a 90-second video.
0:42:22 They sent me a three-to-five-minute video, and then we did an interview.
0:42:25 It was crazy.
0:42:26 It was insane, but I did see from that a lot of enrollments come through.
0:42:31 His parents were like, “Oh wow, she’s expanding her team.
0:42:34 She plays all these different games.”
0:42:36 I would have students enroll from that one, or I have a couple where parents will ask
0:42:41 me specific questions.
0:42:42 I had one where a parent asked, “My son has ADHD.
0:42:45 Could he come to your classes?”
0:42:46 I said, “Absolutely.”
0:42:48 That parent enrolled, and several others did too.
0:42:50 It sounds like an old song and dance, but social media really can be super powerful if you
0:42:55 use it in the right way.
0:42:57 Yeah.
0:42:58 It’s just kind of putting in the swings.
0:42:59 You never know what’s going to hit.
0:43:00 Just some guests have called it the rule of 100.
0:43:03 I got to create 100 pieces of content just to find the one or two that hopefully has
0:43:07 a little bit of viral pull, but 6,000 applications.
0:43:10 Yeah, he got some attention for that one.
0:43:12 Even though it was targeting the teacher side of things, it’s naturally like, “Oh, other
0:43:17 parents are going to be watching.”
0:43:19 You’re like, “Oh, this would be perfect for my kid.”
0:43:21 Exactly.
0:43:22 Yeah.
0:43:23 Just also being true to my brand across all platforms.
0:43:26 I’ve done a little bit of Twitch streaming, and we were family-friendly streamed because
0:43:29 I wanted parents to see what their kids would be experiencing in the class.
0:43:32 Same with my YouTube channel, totally family-friendly.
0:43:35 Same with my TikTok, family-friendly.
0:43:38 Across everything, I keep my brand consistent so that parents know what they’re going
0:43:43 to get.
0:43:44 Just like when you go to a grocery store, or when you go to any chain store, it has to
0:43:47 be consistent.
0:43:48 Otherwise, your customer gets confused.
0:43:50 I was going to ask about the YouTube side of things for filming tutorials, or how to
0:43:57 get past this boss, or how to solve this challenge in this particular game, that kind of content.
0:44:03 It’s very transactional, like solve my specific problem.
0:44:06 I don’t know if that would lead to more enrollments, or if you played around with anything like
0:44:09 that.
0:44:10 I have a little bit.
0:44:11 I actually started my YouTube channel because my students had specific questions that I
0:44:15 didn’t have time to cover in class.
0:44:17 A great example is there was this big puzzle in Zelda, and it is so hard.
0:44:22 It is so hard because there’s no instructions, you just show up and do it.
0:44:26 I had a student ask me, he said, “Hey, can you help me with this?”
0:44:28 I said, “We’re not going to have time in class today, but I’ll make a video and I’ll put
0:44:32 it up on YouTube and you can watch it.
0:44:34 That way you have your answer and everything like that.”
0:44:37 Then what happened was that video was a problem that a lot of people had in the game.
0:44:42 A lot of people were struggling with this shrine.
0:44:45 More people would go and then they would watch it, and they’d say, “Oh, thank you so much
0:44:48 for explaining this,” and then some of those people who watched it were kids who then enrolled
0:44:54 in my classes.
0:44:55 It’s very much like we were talking about with the self-paced courses, just in a little
0:44:59 bit of a different format.
0:45:01 It’s just that passive marketing that’s always going.
0:45:04 Yeah.
0:45:05 I love this YouTube strategy, just question and answer YouTube, where it’s like, “It’s
0:45:09 probably not going to go viral, but it’s going to solve somebody’s specific problem.
0:45:13 People are typing it in.”
0:45:14 This was Gabby Wallace was teaching English in Japan, I want to say.
0:45:18 It’s been probably 10 years since we did this interview, and I’m going to create these
0:45:22 English language lesson tutorial videos for my students.
0:45:25 The ones I’m seeing in person anyway, I’ll just put it up on YouTube.
0:45:29 It’s faster than me meeting with you in person again.
0:45:31 Just watch this.
0:45:32 Then, lo and behold, other people are watching this stuff and built this whole English language
0:45:37 learning empire on the back of these videos that really weren’t intended for that going
0:45:41 on.
0:45:42 It’s kind of a numbers game.
0:45:43 A certain percentage of people are going to watch and then ultimately enroll, and I
0:45:47 love this.
0:45:48 Some of my best performing YouTube videos, stuff I made 10 years ago.
0:45:51 How to stop Dropbox from taking up your local storage space.
0:45:54 I was annoyed by this.
0:45:55 It was like a personal, “Hey, it’s supposed to be cloud storage.
0:45:58 Why is it on my hard drive?”
0:45:59 Right.
0:46:00 Checkbox.
0:46:01 That’s still one of my best performing videos.
0:46:03 It’s like really dumb stuff in a lot of ways by answering these type of questions.
0:46:07 I think that makes a lot of sense.
0:46:09 Where TikTok is viral, it’s going to disrupt your feed maybe, or it’s like interruption
0:46:14 marketing.
0:46:15 YouTube is very much Q&A.
0:46:16 How to solve this specific problem so you can target maybe more strategically the classes
0:46:20 that you’ve got over there.
0:46:21 Right now, we’ve got dozens of classes, dozens of plus teachers, a little bit dabbling into
0:46:26 the self-paced classes.
0:46:27 Is there anything else, primarily out school as far as what’s bringing the cash register?
0:46:32 Any other revenue streams that we haven’t touched on?
0:46:34 I have a couple of other projects that I’m working on that are not specifically related
0:46:40 to teaching on out school, but they came from that.
0:46:44 I had a company reach out to me a couple weeks ago and they said, “Hey, we have this
0:46:48 app where kids can play Roblox and parents can monitor their Roblox playing experience.
0:46:55 We would like you to create a video for us.”
0:46:57 That kind of stemmed from my TikTok, where they saw that I was a gamer who was focused
0:47:02 on education and they said, “We would like you to make a video for us.”
0:47:06 I’ve had a couple of companies reach out to me in that UGC kind of space where it’s like,
0:47:10 “We would like you to make content for us because your brand aligns with what we are
0:47:14 looking for and we think that you would do a good job with this messaging.”
0:47:19 I’ve had a couple of those start to pop up and it’s definitely something I’m interested
0:47:23 in pursuing further, but a few of those have started to pop up a little bit, which I did
0:47:27 not anticipate.
0:47:28 It wasn’t something I expected to see come.
0:47:30 You know what I mean?
0:47:31 Yeah, absolutely.
0:47:32 That’s bonus money.
0:47:33 New income stream unlocked.
0:47:35 What’s typical for a rate for those?
0:47:38 It’s kind of the Wild West and it’s like, “I don’t know what to charge for that.”
0:47:40 Or do they come to you with a price?
0:47:42 I do a lot of UGC for user-generated content if any of your viewers don’t know.
0:47:47 I do a lot of that for out-school, so they have a marketing team and so they’ve brought
0:47:50 me on as one of their … I’m in a lot of out-school YouTube videos.
0:47:54 I use that as my baseline and I was like, “How does this sound?”
0:47:57 I knew it was a small company, so I kept my price pretty low.
0:48:00 I was around $150, $200 for a video, a 90-second video.
0:48:04 They were like, “Yep, that sounds great, absolutely.”
0:48:06 Then I’ve had bigger companies reach out to me and offer me well over $1,000 for a
0:48:12 video because they have a bigger budget.
0:48:14 The UGC world, I am still just barely getting started in it, but it is an interesting space
0:48:19 where you can approach people and people can approach you and you can kind of tailor your
0:48:23 prices based on what people want, but it’s a new side hustle for me, Nick.
0:48:28 This is a new one, that’s why I’m excited.
0:48:31 It is exciting.
0:48:32 I mean, the prospect of getting paid $1,000 to make a 90-second video, I think that would
0:48:35 be exciting for a lot of people and then for anybody else, on the marketing side, if you’re
0:48:41 turning around, and I want to hire a bunch of influencers to promote my thing, here’s
0:48:46 a potential avenue to go and do that, something that has kind of been on the back burner to
0:48:50 do list for me.
0:48:52 It’s not a ton of desire to be the TikTok face myself, but if there’s other people who
0:48:57 want to talk up the side hustle show, okay, sure, I can hire some influencers maybe in
0:49:01 that way.
0:49:03 It’s interesting when people talk about being a content creator.
0:49:05 I think a lot of people think it has to be my personal TikTok, but that’s just kind of
0:49:09 your starting point.
0:49:10 I don’t really have any money from TikTok.
0:49:11 I have 15,000 followers, I don’t make a penny, but the way that these brands both found me
0:49:16 was through my TikTok channel.
0:49:18 Just having that kind of as a portfolio is also a really awesome resource.
0:49:22 Yeah, that’s cool.
0:49:23 That’s cool.
0:49:24 What surprised you the most over the last, I guess, two years since we last spoke and
0:49:28 three years since going deep in the video game world?
0:49:30 I’ve been a side hustler my whole life, right?
0:49:33 I’ve always wanted to stay home with my daughter, so I’ve done a lot of side hustles, but I have
0:49:37 always been the independent contractor, and now I am the boss.
0:49:42 I’m in charge of these teachers who teach for me, and getting over the imposter syndrome
0:49:48 feeling, it is real.
0:49:50 When you’re hiring people and you’re now in charge of making the decisions for their
0:49:53 schedule, their pay, all these things, I have very often felt, I am so not qualified for
0:49:58 this.
0:49:59 Why me?
0:50:00 Why am I in charge of this?
0:50:01 But then I have to stop and think, and I’m like, I’m in charge of this because this is
0:50:05 what I have built.
0:50:07 Even though it feels like there’s a million other people who could do a million things
0:50:10 better than I can, in the end, it really is me who’s going to be the best at making
0:50:15 these decisions.
0:50:16 Imposter syndrome has been massive, I think.
0:50:19 Yeah.
0:50:20 Well, the only don’t cure for imposter syndrome that I found is what you’re doing, doing
0:50:24 the work, doing the thing, and coming out on the other side and saying, well, that wasn’t
0:50:28 as bad as I thought it was.
0:50:29 Can you give me a sense of a day in the life or a week in the life now?
0:50:32 Are you still doing any classes live or is that 100% on the team?
0:50:36 I am slowly shifting out of all live teaching.
0:50:39 So when we spoke last time, I was teaching about 20 hours a week, and now I think I’m
0:50:42 down to about three, and I’m planning on getting that to zero by May.
0:50:47 I’m planning on being done live teaching because I do want to focus on self-paced classes and
0:50:53 other content that can be consumed by parents in different ways on out school.
0:50:57 So I don’t do any live teaching anymore, and in a lot of ways it’s really hard because
0:51:02 I love these students.
0:51:03 I’ve connected with them, and so not seeing them is a very hard thing, but part of it
0:51:08 is we have a really big move coming up, and so I may come back to live teaching, but at
0:51:12 the same time, it’s like, I think my role has changed so much.
0:51:15 Now I need to be the eye in the sky.
0:51:17 I need to be in charge of admin and messaging and payroll and helping my teachers succeed
0:51:23 rather than my own personal classes being the ones that are succeeding.
0:51:27 So it’s a big mind shift change.
0:51:29 And it sounds like you’re having fun in that new role.
0:51:32 The fear would be, well, I really love doing the 101 classes, but logic and all the business
0:51:37 gurus say, “You got a scale, you got a hire,” and in the worst case scenario, you find yourself
0:51:41 in a new job if you don’t like, you’re like, “Well, that’s not what I wanted.”
0:51:44 Well, and I’ve talked to a lot of teachers on out school who have reached out to me,
0:51:47 and they said, “Should I become an organization?
0:51:49 Should I start to hire teachers and do the process you did?”
0:51:51 And I always tell them, I say, “Do you like to manage people or do you like to teach kids?”
0:51:56 And if they say, “I like to teach kids,” then I say, “Do not scale any further.
0:51:59 Don’t do it,” because you are not going to be a teacher anymore.
0:52:02 You are now a business owner, and you have to take it very seriously.
0:52:06 And so my job now, I love people, I love working with my teachers, I love managing it, I love
0:52:11 all of that, and so it works for me.
0:52:14 But if you’re not a person who wants to manage that sort of stuff, don’t do it, just don’t
0:52:19 do it because you’re going to be miserable.
0:52:21 You’re going to be like, “Man, I miss what I was doing before, but if that is something
0:52:25 you want to do, then absolutely, scaling makes sense.”
0:52:27 Yeah, it’s a different skill set, so you’re playing a different game and growing from
0:52:31 there.
0:52:32 You mentioned the self-paced classes, you mentioned the goal of growing to 400 to 500 recurring
0:52:37 weekly students.
0:52:38 What else is on the horizon for this year?
0:52:40 Well, I just barely hired on seven more teachers, that’s what brought us up to 14.
0:52:44 And so one of my biggest goals is filling their schedules.
0:52:47 That’s what consumes my thoughts all the time.
0:52:50 I’m like, “Okay, they are depending on me to fill their schedules, to find classes that
0:52:53 will work innovating, creating more classes, going down different avenues.”
0:52:57 I really do want to do more outside of out school, but more in-person.
0:53:02 I really want to be educating parents on how to help their kids game, because a lot of
0:53:08 parents don’t help their kids game in a responsible or healthy way, and it’s just because they
0:53:13 don’t know how.
0:53:14 That’s the big part of my business that I’m extremely passionate about is I really want
0:53:17 parents to be better at helping their kiddos game in a healthy way.
0:53:21 So, looking at different conferences that I can speak at, looking at different avenues
0:53:26 where I can share this message.
0:53:28 I’ve thought about all of those different kinds of things, but those are my main priorities
0:53:32 right now.
0:53:33 Yeah, there’s definitely a path to being an influencer in that space.
0:53:37 I know my wife follows someone in that niche, I don’t know if it’s like at Video Game Mom
0:53:41 or something, but it’s the healthy gaming habits, the benefits of video games, the problem-solving,
0:53:46 the sense of progress, beating this level, the stick-to-itiveness of dealing with a
0:53:51 tough challenge.
0:53:52 There’s a lot of benefits from it, and I can say that I benefited from doing this as a
0:53:57 kid too.
0:53:58 You can see it with our kids too.
0:53:59 It’s not passive.
0:54:00 It’s not just sitting there and vaging out in front of the TV.
0:54:03 You’re actively using your brain, hopefully, in playing these things.
0:54:06 Absolutely, and that’s a thing that a lot of parents don’t understand because they just
0:54:10 see their child gaming for hours and hours and hours, and they’re like, “Oh, they’re just
0:54:13 wasting their time,” or whatever.
0:54:15 You mentioned Minecraft.
0:54:17 I don’t know if you knew this about Minecraft, but you can make automated engineering machines,
0:54:22 which is amazing in Minecraft.
0:54:24 It is a very complex game, so you can have it be that this machine plants the seeds,
0:54:28 and then once the seeds have grown, this machine gathers the seeds, and then they take those
0:54:32 seeds and take them over here, and then they make the food that your character needs to
0:54:36 eat.
0:54:37 That process, it is an amazing engineering thing that kids learn, but they’re playing
0:54:42 a video game.
0:54:43 Yeah, those are some of the things I really want to work on more, is helping parents not
0:54:47 be so scared of games.
0:54:49 Yeah, it’s not just completely wasted time.
0:54:51 Sure, I maybe would rather you be outside or have some balance of outside time and physical
0:54:56 activity, but if it’s during the cold, rainy, wet, northwest winters, hey, live it up.
0:55:02 Do some gaming.
0:55:03 Well, MsDevin.com, D-E-V-Y-N.com is where you can find her.
0:55:09 I will link up the Out School page as well.
0:55:12 Appreciate you joining me, sharing the insight on how all this stuff works.
0:55:16 Let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side hustle nation.
0:55:19 You just got to start.
0:55:20 That’s the first thing, and start and try a lot of different things.
0:55:25 When I look at my out school journey and all of the classes that I taught, all the things
0:55:30 I tried and did not succeed at, it’s okay.
0:55:33 You just got to do it, and you have to be okay with sometimes things not working out,
0:55:37 but if you just keep going, you’ll find your side hustle, and it’s the best.
0:55:41 It’s great to have a side hustle because you really don’t have to be dependent on the
0:55:46 schedule or the whims of another person.
0:55:49 That’s my number one tip, I guess.
0:55:52 That was one that I had wrote down too, this call to just test out a bunch of different
0:55:56 stuff.
0:55:57 It’s throwing the proverbial spaghetti at the wall, and you’re going to see what sticks
0:56:00 and what you like doing, what kind of reaction it gets.
0:56:03 It’s similar to, “Oh, I created 50 different listings on Etsy,” or, “I put up a hundred
0:56:09 different YouTube.”
0:56:10 It’s like, “Almost.
0:56:11 You got to test the waters with this stuff.
0:56:12 I put up a dozen different classes,” or, “I put up a dozen different Fiverr gigs and
0:56:15 cost you hardly anything to do that,” and you see what starts to resonate in the market.
0:56:21 That was definitely one thing that I took away from this, and then the other thing is going
0:56:25 where the cash is already flowing.
0:56:26 Yes, on the surface, 30%, 20%, whatever the platform cut is, that’s going to look expensive,
0:56:32 but it’s like, in exchange, this is my outsourced marketing department.
0:56:35 This is my outsourced admin, and really a lot of things are taking off your plate in
0:56:39 exchange for that.
0:56:40 That was something else that I put down.
0:56:42 If you are listening to this, make sure to go check out the previous interview with Devin
0:56:46 from 2022.
0:56:47 You can see where she was at that stage.
0:56:50 If you’re not sure where to start in the Side Hustle Show archives with over 600 episodes
0:56:53 to choose from, go grab yourself a personalized playlist at hustle.show just to answer a few
0:56:58 short multiple-choice questions.
0:57:00 You can do it from your phone, and the machine will spit out the custom curated playlist that’s
0:57:04 going to be most relevant and impactful for you, and you can add that to your device.
0:57:09 Learn what works, and go make some more money.
0:57:10 Again, hustle.show for that.
0:57:12 Big thanks to Devin for sharing her insight.
0:57:15 Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:57:19 As always, you can head up sidehustlenation.com/deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors
0:57:24 in one place.
0:57:25 That’s it for me.
0:57:26 Thanks so much for tuning in.
0:57:27 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen, and I’ll catch you in the
0:57:31 next edition of the Side Hustle Show.
0:57:33 Hustle on.
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0:01:38 How a middle schooler started a business that eventually made 70 grand in profit in one
0:01:43 year and then ultimately had a six-figure exit at just 21 years old.
0:01:49 What’s up?
0:01:50 What’s up, Nick Lover here.
0:01:51 Welcome to the SideHustle Show, part of the entrepreneur podcast and network.
0:01:54 Yes, the business podcast you can actually apply.
0:01:56 We’re not talking software today.
0:01:58 We’re not talking viral apps.
0:02:00 We’re not talking venture capital.
0:02:01 We’re talking lawn mowing.
0:02:03 Yes, simple, local, low overhead, strong margins, incredible story for you today.
0:02:07 I know it’ll inspire a lot of people to go out there and take action from mudlabscourses.com
0:02:14 and formerly of Yard Boys, Jack Fleming.
0:02:16 Welcome to the SideHustle Show.
0:02:18 Thanks, Nick.
0:02:19 Thanks so much for having me and I’m really excited to talk, share my experience and a
0:02:22 lot of the funny and sad and crazy stories along the way.
0:02:26 You guys have been a cool journey so far and I know you’re just getting started in the
0:02:29 world of business.
0:02:30 Let’s stick around.
0:02:31 You’re going to learn how Jack got his first customers, grew the business, so it wasn’t
0:02:34 relying on him cutting all the grass and ultimately sold it for a six-figure sum.
0:02:38 Talk about giving yourself a great financial foundation at a young age.
0:02:42 That’s a real magic strategy of working for a cash flow plus equity in the business.
0:02:47 Now, you might not be interested in lawn care and I get it.
0:02:49 That’s cool, but you can still apply some of Jack’s broader strategies to whatever niche
0:02:53 you choose.
0:02:54 That’s why I put together this week’s Listener Only bonus.
0:02:57 It’s my big list of 101 service business ideas to get those creative juices flowing.
0:03:02 You can go download that for free at the show notes for this episode.
0:03:05 Just follow the link in the episode description and you’ll get right over there.
0:03:09 Jack, my understanding is you’re 13 years old.
0:03:12 You get the idea.
0:03:13 I got to make some extra money.
0:03:14 I’m going to go cut grass.
0:03:15 Tell me about your first customer, your first job here.
0:03:17 My very first client, it was a rental property.
0:03:20 The client hadn’t mowed it in about six weeks.
0:03:22 I was young and dumb and super naive and I said, “We could do it for 30 bucks and we’ll
0:03:28 probably get it done in 45 minutes.”
0:03:31 Eight hours later, I think I made $278 per hour average and I didn’t subtract expenses
0:03:38 because I didn’t want to lose money on my first job.
0:03:40 I probably broke even my very first job last Saturday and I was like, “Wow, what did I actually
0:03:46 get myself into?”
0:03:47 That was the moment I was like, “Wow, this might be a little bit more challenging than
0:03:50 I actually thought it would.”
0:03:51 Yeah.
0:03:52 Well, good on you for getting out there and getting a yes.
0:03:53 I don’t know how many doors you had to knock on before somebody said yes to you, but somebody
0:03:58 did.
0:03:59 Somebody hired you and you learned a valuable lesson, underbid the work required, but what
0:04:03 happens after that?
0:04:04 One of my best friends found out the night before I was just going to go knock on doors
0:04:08 in my neighborhood and see if I could basically get some clients, get some lawn mowing projects.
0:04:12 He was like, “Jack, let me come with you.”
0:04:14 I was like, “Sure.
0:04:15 Two’s better than one.”
0:04:16 Yeah.
0:04:17 Safety in numbers.
0:04:18 Yeah.
0:04:19 Exactly.
0:04:20 We were these little cute 13-year-old kids.
0:04:21 I was like, “I need to…”
0:04:22 I don’t know.
0:04:23 If there’s two of us, I’ll feel more confident and a little bit less scared when I go and
0:04:25 knock on all these strangers’ doors.
0:04:27 I jumped on Canva, I remember, and I printed out a one-page homemade granola-looking little
0:04:34 flyer that had my name, had my phone number, our email, and then our services, a lawn mowing
0:04:39 between like $20 and $30, pet waste cleanup, I think I charged $3 for as an add-on service.
0:04:45 We basically printed out a bunch.
0:04:48 I think over the next week, week and a half, we knocked on about a thousand or more houses.
0:04:53 Wow.
0:04:54 Yeah.
0:04:55 We just made a little cute pitch.
0:04:56 I’d knock on the door and I would say, “Hi, my name’s Jack.
0:04:58 I live in the neighborhood.”
0:04:59 I’d get quiet.
0:05:00 Then Nathan would go, “My name’s Nathan.”
0:05:03 Then I would say, “We’re like, I want to know if you wanted any yard care services
0:05:06 today.”
0:05:07 Then I learned, because I heard on a podcast, you’re supposed to stay quiet at that point
0:05:10 and just really listen, and typically when you’re 13, they’re really nice.
0:05:15 They’re like, “Oh, no, we’re good.”
0:05:17 I’m like, “Oh, well, what about when you’re out of town?”
0:05:19 They’re like, “Oh, I didn’t think of that.”
0:05:21 I’m like, “Yeah, well, we could just do it up until you’re out of town.”
0:05:24 It was just kind of, we got this sales pitch nailed down as we went along and just kind
0:05:29 of grew it all organically through that process.
0:05:31 Yeah.
0:05:32 Really refined that.
0:05:33 What pitch is going to work after hitting a thousand houses?
0:05:35 Yeah.
0:05:36 Exactly.
0:05:37 That’s kind of crazy.
0:05:38 My question with Lawn Mower and really a lot of these home care services, if that home
0:05:42 owner has been there for any length of time, they have a system in place.
0:05:45 They’re either doing it for themselves or they have a service.
0:05:49 It seems hard to break into that unless it’s a huge pain point for them.
0:05:55 We have a very tiny little lawn.
0:05:56 It’s like, “Well, this takes five minutes for me to go do.”
0:05:58 That’s kind of the question.
0:05:59 What market share are you disrupting mostly?
0:06:02 Was it people doing it themselves?
0:06:03 Were you displacing other service providers in the area?
0:06:06 The industry turnover rates super, super high in all service industries.
0:06:10 With us, it’s basically, if you show up on time, you leave ish on time, you charge the
0:06:15 amount of price to the client that you actually said you would, and you don’t show up high
0:06:18 or drunk, you’re about better than 90% of the other services.
0:06:22 Hopefully, they didn’t have to worry about that with 13-year-olds.
0:06:26 But it was the pricing, it was the timing.
0:06:28 For us, our entry was, we started just with a handful of clients in my neighborhood,
0:06:34 and then it was over a nine-season period that we were getting to the point where we
0:06:38 had worked for about 80%, 85% of all the houses in my subdivision, which was a couple hundred
0:06:43 houses at that time.
0:06:44 It was cool because I’d been there for so long, I knew that Mrs. Smith was 93 years
0:06:49 old and had four cats and their names were X, Y, and Z, and then this person just moved
0:06:54 in.
0:06:55 We had all the real estate agents knew who we were because we do work for them.
0:06:58 It kind of just became like we were just the kids in the neighborhood that you would call
0:07:02 whenever you needed an outdoor service done.
0:07:04 But originally, our entry was pretty much, there’s a lot of turnover, so it was like
0:07:08 if a client moved in to the neighborhood that needed a new service or they had issues with
0:07:13 their old service and they were looking around, word of mouth was our biggest marketing factor
0:07:17 because we had an excellent reputation as we still do, and that’s what we really relied
0:07:21 on over time.
0:07:22 Yeah, that makes sense where you show up, when you say you’re going to show up, do what
0:07:26 you say you’re going to do, and be around, be a part of the community.
0:07:29 People feel confident making that recommendation to say, “Oh yeah, I’ve got somebody that
0:07:33 I know and trust and like, and they’ll help take care of you too,” so I can definitely
0:07:37 see how that fuels it over time.
0:07:39 But in the early days, a lot of grass roots, a lot of knocking on doors, and a lot of
0:07:43 rejection I imagine as well.
0:07:45 We had so many rejections that in the moment are super disheartening when you’re 13 years
0:07:49 old and then you look back and it’s kind of funny and it’s a hilarious story to tell.
0:07:53 I remember, I think it was the second house we ever knocked on.
0:07:57 We knocked on this house, this lady came to the door and I knew her son because we were
0:08:00 in the swim team together, and I remember saying, “Hey, is this something you’re interested
0:08:04 in having in your lawnmode?”
0:08:05 I remember her looking at me and going, “Well, if I was going to have anyone do it, I’d have
0:08:09 my son do it,” and so my son needs to work just as much as you, and I remember being
0:08:13 kind of off-put by that because I was like, as a little 13-year-old, I kind of had my
0:08:18 feelings hurt, and I remember now it’s funny because it’s like, you realize that they’re
0:08:22 not necessarily rejecting you.
0:08:24 It’s just that it’s not the right person or not the right service, and through all those
0:08:27 little rejections, you kind of just go, “Oh, it is what it is.
0:08:30 I guess it wasn’t right.”
0:08:31 You just move on, you do more houses, and then you get more clients.
0:08:34 It’s just kind of a natural organic progression.
0:08:35 Yeah.
0:08:36 You develop a thick skin right away.
0:08:38 We had people throw every excuse at me when I was knocking on doors, like, “I don’t believe
0:08:42 in Cole Collie,” and my brother was with me.
0:08:45 He’s like, “It’s not like it’s Jesus,” but a lot of fun stuff came out of that.
0:08:50 You end up signing up a bunch of clients doing this over the course of nine seasons, and I
0:08:54 think that’s what’s interesting here is a lot of common teenage, like, how do I make
0:09:00 money during the summer?
0:09:01 Like, okay, I’ll go cut grass, but to take that from just a summer little side project,
0:09:06 maybe I have a half dozen yards if I’m lucky, to make something that’s really scalable and
0:09:12 thinking about it from the entrepreneurial standpoint of like, how do I get crews in
0:09:15 place to go out and do this?
0:09:17 I imagine doing it yourself, starting out like most service providers, but you talk
0:09:22 about, I guess, delivering the work and the startup costs, like, maybe you borrowed Mama
0:09:26 Dad’s mower and then went from there, but what went into it in terms of the startup costs?
0:09:31 When I started, I was 13, and I actually borrowed my neighbor’s lawn mower that didn’t have
0:09:35 a gas cap.
0:09:36 I had this little maybe 20-year-old lawn mower that I just pushed from house to house, and
0:09:41 then my friend had a weed wacker and a battery-powered blower.
0:09:45 Our sort of costs were zero when we first got started.
0:09:48 Over those nine summers where it progressed to, it was completely different.
0:09:52 Like, our working cash flow by the end was close to $30,000, $40,000 just to keep track
0:09:57 of all the projects we had, all the payroll, all the equipment rentals, material costs.
0:10:02 We had a full-time office manager and staff to manage all incoming leads, estimates, financial.
0:10:07 Wow.
0:10:08 Yeah, and so I would say it was kind of like out of the nine seasons I did it, every three
0:10:11 years the business totally changed.
0:10:13 So the first three years, it was just me and my buddy, and with my parents lawn mower.
0:10:18 Well, honestly, that was just for the first couple of months of that season, but after
0:10:21 it was just some used, cheap equipment that we had.
0:10:25 The next three years, it was starting to be like, “Okay, what is actually tracking your
0:10:28 numbers look like?
0:10:29 Am I actually making money at this project or not?
0:10:32 What’s we’re breaking into social media marketing?
0:10:34 We’re breaking into some more technical construction landscape services like irrigation or maybe
0:10:40 light plant design, and then the last three years was a full-on, all those large landscaping
0:10:45 crew companies you see around where we have full-time office, we have social media marketing,
0:10:49 paid advertising, trained crews, we pull permits.
0:10:54 Our last project we did was for $60,000 and it was a full front and backyard scrape, redo,
0:10:59 new driveways, concrete lighting.
0:11:01 I think their planting budget was $15,000.
0:11:04 People spend way too much money on their yards.
0:11:05 So it’s kind of every three years that’s kind of that transition where the business kind
0:11:10 of, the operations need to change, but it’s kind of like constantly reinventing it as
0:11:13 it went.
0:11:14 Yeah, trying to rebuild that airplane while it’s in flight, and that’s really cool to
0:11:19 see the evolution of that and some huge projects.
0:11:22 Like we’re not talking about going door-to-door pushing a broken lawn mower anymore.
0:11:26 We’re talking about major, major landscaping projects.
0:11:29 Right, exactly.
0:11:30 Yeah.
0:11:31 And that’s where that last three years kind of came in as we, right at 2020, it was actually
0:11:34 a really good year.
0:11:35 That was the year that we transitioned from primarily landscape maintenance.
0:11:40 So like mowing lawns, cleaning yards, replacing mulch into like a landscape construction and
0:11:45 design firm, which that transition came about for two reasons.
0:11:48 I was actually going off to college at that point and I couldn’t mow lawns when I was
0:11:52 out of state.
0:11:53 And then the other reason is the margins were just higher from a construction perspective
0:11:57 and it was easier to land high ticket clients and then work with them over a long period
0:12:00 of time.
0:12:01 Part of me wants to ask, why college?
0:12:03 If you already got this thing that’s a six-figure business as a teenager, like do you really
0:12:07 need to go off and spend all this money on tuition?
0:12:09 I’ve already got this thing.
0:12:11 I could plow that investment into here and hopefully grow it.
0:12:13 You asked that question once.
0:12:14 I ask it to myself like every single day over the last four years, especially when I’m in
0:12:19 my finance class and they’re asking about certain things that I’ve already, definitely
0:12:24 they cover it from a different perspective.
0:12:25 But I’ve real life experience that I think a lot of my other fellow students don’t have.
0:12:29 Yeah.
0:12:30 It’s not just theory.
0:12:31 I guess something to apply this to.
0:12:32 Yeah.
0:12:33 No, like especially like even I remember in school, like we’re uncovering like the importance
0:12:36 of cash flow.
0:12:37 I remember most of the students were zoned out.
0:12:39 I remember thinking to myself, oh yeah, like two months ago when my school called me and
0:12:42 asked for a $20,000 check and I had already made $20,000 that season.
0:12:45 But I started $40,000 of other projects and you can make it on paper, but you still have
0:12:50 to have cash flow.
0:12:51 Like that concept, it was so real to me.
0:12:52 I remember being like, okay, this is probably an area where I’ve learned that it’s a little
0:12:56 bit different for me.
0:12:57 So, I graduated high school in 2019 and I was really stuck because I had a friend that
0:13:04 I had made and met who was about three years older than me.
0:13:07 His name is RJ at Greenworks Landscaping, one of the best character guys I know.
0:13:13 And I remember he spoke with me and said, “Jack, I’m three years ahead of you.
0:13:16 I make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year.
0:13:19 I work six months out of the year and I own my own company and this can be you in two
0:13:23 to three years.”
0:13:24 Right.
0:13:25 He’s laid out the path.
0:13:26 Yeah.
0:13:27 And the best part is he’s such a great guy.
0:13:28 He goes, “And I will show you how to do this.
0:13:30 I’m 18 years old and I’m going, oh my goodness, my dad doesn’t even make a couple hundred
0:13:33 thousand dollars a year.”
0:13:35 And for me, I had to really sit down and think, is this more of an opportunity to bring me
0:13:41 into my next area of life or is this an area where I really want to focus on growing?
0:13:46 And so, for me, I recognize one of my biggest goals was to go to college and to graduate
0:13:51 debt free with my degree rather than looking at this business as my end all be all.
0:13:56 I want to have the largest landscape construction firm in all of Denver, Colorado, which is
0:13:59 where I was located at the time.
0:14:01 Mine was it was an opportunity and a way to get to my bigger goal, which was going in
0:14:05 and actually teaching others how to better run their businesses and actually better operate
0:14:10 their companies.
0:14:11 And so, for me, I saw that through college.
0:14:13 I saw that through getting a degree debt free and I saw my landscaping business as a way
0:14:17 to practice what I want to eventually teach and also pay for that opportunity debt free.
0:14:21 Yeah.
0:14:22 That’s fair.
0:14:23 It’s like, well, I already got something that’s working here and my buddy has laid
0:14:27 out the path.
0:14:28 So, that’s funny.
0:14:29 A friend of my brother is like who we ski with all the time, like similar, like landscaping
0:14:32 business works hard all summer long, but skis almost every single day in the winter
0:14:37 because it’s like, well, I’m not cutting a lot of grass because nothing’s growing
0:14:41 right now.
0:14:42 Exactly.
0:14:43 It’s covered in snow.
0:14:44 More with Jack in just a moment, including how his clients reacted when it was no longer
0:14:46 just him showing up to do the work and the specific profit margins he was targeting right
0:14:51 after this.
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0:17:06 I want to talk about the transition from kind of like the scrappy middle school hustlers
0:17:11 going door-to-door to now hiring other people to do the work and if Mrs. Smith and her four
0:17:18 cats, what’s her reaction when somebody else shows up and it’s not Jack showing up to cut
0:17:23 the grass anymore?
0:17:24 Like that first level of going from solo service provider to more of an agency type of business.
0:17:29 Mrs. Smith was very disappointed when she eventually sent an email or saw me because
0:17:33 I would fill in all the time as well when I first was transitioning.
0:17:36 She would say, “I hired you guys because I saw you on the first day and I don’t know
0:17:40 where you went and I explained where I was at, how many hours, there’s only so many
0:17:43 hours in a day and I want to make sure I was doing a good job managing everything.”
0:17:48 Mrs. Smith was very understanding but at that transition it was really difficult, especially
0:17:53 I always worked with one or two other people so it wasn’t just me by myself all the time.
0:17:58 I always would hire friends.
0:18:00 I played soccer in high school so I had three-quarters of my soccer team employed by me was the coach
0:18:05 hated because-
0:18:06 How cool is that?
0:18:07 That’s fantastic.
0:18:08 That’s really cool.
0:18:09 My coach hated it because they’d come to practice dead tired because they walked 15-20 miles
0:18:13 that day and they’re supposed to run around a track out in the heat and they’re already
0:18:17 toast but so for me the transition was I already had recently ever since the beginning broken
0:18:22 into the fact like well if you’re charging the client about let’s say for round numbers
0:18:26 $50 an hour for a project and you only have to pay $20, at that time it was $20 an hour
0:18:32 to one of your employees, well you’re netting the difference $30 an hour difference and
0:18:36 if you can do that with two three people at a time you might be picking up that $60, $80
0:18:41 an hour going directly to you.
0:18:44 For me it was an opportunity well I never had an issue landing the work my issue is always
0:18:48 finding the workers that transition period what started with just my friends but then
0:18:52 it also went to I did LinkedIn posts I did indeed we did a lot of hiring off of like
0:18:59 zip recruiter next door I’ve done so many interviews at Starbucks basically it’s other
0:19:03 high school college kids that come and sit down and you walk this narrow balance of looking
0:19:08 as professional as possible but then also letting them know like at least in the early
0:19:11 days when I was 16 17 years old right right the high school business and I remember all
0:19:17 the time it wasn’t an official role but in my head I was thinking well the more mature
0:19:21 they are the better they’re going to be so I try to only hire people that were older
0:19:23 and wiser than me and so most of our crew was three four five years older than me for
0:19:29 most of the time so I was like one of our crew managers Ethan he joined back in 20 I
0:19:34 want to say 18 I should know that but he just graduated from CU Boulder physics student
0:19:40 remarkably smart just so intelligent he worked with me for years and years and I think he’s
0:19:44 about four or five years older than me which was really helpful because it grows that
0:19:48 level of confidence with crews and employees and clients but it always definitely tricky
0:19:52 when you’re 16 years old hiring a 21 year old yeah and you try to manage somebody older
0:19:59 than you yeah it’s a weird place to be yeah it’s definitely odd after a little bit you
0:20:03 realize you’re all kind of in the same boat and it’s not the end of the world is that
0:20:06 where you like to be in terms of the pricing and margins like a 60% gross margin on labor
0:20:11 you’ve mentioned okay I’m gonna charge the client 50 bucks an hour is all estimate like
0:20:15 how long is this job gonna take but I’m gonna pay 20 to the worker and is that typical for
0:20:21 pricing this type of service it depends so I didn’t know this going in but what I learned
0:20:25 over time is landscape maintenance the margins are a little bit tighter and landscape construction
0:20:30 you’re gonna have a little bit larger margins so on the construction side which is where
0:20:34 we did all of our really detailed number tracking to make sure we’re actually being profitable
0:20:38 on every single job we aim for 40% margin so let’s say if you have a product you bring
0:20:43 in for $10,000 we expect that it be it depends from project to project but around we’ll say
0:20:49 maybe $4,000 of material another $2,000 of labor and then you’ll have about $4,000 left
0:20:54 over in gross profit then from there you still have to subtract overhead and for us typically
0:21:01 it’s around a 20% somewhere between 20 and 30% net profit margin we run on the landscape
0:21:08 construction side overhead in this case would be fuel office staff exactly software stuff
0:21:13 marketing expenses yeah so all like insurance is a big one for construction companies just
0:21:18 because we have a lot of guys out in the field doing nothing dangerous but they work around
0:21:22 heavy machinery equipment training and then other trucks trailers someone drives over
0:21:27 something that pops a tire and it’s $400 and that has to come out of somewhere so okay
0:21:32 no that makes sense that’s helpful to know too and I guess that’s somewhat intuitive
0:21:37 where I’m gonna trade a little bit of margin on the maintenance side in exchange for recurring
0:21:42 week like it’s more predictable like okay every week we’re gonna go and cut this lawn
0:21:46 it’s gonna be part of our regular route and so it becomes simpler and probably more competitive
0:21:51 on that side too like other people try to come in and take that business from you the maintenance
0:21:56 was fun because it’s predictable I started to grow in Colorado the first second week
0:22:00 of April ran through the last week of October you know once a week you charge between $25
0:22:04 and $35 back then now inflation has caused everything to go more expensive but it’s
0:22:08 really predictable whereas the project side you can have a bunch of really great leads
0:22:13 come in for 20 30 $50,000 projects and then it takes three six months to actually finalize
0:22:19 all the details with the client there’s more risk but there’s a lot more reward the more
0:22:23 practice I got at landing those clients that was where the main deciding factor is the
0:22:28 fact I wasn’t there at the beginning and end of the seasons from maintenance so I kind
0:22:33 of didn’t have a choice I had to switch over but it also turned out to be one of the best
0:22:36 decisions we ended up making as well.
0:22:38 Gotcha on the tools and technology you go back to the overhead thing what kind of tools
0:22:44 are you using to manage all the different crews like where they need to be at what time
0:22:48 to hold all this together and try to do it remotely like you said early season late
0:22:51 season.
0:22:52 Every three years it totally changed the first year is real simple we had it was the end
0:22:56 of the third year so we got all set up on Google suite so Google Suites one of the most
0:23:01 underpriced technology packages there are out there it’s so great for starting any sort
0:23:06 of side hustle business and it allowed us to all have our individual emails all share
0:23:10 the same Google calendar and basically just have a place to put all of our documents in
0:23:13 one place so everyone could take a look at things as they needed to.
0:23:17 So for us we just ran our schedule off of Google so we’d open up the notes on a specific
0:23:22 day and we would just scroll down to the notes and we would see that there’s 23 lawns in
0:23:26 there and we would just go in order and the office manager that we had essentially would
0:23:32 just make sure to put them in the right order which was the most efficient route for that
0:23:35 day.
0:23:36 All right so we got Google Suites super powerful tool to help keep everything in one place
0:23:40 anything else on the tools and tech front.
0:23:42 We also use QuickBooks for a while we also looked at entering into working with like
0:23:45 Jobber and some other like CRM as well as scheduling projects.
0:23:50 Those were all really helpful because before it was honestly just me running everything
0:23:54 off a whiteboard in my bedroom and when we had a team in an office and two different
0:23:59 crews three different crews and subcontractors they all can’t see that whiteboard so from
0:24:04 there that’s where we really started leaning heavily into the softwares which for us saved
0:24:08 us so much on cost made us so much more efficient actually created a good opportunity for us
0:24:12 to grow.
0:24:13 Now at what point was the call volume such that you needed an admin staff to help answer
0:24:19 calls and get things scheduled?
0:24:21 Honestly it was probably close to the fifth year when we were doing about north of a hundred
0:24:26 thousand in revenue.
0:24:28 I think I hired it a year late and that was when we were doing about three hundred thousand
0:24:33 in gross revenue.
0:24:34 For us one of the worst days of my life was it was about ten days after quarantine starts
0:24:39 this is the first week of April of 2020.
0:24:42 We had one person post some next door saying oh we gave yard boys a call they were super
0:24:47 helpful if anyone needs anything you should give them a call.
0:24:50 That one post I had probably thirty clients that we had worked for before respond to the
0:24:54 bottom of it saying oh they’re great they’re awesome everyone give them a call.
0:24:58 Everyone in the world was on next door in that time and I think I got forty calls in
0:25:02 twenty four hours and I realized how much I was over my head.
0:25:08 I hired so I have a younger sister named Evelyn I hired Evelyn who was thirteen years old
0:25:13 and I said Evelyn when this phone rings you need a call you need an answer you need to
0:25:18 ask for their email and then I’m going to get your own personal email and then you’re
0:25:21 going to schedule an estimate to follow up with them and we’ll figure out how to best
0:25:25 train you along the way but right now I can’t answer forty calls run two crews and figure
0:25:31 out all these new clients all along the way.
0:25:33 So that was where it was basically like as the plane was flying I kind of like you said
0:25:37 earlier we were building all the processes and services as we went.
0:25:40 Was this through Google voice or is this through job or like how you manage the phone system
0:25:46 or just like your personal cell phone.
0:25:48 So I had a personal cell phone which was one of the worst decisions of my side hustle
0:25:52 idea in that moment we went to two phone numbers so we had a strictly in office number and
0:25:57 then I got my own personal phone number back which was one of the most it took out so much
0:26:01 stress for my life because it gave another kind of barrier for clients being able to
0:26:05 reach me.
0:26:06 So we got the social media and that’s great to have like customer testimonials and have
0:26:11 that kind of go live right at the start of the season basically anything else you mentioned
0:26:16 some paid traffic but what else worked on social and the marketing front to get some
0:26:21 new business in the door after the cold calling days.
0:26:23 Honestly it was word of mouth that was came for us we had a lot of also old fashioned
0:26:28 branding so all of our trucks all of our employees had an employee shirts they all look professional
0:26:32 when they drove by we had yard signs with these little stick on card holder.
0:26:38 So when you’re taking your dog for a walk in the neighborhood you would see this professional
0:26:42 crew working and go oh we need that same thing done in our house to grab a card and keep
0:26:46 walking.
0:26:47 Eventually the last two years got into like more of a paid social media marketing campaign
0:26:52 we worked with a couple other contractors in the area who were north of they’re around
0:26:56 a couple million if not like five or 10 million in gross revenue and that’s what they said
0:27:00 they had noticed the greatest change and so we started breaking into that but even near
0:27:05 the end that wasn’t our bread and butter our bread and butter was next door organic lead
0:27:09 generation and then honestly just paying my office manager to sit there and monitor
0:27:14 at the whole day.
0:27:15 If any new inquiries came in of someone saying hey does anyone have a good recommendation
0:27:19 to redo our backyard and put in a patio we were the first one to comment and then because
0:27:24 we had such a high reputation and quality of work typically we’d have two to four other
0:27:28 clients we had worked for in the area also comment below us and say oh we worked with
0:27:33 yard boys and Jack they’re phenomenal give them a try and the best part is that stuff
0:27:38 stayed on there forever so I still get calls to my personal number right now and that’s
0:27:43 why my voicemail personally now it says if you’re trying to call yard boys give this
0:27:46 number a call just because we have such like a long standing relationship on next door
0:27:51 with all those people.
0:27:52 Okay I like the yard signs with the little stick on card holders as kind of cool as people
0:27:57 and then just like the word of mouth reputation as you know it takes years to build and moments
0:28:01 to ruin if something does go wrong so like you know any horror stories of not being able
0:28:06 to fulfill the work or anything like that.
0:28:08 In all of my time doing my company I got one bad review it directly corresponded to that
0:28:14 week period where I got so many calls right during COVID and I usually didn’t have the
0:28:19 volume control set up it was an elderly lady who I had answered the phone and said I’ll
0:28:26 get back to you in a couple days and I had misplaced her number lost to completely on
0:28:30 my phone call back and then she posts on next door and says yeah I called yard boys but
0:28:37 they haven’t responded and they totally lied to me and I was like oh I can’t find your
0:28:42 number that’s not my goal I just I just completely lost it and so I message right away I’m like
0:28:47 I’m so sorry we’ll get that fixed I call her up I say I’m so sorry so we actually she
0:28:51 won I think a long million at the time we didn’t offer that at that time but I said
0:28:55 I’ve got three hours on a Saturday I don’t have any other work to do I’ll come by and
0:28:59 personally do it I didn’t actually do any work anymore but I was like oh well she seemed
0:29:02 like she was in her 60s 70s I was like I’m more than happy to stop by this what it is
0:29:06 I was like would you mind deleting that just because that was totally my bad or reputations
0:29:10 everything and she goes oh of course not a problem I mowed her lawn for free didn’t charge
0:29:14 her I watered her trees when she was there she asked me and then about two months later
0:29:18 I checked and it was still up and so I called her I said hey is it okay if I get that taken
0:29:23 down I just like really want to make sure we keep a reputation good and she goes I’m
0:29:27 sorry I’m having a bad day my dog dies and hangs up on me and so that repute that thing
0:29:32 is still on next door so I never got it taken down but that’s the only one at the time that
0:29:37 we had before I so our reputation was everything all of our Google reviews were five stars Yelp
0:29:42 was five stars next door is as good as it could be okay yeah I was gonna ask about what role
0:29:48 the Google Maps listing of the Google local business or Yelp played in this it sounds
0:29:52 like yes we did create profiles on there even though starting out like almost subdivision
0:29:57 specific like starting out super super local but going a little bit broader and setting
0:30:01 up those profiles that’s correct yeah so there’s so many competing there’s Yelp there’s home
0:30:05 advisor there’s one called Angie’s List I think it just got rebranded I can’t remember
0:30:09 what it changed into but oh there’s also thumbtack there’s probably about 10 to 15 places where
0:30:16 you can get reviewed on and so for us we had to pick about five that we really focused on
0:30:21 growing and for us that was next door Yelp Facebook Instagram the very last year and
0:30:29 Google reviews okay and because with those kind of four to five we had them tied into
0:30:34 our website so it automatically showed on our website the best reviews popping up there
0:30:39 so that was kind of where we got all of our workers word of mouth organic which is honestly
0:30:43 the best marketing you can do then just standard old-fashioned business cards out in the driveway
0:30:49 next to a lawn sign like what’s cool about the service industry is it’s still a good
0:30:54 10 15 20 years behind everything else if you just kind of implement some technology but
0:31:01 still tie in with those fundamental old-timey marketing things back in the 1950s or earlier
0:31:06 old-fashioned clean branding you’re going to be miles ahead of most of the other people
0:31:10 in the industry yeah that’s one reason I like businesses like this it’s like a lot of the
0:31:15 existing competition they don’t have a website you see like fax us for a quote type of stuff
0:31:20 like no no just make it easy for me to do business I’m used to Amazon Prime like I just
0:31:24 click the button that shows up at my house like easy right like make this easy and Johnny
0:31:29 Robinson from squeegee God on Twitter like doing his window cleaning business is like
0:31:33 so much of the branding and reputation is online it’s the digital presence it’s the
0:31:38 how you answer the phone it’s like you show up if you’re uniform you show up when you
0:31:42 say you’re going to do you charge what you say you’re going to charge like make it easy
0:31:45 make it seamless so that’s one reason I like it the other reason I like these types of
0:31:48 businesses is just growing demand like just people like I don’t want to bother with this
0:31:53 anymore like people hiring out the service and a diminishing labor pool of people who
0:31:57 want to go into blue collar type services so I think it’s a great place to play and
0:32:01 one that you’ve done really well with did you do anything specific to solicit those
0:32:05 Google reviews Facebook reviews Yelp reviews as you’re wrapping up a job yeah of course
0:32:09 so with all of us like how it is we want our reviews being accurate representation of who
0:32:14 we are and the nice part was we always had really happy really awesome clients and that
0:32:21 was just because we went above and beyond kind of the service because with landscaping
0:32:25 construction we are not a product business we are a service business and so does that
0:32:29 mean if at the end of the job they say hey Jack we love to talk to you about the project
0:32:34 you want to sit up in the front porch and just look at the yard I will sit there for two hours
0:32:37 and generally enjoy my time talking with a client that we just did a big scale project
0:32:41 for and so through conversations like that if I can tell that they were really happy
0:32:45 with kind of service provided and how it worked I’ll say one thing that’s really important
0:32:49 to us is getting these reviews and it’s something the best thing that we could do would you
0:32:53 be comfortable filling out a review we won’t tell you what to say we’ll just send you a
0:32:57 couple examples what other people have done and for us it was 95% of the time they would
0:33:01 say oh of course we’d love to in those reviews since they’re all organic they would highlight
0:33:05 different factors that I might not even thought to mention but they’re like oh they got back
0:33:08 to us on time oh Jack took his shoes off before he went in the house like those little details
0:33:12 that kind of set you apart because you are a service based company okay yeah that’s kind
0:33:16 of cool and then it allows you to branch out to hopefully other nearby cities or suburbs
0:33:22 that might be looking and can find you in maps where it’s like oh that was outside of our
0:33:27 cold calling radius but they still found us exactly at least with us it was our reputation
0:33:32 is everything and that’s kind of a misnomer I think a lot of people kind of look at service
0:33:38 industries of whether it’s plumber electrician landscape construction company as like a lower
0:33:43 paid lower wage job and it definitely is for some but it’s funny most of the time from
0:33:49 what I’ve been hearing through my experiences starting out even as like I was 16 17 in high
0:33:55 school I was making about $500 $600 a day in profit four years ago and that was me waking
0:34:01 up yeah it’s insane money yeah and it’s not rocket science it’s just cutting grass and
0:34:08 I would listen to a bunch of business podcast whether it’s from Wall Street Journal or Guy
0:34:12 Ross and I was learning about business somebody cared about making money making $500 a day
0:34:17 getting a really bad farmer’s tan but at 17 years old that’s all really pretty straightforward
0:34:22 so it’s funny that like there’s a huge opportunity here and people just they just don’t really
0:34:26 know which is kind of what the cool part was is it’s like it’s overlooked because it’s
0:34:31 so obvious yeah there’s a lot of people toiling away looking for that elusive passive income
0:34:36 stream where you might be better off in the near term especially just going out and solving
0:34:41 somebody’s problem yeah no that’s a good way to put it more with Jack in just a moment
0:34:45 including dealing with imposter syndrome bidding on some of these bigger projects and setting
0:34:49 up the business for a six-figure exit right after this I never thought I’d say this but
0:34:54 another spreadsheet of mine has bit the dust it was my net worth and investment tracking
0:34:59 spreadsheet where I would dutifully log into a dozen different accounts every month to
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0:37:23 that’s Squarespace dot com slash side hustle toward the end of this thing what was like
0:37:29 a day in the life logistics for you was this bidding jobs was this trying to play puppet
0:37:33 master on the different crews you got to go here you got to go here what was your role
0:37:38 at the end of this thing I think probably about midway through or to the end of my business
0:37:42 I realized that when you run a business you make your money when you don’t spend your
0:37:47 time running the business but you spend your time fixing it and making the business run
0:37:52 better and that was a hard transition for me because I’m used to overshort a crew I’m
0:37:59 1718 19 years old I can go move some rocks for eight hours yeah yeah I’ll just go do it
0:38:03 right yeah right and so for me one year I set a hard line of this year jack doesn’t do
0:38:09 any work and it’s not because I’m lazy it’s just because if I move rocks for 12 hours
0:38:13 I probably already had 15 hours of other stuff I need to do and that’s going to be late now
0:38:18 and so a day in the life for me those last couple years is I woke up before all of our
0:38:23 crews woke up so we started a project at 7 30 in the morning I woke up at 6 45 7 right
0:38:28 then went downstairs open up my laptop my phone responded some emails respond some client
0:38:33 questions followed up on estimates then typically by 8 8 30 I went to the job site talked with
0:38:39 the manager walked around really having that hands on making sure that everything was done
0:38:44 up to my standards because as the owner like you’re going to catch things that a client
0:38:49 would catch that just the people doing the work they’re there the whole day they’re
0:38:52 just going to miss yeah this was like mind-blowingly frustrating for me when I was running painting
0:38:56 crews in college yes it’s like yeah you can see from your truck on the sidewalk like before
0:39:01 you can get out of the car did no one notice that the masking didn’t come off that upper
0:39:04 window or what it’s just like I don’t know like the attention to detail just like was
0:39:09 really frustrating it’s like come on guys like if you don’t have time to do it right
0:39:12 when do you have time to do it over like all the guys worked with were really great but
0:39:16 occasionally we hired some people that I had to let go and I do remember and just as one
0:39:22 funny story I remember going to a job one day and telling the guys okay you can go ahead
0:39:27 and start planting those plants because he was sitting on a shovel not moving it yeah
0:39:31 and he goes okay sounds good and he like brings a couple plants over and they’re all in those
0:39:34 plastic Home Depot but we didn’t have them from Home Depot but those standard plastic
0:39:38 buckets that are disposable and remember he looks at the plant and he looks at me and
0:39:43 he goes do I take the plastic off before I plant it or do I plant it with the pot and
0:39:47 I remember being like like okay it’s a good thing I’m here just double check sir because
0:39:51 that’s when you go and you plant all these different plants in the buckets you’re supposed
0:39:54 to take off or just little things where we had one time the guys were so tired as the
0:39:59 end of the day we had two different shades of mulch and they had mixed them and put them
0:40:03 all throughout the yard so we had like a red and a brown mulch mixed together which to
0:40:08 me it’s extremely obvious when you look but they’ve been there all day so they were just
0:40:12 moving they’re trying to get out of there and so when my day in the life it was wake
0:40:16 up emails real quick double check to make sure everything’s going in the right direction
0:40:20 no plastic pots were in the holes and then run some deliveries also on the phone with
0:40:26 suppliers, clients confirming questions or answering things while I’m doing deliveries
0:40:30 and then from about 11 to 2 in the afternoon I went to the same Starbucks every single
0:40:36 day sat on my computer and then just worked on whatever as the business owner whether
0:40:41 it’s payroll fixing a glitch on the website running our next email ad campaigns answering
0:40:47 questions from the office that’s kind of how the day in the life was near the end.
0:40:50 And that’s helpful to hear like still a little bit of hands on like I got to show my face
0:40:54 and like be the leader for these crews and hopefully plug any holes before it sinks the
0:40:59 ship and but also being this business owner and like having a higher level view of things
0:41:05 whereas the business going did you ever run into like the imposter syndrome of biting off
0:41:11 more than you could chew or bidding a five-figure job for the first time or a $25,000 job for
0:41:17 the first time and you’re like can we really get this done?
0:41:21 Do we really know how to deliver?
0:41:22 Yeah, I think that’s a place I perpetually live in is imposter syndrome.
0:41:26 It’s funny even when I was getting ready to do this interview I was like oh my gosh what
0:41:30 if I forget all the stories I did for the last nine years and what if I just don’t have
0:41:35 anything to talk about when you ask me questions and then of course my next thought was well
0:41:39 that’s okay I’m sure you’ll remember as you go along but so I think for me it was big
0:41:44 too because I went to college out of state I was still running things from an operational
0:41:48 side from my dorm but I was in class full time I was studying I played on intramurals
0:41:55 I went to class and did homework and went to the library and at the cafeteria and then
0:42:00 in spring break I would jump on a plane while my friends went to Florida do whatever they’re
0:42:04 going to do I would jump on a plane I would do 25 estimates back to back to back put on
0:42:10 my car heart work boots and ride around my truck and estimate out a couple hundred thousand
0:42:15 dollars of projects and then go right back to college and then go back to being a college
0:42:20 kid again and so for me it’s always been an area where I don’t think I’ve ever felt qualified
0:42:26 and still weird to say like if I told a client oh that’ll be 25,000 dollars like in my head
0:42:30 I’m like oh my gosh what if they know I’m just like 18 years old or 19 and they’re like
0:42:35 no that totally makes sense sounds good and we’ll do it and they’re so happy and then
0:42:39 I get in my truck and I close my eyes and I go all right you’re doing it you’re doing
0:42:43 good just keep on going so that’s a place where I feel like I’ve never fully gotten
0:42:46 out of but it’s a place where I’m trying to continue growing.
0:42:49 And it didn’t start there I think that’s probably the important like you started doing the work
0:42:53 for 275 an hour like you know level up over the course of I’m like I see these big highway
0:42:59 construction crews and they’re working on building like this light rail across the I-90
0:43:04 bridge and it’s like I’m just curious like or was like four generations ago was this
0:43:09 like a little handyman service and they like slowly started bidding bigger and bigger jobs
0:43:13 I kind of ask myself that question like I see these people tackling these projects that
0:43:18 are probably multi-million dollar bids it’s like where’d they start like I’m always curious
0:43:23 the origin story for that so thanks for sharing them the imposter syndrome never really goes
0:43:27 away and it’s just every time like okay let’s learn as we go let’s deliver this and do right
0:43:32 by the clients I want to transition into a portion of getting out of this business or
0:43:37 exiting this business I think to have an exit a six-figure exit under your belt at this
0:43:43 age is something that a lot of entrepreneurs will never see I think the stats are you know
0:43:48 most businesses end up getting shut down rather than sold so I think it’s a really cool plan
0:43:53 to say you know I don’t know if this is what I want to be doing forever and to have said
0:43:56 it up in such a way that somebody else could take it over my transition kind of was two
0:44:01 different phases so in 2020 I started college for the first time I moved from Colorado to
0:44:07 Virginia and we subcontracted out about a hundred weekly clients that we had and as
0:44:12 well as fall cleanup services so all in all is probably about three to four days work
0:44:17 of full-time crew work we found another reputable contractor we had an agreement written up
0:44:23 of my lawyer and he signed we agreed I think it was probably the end of that year after
0:44:28 we’d fulfilled that agreement I went back through and ran the numbers and it dawned
0:44:32 to me that basically I had broken even for subcontracting out for those three or four
0:44:36 months and so my head I go okay well is breaking even a necessary evil like it gives me the
0:44:42 increased income over the summer but then it’s a hassle in the spring and fall to manage
0:44:46 is there an opportunity to essentially sell off these clients and then that way I can
0:44:50 just solely focus on the landscaping side which was higher margin which we had already
0:44:55 done about $200,000 in that previous season for the first time we got in okay me I reached
0:45:01 out to the guy that we had subcontracted to and said hey we’d love to offer you to purchase
0:45:06 these clients is that something you’d be interested in then that was the summer 2021 we signed
0:45:10 a deal for $55,000 which was the purchase of all our client book residential maintenance
0:45:17 client book so any services that were basically with the lawnmowering or an aeration client
0:45:23 spring or fall cleanup things of that nature 55,000 was like six months or so of the net
0:45:29 profit from running that and in the lawn maintenance industry that’s pretty uncommon because none
0:45:36 of them were under contract which is where most the value comes in typically but for
0:45:40 us it made sense because we were trying to transition out and they already had a really
0:45:44 great working relationship with that new service and clients had I think this is what blew
0:45:50 me away the new service had a retention rate I think of close to 90 or 95% which is completely
0:45:56 unheard of I told him I said I’m gonna be honest there’s no guarantee I think if you
0:46:01 do it right you’ll probably keep 70 maybe 80% and he goes okay that makes sense and
0:46:06 in the back of my head I was like you never even really know and I think we checked back
0:46:10 from the following year and he had close to 95% retention and I was like wow that’s spoke
0:46:15 directly to his quality because we actually had trained him to how we ran it and then
0:46:19 also that ease of transition between the two okay so for the buyer in this case they’re
0:46:23 looking at okay these recurring maintenance clients are not under contract but they have
0:46:27 this ongoing need currently yard boys is solving this problem we can step in and buy that book
0:46:32 of business and hopefully retain those clients this is in lieu of any marketing expense to
0:46:37 go out and get this volume of business ourselves like we could shortcut that by just buying
0:46:40 up this volume of work exactly and that’s where the value came in is it’s not that these
0:46:45 are so precious and valuable it’s just that the time it would take to grow it that was
0:46:48 a deal for them if they’re able to retain it and even from the numbers it turned out
0:46:53 to be a major success for them as well as for us cool alright and then that was part
0:46:57 one what was the second part the following year is 2022 my junior year of college and
0:47:01 I was like alright I do know for sure I’m not gonna be going back in and doing landscaping
0:47:05 after I graduate let me shop around and see if there’s a buyer for the rest of this company
0:47:10 essentially and so which is more challenging because it’s one off projects right yeah it’s
0:47:15 one off projects it’s employees but there’s so much turnover and employees and this one
0:47:21 was even way more tricky a couple years ago in high school I had applied in one first place
0:47:26 in the local Colorado competition for the top youth owned business in that state so I called
0:47:30 up one of my former mentors there and said hey I think I was 21 years old then I sound
0:47:37 21 years old I’m trying to sell business and I’ve never done this before do you have anyone
0:47:41 that I could just talk to that like I mean I already checked with my mom and my dad and
0:47:46 got their opinion but like is there someone that like I can just talk to one of the ladies
0:47:50 I knew there has been majorly helpful over these years said let me give you contact this
0:47:55 guy’s worked on he works for a private equity firm and I’m sure he’d love to talk with you
0:48:01 and so I met with him he had a free opportunity at 645 in the morning downtown so I woke up
0:48:07 and ran downtown got breakfast with him and it was so helpful he basically he said don’t
0:48:14 overcomplicate it you check a couple websites to see what the current market rate is for
0:48:18 those things see how your company compares and then create an offer that basically looks
0:48:23 similar to what you’re seeing open in the market and I remember walking away and going
0:48:28 that’s not that hard for his standard stuff it’s months and months and months of CFA
0:48:32 yeah do diligence and everything yeah of course but I just appreciated that you like
0:48:36 even took the time to talk to a 21 year old kid that had a landscape construction company
0:48:40 so went home ran a bunch of numbers looked at our financials compared to what was kind
0:48:45 of out there then reached out actually to the person that had bought our landscape maintenance
0:48:50 clients and said hey essentially do would you be interested in purchasing the rest of this
0:48:56 business and then transitioning the name as well over with him he said for sure he wanted
0:49:01 to get some more time to continue the maintenance side I want to get some more time to finish
0:49:04 running this through college we set up agreement basically that it was a year year and a half
0:49:08 training program where he got to basically I had a shadow for 16 18 months and allowed
0:49:15 me to really show him what it looked like on a daily basis so that transition concluded
0:49:20 in July of 2023 and from there he took over and started running the business without me
0:49:24 now I still in theory you think you’re done and you can pop the confetti since then I’ve
0:49:30 learned a bunch what it actually looks like to do a proper transition and even since we
0:49:35 have transitioned we’ve definitely have experienced some troubles just because when it goes from
0:49:39 you’re literally running everything to someone that you worked with for even a year two years
0:49:43 three years taking over there’s a lot of stuff that can come up with that so that’s kind of
0:49:48 how that transition worked is it was an opportunity for me because I can move on past up and then
0:49:54 also he could enter new industry that he didn’t necessarily have enough experience and to enter
0:49:58 on his own okay so it wasn’t putting it up for sale on any online business brokerage
0:50:04 like a biz buy sell or anything it was like look already have a relationship with this
0:50:08 potential buyer and just kind of like floating that idea you already bought our maintenance
0:50:12 business what do you think about the other side too exactly yeah and with our long maintenance
0:50:16 clients when we first that first transition period we did shop around with some other
0:50:21 local areas and this just the impression we got in from the research I did it was just
0:50:27 the issue of when you transition from one company to another and there’s no contracts
0:50:31 involved the dollar that they would be willing to spend would be lower than this other person
0:50:36 since they already had the relationship and so that was just we did with the first time
0:50:40 around and then the second time I was like all right there’s a lot being said that you
0:50:43 already in your network you already have relationships with people and you know how they work and
0:50:47 you know how they run their business and we already had seen success and how he transitioned
0:50:50 before and that’s why I decided to go with him again for that second term it’s an interesting
0:50:55 one because it’s like for one off projects that you’re buying basically the team and
0:50:59 their expertise but like you said a lot of employee turnover or there can be it’s like
0:51:03 almost you’re buying the online reputation and the goodwill that you have built like
0:51:09 the marketing engine almost like to even though these are one off projects like I’m reasonably
0:51:13 confident that more lead flow is going to be coming through on the basis of this foundation
0:51:18 that you built.
0:51:19 Yeah and the other thing that I would add as well too is it wasn’t as simple as oh yeah
0:51:23 we’ll sell you our website for a couple hundred grand or whatever that wasn’t it it was we’ll
0:51:27 transition midseason so July’s peak everything and it will come with whatever contracts we
0:51:32 already have under contract as well with since we did the year previous there’s no guarantee
0:51:36 so when we actually ended up did transitioning we transitioned over contracts and then basically
0:51:42 worked on training up his guys as well too so and then it’s also and this is kind of
0:51:47 going into kind of my next endeavors is a lot of the stuff I learned along the way it
0:51:52 took me a total of nine summers to basically make the wrong choice or you started when you
0:51:57 were practically a baby you know yeah I was a little baby yeah but like you make the wrong
0:52:02 choice and then you do something wrong you fix that and then you know what the right
0:52:07 thing is and so the real value came in that training along the way is don’t do this don’t
0:52:11 do this this is how we do it and there’s always opportunity for more growth but this is what
0:52:17 we found that works this is how you run your employees your operations your whatever it
0:52:22 is that you’re actually working with yeah absolutely so that leads us nicely into well
0:52:27 what’s next for you what’s got you excited these days sounds like you kind of winding
0:52:30 down the transition phase and now off to the next project I walk in graduation in May so
0:52:36 I’m super not even graduated yet well congrats on that yeah no thank you I’m all finished
0:52:41 what I really learned in high school is yes I made a really good amount of money I paid
0:52:46 for my college debt free I was able to I’ve been to Europe twice I paid for I went to
0:52:52 New Zealand for an internship in real estate development consulting like I’ve had a lot
0:52:56 of great opportunities and it’s paid for a lot of opportunities for me to grow into
0:53:00 however the real growth was in learning what it looks like to actually be an entrepreneur
0:53:07 and like learn how to talk to clients and how to know what it is to actually figure
0:53:14 out if you’re profitable or how to sell services and I learned all that in high school for
0:53:19 what I’m working on now is basically I’m building an online course that’s going to be launching
0:53:22 June 1st where it’s really designed for other high school students to really start businesses
0:53:28 that they want to start and from my perspective like my parents all the time were asked how
0:53:34 did your son learn that and for me it was because of the practice and like the failure
0:53:38 in you it was doing the thing trial and error yeah exactly yeah and for me I just wanted
0:53:43 to be able to basically create a course where you’re able to follow it takes kind of guesswork
0:53:48 and that scared like oh like do I get clients do I buy a lawnmower do I go on social media
0:53:54 like whatever it is like I want to be able to create an opportunity for because a bunch
0:53:59 of my friends in high school the only difference between me and my friends in high school is
0:54:02 I knocked on doors before I fully realized how difficult it’s going to be like there’s
0:54:08 nothing real special about my story it was just the fact that like I did it before I
0:54:11 really thought it through so I wanted to create a course that allows students to know what
0:54:16 that next step is what it actually looks like and to take a lot of the guesswork and the
0:54:19 nerves out of what it looks like and then also give parents a way to allow their kids
0:54:23 in high school to maybe whether it’s mature grow up when we learn what it actually looks
0:54:27 like how business works how to manage money how to talk to people whatever it is that they’re
0:54:31 really looking want to actually grow and I guess the my generation would be called like
0:54:35 adulting how to adult in a better way so yeah you know instead of looking for a job go build
0:54:40 yourself your own job build your own income streams and I love this call to well I didn’t
0:54:45 really give myself a chance to overanalyze and overthink it I just started knocking on
0:54:49 doors and sooner or later people said yes and then I had to figure out the next table
0:54:53 how am I going to deliver this work and then enough people said yes that I needed to hire
0:54:57 help to go deliver this work and then I hired my sister to answer the phones and exactly
0:55:01 like such a cool story. So this is mudlabscourses.com you can find Jack’s upcoming course offerings
0:55:08 over there we’ll be sure to link that up in the show notes as well again mud labs courses
0:55:13 super inspiring story really appreciate you stopping by and sharing the goods on how you
0:55:17 built and eventually sold this thing. Let’s wrap this up with your number one tip for
0:55:23 side hustle nation. Wherever you’re at you probably have enough information to get started
0:55:28 and you know what you need to do to start you’re probably not starting just because
0:55:32 you’re nervous to. I think there’s a lot of for me even like when I was going to start
0:55:37 this new like building the course I was like oh like do I need to do some more interviews
0:55:41 or do some more podcast interviews or really understand my business more. No I have an
0:55:45 understanding of what knowledge I’ve grown in and so I just need to take that next step
0:55:51 and offer that and not get stuck and overthink or get nervous I just need to go for it and
0:55:56 so for me I think there’s a lot of beauty and just kind of stepping out before you really
0:56:00 know exactly what your next step is but you know what the first thing you need to do is
0:56:04 so for me I would say that’s going to be my number one take away and that I really built
0:56:09 my business around is I didn’t let myself overthink things because I’m a natural overthinker
0:56:13 I just landed a project for twenty thirty thousand and went oh my goodness I need to
0:56:18 figure out how to do this one part of the project that I’ve never learned before and
0:56:22 I need to what does it look like for me to get there that was how I just I set a deadline
0:56:26 and then I had to fulfill it by that time and I was impressed with how things were able
0:56:32 to work out and I’m definitely totally believe that that’s an opportunity for everyone else
0:56:35 as well too. Yeah this is the entrepreneurial skill set it’s figuring it out every step
0:56:40 of the way is up against the ceiling of your skills and ability and it’s your job to figure
0:56:45 it out where do we go from here so I like this call you probably have enough information
0:56:49 to get started you don’t need to know steps two through ten to get started you just got
0:56:53 to do the first thing so I like that one a couple takeaways before we wrap up one is
0:56:57 this mention of yours to be the business owner and not the business doer and trying to get
0:57:01 out of that as soon as possible to kind of wear that CEO hat and if that’s where you
0:57:06 want to scale the thing have you love cutting grass like hey that’s fantastic we had somebody
0:57:11 like if you love teaching video game classes to keep doing the thing right you don’t want
0:57:14 to get rid of a job you love in the name of growth and scale but if that is where you
0:57:19 want to go then you got to be the CEO you got to be the business owner. Second thing
0:57:22 was reputation is everything and to have that foresight as a teenager and to show up on
0:57:29 time and be respectful and especially with people’s property like they got a lot of equity
0:57:34 and money tied up in these things like it’s not that anything isn’t reversible but like
0:57:38 there’s potential damage just screw something up and so you have to be a reputable and respectful
0:57:42 person there because all the branding that can happen in person can also happen online
0:57:46 with the example of people flaming you out on next doors you don’t want that to happen.
0:57:50 Again, your listener only bonus for this episode is my list of 101 service business ideas
0:57:56 that you might be able to apply some of Jack’s tactics to to grow a side hustle of your own.
0:58:01 You can download that for free at the show notes for this episode or just follow the
0:58:04 link in the episode description of your podcast app. We’ve got a whole host of blue collar
0:58:10 service business examples we’ve covered the pooper scooper business the window cleaning
0:58:14 business mobile car detailing there are lots of examples kind of in this ballpark if that
0:58:19 is up your alley so we’re trying to link up a few of those other examples in the show notes
0:58:23 as well but big thanks to Jack for sharing his insight. Thanks to our sponsors for helping
0:58:28 make this content free for everyone. You can hit up side hustle nation dot com slash deals
0:58:33 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thanks for supporting the advertisers
0:58:37 that support the show. That’s it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you find
0:58:42 any value in the show the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend so fire off that text
0:58:47 message. Hey, check out the story of this guy who started this teenage business and grew it to six
0:58:52 figures paid for his college really inspiring stuff. I hope you help spread the word in that way
0:58:57 until next time let’s go out there and make something happen and I’ll catch you in the next
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