The Side Hustle Project

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Laurence Bradford, the creator of Learn To Code With Me, her blog that teaches more than 150,000 monthly readers how to get started with becoming a developer. She also runs the Newbie Coder Warehouse Facebook Group, her community of more than 12,000 people learning how to code and helping each other along the way. Laurence also writes for publications like Forbes, Mashable, USA Today, and she works with Teachable—the online course creation platform. …

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Aaron Orendorff, a content strategist, copywriter, and blogger for hire. While he spends most of his time in the world of content working with companies like Shopify, and writing for sites like Mashable, LifeHacker, and Fast Company… Aaron’s story is a surprising one. He didn’t go to business school, or study to become a marketer… Aaron actually went to seminary school after graduating from college and became a church minister for a couple of years. Eventually thought, he experienced a few life-changing events, and found himself in a bit of a dark patch—turning to drugs and alcohol, and had to step down from his church ministry. Aaron took some time to recover, make positive lifestyle changes, and started to test his way into a new career as a freelance writer. The rest as they say, is history…

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Jeff Haden, a contributing editor at Inc Magazine, ghostwriter to some of the world’s top CEOs & entrepreneurs, speaker, and author of his own upcoming business book… This interview was very special to me—Jeff was the first person to publish my work somewhere other than just my own blog & the blogs of startups I knew… he took an article I wrote for the Buffer Blog and published it to his column on Inc Magazine, which served as the catalyst for me being able to get columns on all the other major publications afterwards. In many ways, Jeff is where my journey into writing turned up a notch. Jeff’s story is also very unique… after spending more than 20 years rising up through management at a book manufacturing plant, he started to get bored with his work—and wanted something more meaningful. Jeff began freelance writing on the side of his day job. After a few years of stoking the fire with this side hustle, his writing career began to take off… he’d go on to become a highly sought-after ghostwriter to some of the world’s most recognizable CEO’s and business leaders who wanted to write books. Jeff built relationships with editors at several online publications and eventually found himself being a contributing editor to Inc Magazine…

We’re talking to John Rampton, the Founder of Due.com—that’s spelled due.com—an online payments service (and much more) that’s great for working with contractors, freelancers, and remote employees. John is also a frequent contributor to pretty much all of the biggest online publications… Mashable, TechCrunch, Entrepreneur, Inc, Forbes, you name it… he’s probably been there. He was recently named #3 on Entrepreneur Magazine’s list of the top 50 online influencers in the world, in part due to his incredibly engaged Twitter following of 1.5 Million people. Things weren’t always so glamorous for John though… during college he experienced a pretty traumatizing accident while earning some extra money helping a friend out on a construction site. His leg was broken in several parts, he had multiple surgeries and doctors told him he’d never walk again… it took him almost 3 years of rehab and 10’s of thousands of dollars in expenses each month, but he eventually recovered. And what could’ve been this very dark time for John, instead became the foundation for his next business—he got into online marketing, hiring contractors, and growing an affiliate marketing business in the real estate space.

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Jen Kessler and Chiara McPhee from Bizzy—an email marketing platform designed for eCommerce business owners. After meeting each other while studying at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Jen and Chiara co-founded the company & eventually got accepted into Y-Combinator’s startup accelerator program. After that, they built a small scrappy team out of a WeWork space in downtown San Francisco and focused on growing their customer base until acquisition talks with Sendgrid serendipitously fell into their lap.

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Matt Feldman, the owner of Case Escape, the maker of a phone case printer that can print custom cases in a matter of just a few minutes. Matt and I co-founded Case Escape as a side hustle right after graduating from college. We worked on it together for a couple of years before I jumped into the world of startups, and Matt’s been able to grow the business significantly over the past few years.

In this episode, we’re talking to Viktor Tretyak, an IT Analyst by day and side hustler by night who’s got a growing little business selling super cool pins—and when we talk about pins today, it’s not writing utensils—think throwback pins that go on the lapel of your jacket, on shirt or backpack. These pins range from being in the image of classic VW vans to saying phrases like HUSTLE and GOOD VIBES.

In this episode, we’re chatting with Ian Paget, a creative director by day and freelance designer by night. Also known as the Logo Geek, Ian’s built an incredible personal brand for himself (including 86,000 Twitter followers) and because of that, he’s been a judge on logo design competitions, he’s been interviewed by BBC’s Radio One, and much more.

In this episode, we’re talking to Steli Efti, the CEO of Close.io – an inside sales CRM for start-ups and small-to-medium businesses.

In this episode, we’re talking to Caroline Ghosn, founder and CEO of Levo—a professional network dedicated to helping millennials in the workplace.

Levo, which started as a side hustle back while Caroline was working her first job out of school at McKinsey and Company, has now grown to more than 8.6 Million members.

She was recognized by Fast Company as one of the most Creative People in Business back in 2013 and she’s gone on to raise more than $8 Million in funding from top angel investors & VC’s.