The Side Hustle Show

“You have a skill, but you’re not using it correctly.”

That the tough love advice Vincent Pugliese’s father gave him.

Vincent was working what he thought was his dream job as a photojournalist. He’d just won the most prestigious award in his industry (International Sports Photographer of the Year), and he and his wife Elizabeth had a baby on the way.

Yet the newspaper job didn’t pay well. With the impending arrival of their son, Vincent took a hard look at his financial picture: he was in his mid-30s, 6-figures in debt, and earning $15 an hour.

Not great.

Something had to change, and something did.

Full Show Notes: Freelance to Freedom: From $30k a Year to $30k in a Day

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This week’s guest took a pain point she was experiencing - finding a nanny for her 3-month-old - and turned it into a multi 6-figure full-time business with 500 nannies across 5 states.

Kristy Bickmeyer started TwinkleToesNanny.com back in 2011 in response to not being able to find a nanny herself.

At least not without going through the “traditional” agency model of paying $1,500-3,000 upfront and with few guarantees it will work out long-term.

Kristy decided to start her own agency without the upfront fees, and with a more streamlined approach and robust guarantees for parents - and it’s snowballed from there.

I love this strategy of taking a fragmented, localized industry and adding a layer of branding and professionalism to it.

This is what 1-800-Got-Junk did in junk removal, and is what Belay Solutions has done in the executive assistant space.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

Full Show Notes: Building an Offline Agency to Multiple 6 Figures

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Play matchmaker between pallet buyers and sellers to flip pallets for profit. Varnie Sambola started his pallet flipping business in 2020, and has already scaled it to $1000 a day (and beyond).

He credits another Side Hustle Show guest — John Wilker from episode 274— and his Simplest Biz course with helping him get started.

Full Show Notes: Pallet Flipping 101

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“Nothing puts a smile on a consumer's face quicker than a good peach.”

This week’s guest is Shannon Houchin of RoadsideRepublic.com, and she’s passionate about peaches, fresh produce, and delivering an awesome customer experience.

Shannon actually reached out to me and said, Nick, you’ve got episodes on flipping books and mattresses, clearance products, domain names, flea market finds, and a ton of other stuff - but have I got a side hustle for you: I flip peaches.

So, of course, I had to call her up to learn more.

Turns out Shannon has been doing this for 10 years and has scaled up to operating up to 100 roadside stands at once.

Whether you’re looking for a way to make extra money on the weekend, or to scale to something larger, Shannon has a compelling story for starting a roadside produce stand.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

Full Show Notes: How to Start a Roadside Produce Stand

Grab Your Free Bonus: The Best Items to Flip for a Profit

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Escaping the rat race is simple, but not always easy.

In this episode, I break down the 3 most common ways out of the rat race, and the pros and cons of each.

(This was originally recorded for YouTube, which explains the faster-than-normal pacing and some video sound effects.)

Full Show Notes: How to Escape the Rat Race

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Your voice has value — both figuratively, and maybe even literally.

To prove this point, I’m joined on the show this week by a side hustling couple who have turned their voices into an income stream worth thousands of dollars a month.

Dom and Nicole Draper from TheVoiceoverCouple.com are multi-award winning voice over artists - they get paid to talk.

As professional voice over artists, they’ve done all kinds of interesting jobs and worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, including Nike, Netflix, and Adobe.

In this episode they share how they went from hustling on Fiverr outside of their 9-5, to working with voice over agents and agencies and turning this into a full-time business.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

Full Show Notes: How to Start a Voiceover Acting Business

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Creating the right retirement plan for your business income can save you thousands of dollars in taxes. But between LLCs, IRAs, SEP IRAs, Solo 401(k)s, and more, it's a confusing acronym jungle out there.

To help cut through the clutter, Matt Ruttenberg stopped by and schools us on how to choose the right plan for you and the key differences between them.

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This week’s guest, Scott Keller, left his high-paying but not super satisfying career in insurance to run a bird blog full-time.

Scott started BirdWatchingHQ.com as a side hustle back in 2016 and has since turned it into a full-time income with half a million monthly pageviews and more than 1 million monthly YouTube views.

But like all businesses, it’s been an evolution to get to that point.

Scott started out chasing high-ticket affiliate commissions but pivoted into creating one of the best bird watching resources online with multiple revenue streams.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

Full Show Notes: The 6-Figure Bird Watching Blog

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Do you love weddings? Professional wedding officiants can make $100s an hour and usually do it as a side hustle.

In this episode, you'll meet Maria Romano, who's officiated more than 4000 weddings in her career. She shares what you need to get started, how to get your first customers, and more.

Full Show Notes: How to Become a Wedding Officiant

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Quizzes can help you:

• Grow your email list
• Serve your audience better
• Make more money

We’ve been talking a bit about the power of quiz funnels over the last few months, and so I thought, why not call up the guy who’s famous for implementing these things and helping others do it as well?

Ryan Levesque is the bestselling author of Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Formula to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy...Create a Mass of Raving Fans...and Take Any Business to the Next Level, and CEO of The Ask Method Company.

Using the exact methods we’re talking about today he’s built a highly-profitable 8-figure/year business across 23 different niche markets, amassing an email list of over 4 million people along the way.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• what exactly quiz funnels are and why they are so effective
• how you can get started building your own quiz funnels
• how to drive lots of targeted traffic to your funnel for next to no cost

Next Steps: Register for the upcoming live quiz funnel training (use code SIDEHUSTLE to make the $100 registration free!)

Full Show Notes: Quiz Funnels 101: Sell Smarter, Serve Better, and Earn More Money

Need More Traffic? Use promo code PODCAST for a special discount on The Traffic Course

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