The Side Hustle Show

Remember the Red Paperclip Guy from a few years ago? In 2005, an out-of-work Kyle MacDonald started with a single red paperclip and traded his way up to a house in Kipling, Saskatchewan.

Remarkably, this barter adventure took only 14 trades and was completed in less than a year. Kyle started out small, each time seeking something “bigger and better” in exchange.

For example, his first trade was the red paperclip for a pen shaped like a fish. Then he traded the fish pen for a doorknob, and on and on up the ladder.

The story certainly has some feel-good elements to it, and after a while the media attention definitely helped speed the process along, but I think it’s worthwhile to revisit because we’re all trying to “trade up.”

By “trading up”, it’s important to note I’m not necessarily talking about acquiring a bigger house or a better car, but more along the lines of making bigger impacts and living better stories.

I was reminded of the red paperclip story by last week's episode with Rob "The Flea Market Flipper" Stephenson. He talked about a challenge inside his community to start with something small and keep flipping the profits into bigger deals to see how much you could trade up over the course of a year.

I think we all have a red paperclip story. Like Kyle, even starting with almost nothing, you can make big things happen with a little initiative and a little help from others along the way.

This episode is about connecting the events that got you to where you are today, and thinking about where you want to go tomorrow.

What’s the next trade you’d like to make?

In the spirit of the red paperclip story, I’m going to use my own entrepreneurial journey to illustrate this; and similar to Kyle, I’ll use a series of 14 key decisions or trade points. But unlike Kyle, this took me a lot longer than a year!

Full Show Notes: Trading Up: From $8.65 an Hour to Retired at 25, Plus the Next 10 Years

Rob is a professional "money multiplier."

The good news, he says, is it's a skill that can be learned.

You might remember Rob "The Flea Market Flipper" Stephenson from episode 147 in late 2015. At that time, he was earning $30,000-$40,000 a year flipping random products on the side from his day job.

Since then, the father of 3 has taken his buy low, sell high model and turned it into a full-time 6-figure operation.

Rob doesn’t discriminate what the products are he’s flipping, as long as he can pick it up for a great price he’ll flip it.

I can’t blame him, since some of these single deals are worth thousands of dollars in profit. In fact, Rob only buys items he estimates he can 10x when he flips them.

Since we last spoke Rob has fine-tuned his processes for finding and flipping items. He still hits the flea markets weekly, but he also uses some interesting tools and apps to find more items.

He’s also found a way to save big on shipping cost, enabling him to go after bulky items with even bigger markups.

In this “where are they now” episode, I invited Rob back to learn how he scaled up his business, what his buying criteria or flipping process looks like today, and what he’s got cooking next.

Full Show Notes: $100k a Year Flipping Random Items: The Return of the Flea Market Flipper

"I'm this close to firing you right now."

That's what Hung Pham's boss told him when he reached out about ways to get his team more engaged with the company's overall mission.

"If you want passion and purpose," she said, "you've got to look somewhere else."

Frustrated with the internal cultures at the organizations he worked in, Hung wanted to attend a culture-building conference.

The only problem? That event didn't exist.

Sensing a void in the market, Hung was inspired to create Culture Summit.

With nothing more than a website, a few contacts booked as speakers, and a whole load of enthusiasm, Hung started emailing prospective attendees and getting the word out within the right circles.

He had more than 200 attendees for that first event and was profitable from day one.

By year two, Hung’s Culture Summit, at CultureSummit.co was a 6-figure business – all on the side from his day job.

This was after Hung almost gave up and his partner left the business when they didn’t sell any tickets for the first three months.

Tune in to hear how Hung validated his idea for his conference, how he sold his first tickets, and how he’s grown this side hustle into a full-time business with attendees from 5 continents, and where he wants to go from here.

Full Show Notes: Event Hosting: How to Bring Your Tribe Together and Build a 6-Figure Conference on the Side

“I feel like this is the most important project I’ve ever worked on,” Mike said about his blog YoungArchitect.com.

Mike Riscica runs a blog, podcast, and has built a thriving community for young professionals in the architecture field.

The idea for the blog came from a pain point in Mike’s life, and for many others – passing the Architect Registration Examination (ARE).

After failing to pass the exam 4 times (before passing) and seeing his peers struggling, Mike started blogging about his challenges.

“[My story] resonated with people in a pretty serious way,” he said, and he started seeing traction within the community.

He started monetizing his blog from day one with affiliate products and continued to add more revenue streams to scale up his business with courses, speaking gigs, books, videos, and more as his traffic grew.

Today his blog in a full-time business. He's had the opportunity to travel the country with his dog doing speaking gigs, has helped hundreds of students pass their ARE, and has some interesting plans for the future.

Tune in to hear how Mike grew his blog, how it rings the cash register in at least half a dozen different ways, and the strategies you may be able to lift for your own project.

Full Show Notes: Blogging for Multiple Income Streams – How a Part-Time Blog Became a Diverse Revenue Engine

“I tell people I work on my cleaning business about an hour a day because 5 minutes doesn’t seem believable,” Chris Schwab said.

Chris is the founder of ThinkMaids.com, a residential house cleaning service in the Washington DC area he started on the side while still a university student.

Less than two years later, the business is doing $60k a month worth of cleaning work, all without Chris ever lifting a mop or dusting a shelf himself.

In this episode, Chris shares some of the unique tactics he used to start and grow his cleaning business, and then remove himself from the day-to-day operations.

Tune in to hear how Chris came up with the idea for his cleaning business, how he found his first customers and cleaners, and how he manages the entire business remotely.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: A Local Service Business that Scales - From Zero to $60k a Month in Revenue

Rene Delgado started an online drop shipping store with no ideas and no inventory and went from $0-300k in his first year in business.

It was the search for an extra stream of income that led Rene Delgado to consider e-commerce; selling physical products online.

“Drop shipping” is a form of e-commerce where your suppliers ship products directly to customers on your behalf.

Your role is to drive traffic to your storefront, forward the purchase order details to your supplier when a visitor makes a purchase, collecting the retail price and buying the goods at wholesale.

Rene went through a very specific product research process and ended up starting BounceHouseStore.com, where he sells bounce houses and other products related to bounce houses.

He’s already started scaling his business on the success of his bounce house store. Rene has now outsourced the day-to-day operations of this store and started a new drop shipping store that has already turned over double what his bounce house did in its first year.

There’s no luck here. “It’s hard work,” Rene said. That and some careful planning and execution.

Tune in to hear why Rene was attracted to drop shipping, the criteria he used to find the bounce house niche, and how he generated $300k of sales in his first year in business.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Start an Online Store with No Ideas and No Inventory (and still sell $300k in your first year)

Bill Nowicki has a unique side hustle. He has a podcast show called MariettaStories named after Marietta GA, a suburb of Atlanta with a population of about 60,000.

Having a podcast show isn’t unique but producing a show that’s focused on a local community is something a little different – and something you might consider doing for your local community after hearing Bill’s story.

Bill is a former Navy submariner, still a nuclear engineer by day, and had different side hustle aspirations at first – he wanted to make videos for local businesses but was finding it hard to land clients.

After meeting a charismatic 78-year-old woman at his local church he had the idea to start a podcast about people in his local community, for his local community.

He thought this would be a great way to generate videography leads. But as his show has grown and become a profit-center of its own, Bill realized that not only in his time better spent on his show but the medium of audio is more enjoyable and profitable for him than video.

Tune in to hear how Bill started his podcast show, how he marketed his show and became known in his local community, how he’s monetized the show to turn it into a revenue generating side hustle and some of the exciting things he has planned for the future.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Local Podcasts: How to Become the Voice of Your Community — and Get Paid

Austin Miller built a $1.2 million real estate portfolio at 31 years old -- for free.

He's a side hustling real estate investor specializing in "creative" financing deals -- houses he can buy without using his own money.

Austin is the author of Free Houses: How To Build Your Real Estate Investment Portfolio With No Money.

His basic strategy is this:

The end game is positive monthly cash flow from rental income, plus building a long-term wealth through tenants paying off the mortgage.

Austin has developed some unique and interesting ways to hard money and private money to fund his property purchases.

The best part – it’s truly a side hustle that can be done in a few hours a week the end result is passive income from rental revenue.

Tune in to hear how Austin finds killer deals, buys the houses without risking his own capital, and then rehabs them to get ready to rent.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Free Houses: How to Build a $1 Million Real Estate Portfolio on the Side

It’s time to dive into the ol’ listener mailbag and answer a few questions in this week’s edition of The Side Hustle Show.

I’ve had quite a few interesting questions come in since the last Q&A episode, and picked 20 to talk through in today’s show.

Like this format? This is the 6th installment of “20 Questions” so feel free to go back and binge on the older ones too:

A common piece of advice you’ll hear is to take audience questions and turn them into content, so here’s a meta example of that in action.

This episode covers questions on conferences, affiliate marketing, ebooks, staying motivated and organized, and even bulletproof coffee.

Tune in to hear my responses to those questions and a dozen more below.

Full Show Notes: Email, Ebooks, Platforms, and Conferences: 20 Questions with Nick

Willpower predicts academic and professional success better than IQ, or charisma, or having rich parents.

It’s not the only ingredient in our success recipe, but it’s a critical one -- and one I certainly struggle with at times.

Derek Doepker of ExcuseProof.com is an expert when it comes to increasing willpower and strengthening this critical success muscle we all have.

He is the author of 7 bestselling books in personal development, a speaker, consultant, trainer, and specializes in helping individuals create permanent change and achieve mind, body, and business success in as little as 5 minutes a day.

In this episode, we walk through several powerful willpower strategies you can start with today.

Big thanks to my brother Chris for the inspiration for this one. Check out his excellent willpower article at BecomingBetter.org.

Full Show Notes: Willpower 101: 8 Ways to Strengthen This Critical Success Muscle