The Side Hustle Show

Corey Jeffreys turned an $800 investment into $3k in the first year and has been growing his business and adding more automated processes each year.

His entrepreneurial adventure began by exploring the world of real estate investing, when he happened upon a slightly different rental business model: inflatable bounce houses.

Corey started out renting a bounce house to his aunt as his first customer and doing all the labor himself, to where he is now with a virtual assistant from Upwork taking bookings and a delivery guy from Craigslist handling the delivery.

This is a very different side hustle from the online businesses we see more often, but Corey managed it with a small up-front investment and it set the cogs turning with possibilities of other industries this can be applied to.

Tune in to hear how Corey found his first customers, grew his business through word-of-mouth and online marketing channels, and hired help to automate his business processes and remove himself from the day-to-day operations.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Start a Bounce House Rental Business (Investing in "Inflatable" Real Estate)

“Go big or go home, that’s kinda my whole philosophy with SEO,” Matt said.

And his results speak for themselves.

It’s been more than 200 episodes since we last heard from Matt Giovanisci. Back then, Matt was explaining how he was growing his authority site SwimUniversity.com with epic content and strong SEO.

Since then he’s started 3 more authority sites and has fine-tuned his SEO practices for even bigger and quicker results.

His latest site BrewCabin.com is just a few months old and Matt is already ranking well for high traffic “money” keywords – without building backlinks or promoting this content.

How is he doing this?

It’s not through longtail keywords.

Quite the opposite, Matt goes after those high traffic keywords and outranks his competitors by producing epic content that people want to read.

Tune in to hear Matt explain how he does his keyword research, how he formats his content to ensure strong on-page SEO, and why he’s seeing such rapid growth across all of his sites.

Note: This is "round 2" of SEO for Bloggers. Round 1 was this conversation with Joseph Hogue last year.)

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: SEO for Bloggers: The Simple Way to Get More Free Traffic From Google

A $425k exit on a 2.5 year old business!?

Recently a friend of mine posted about how he sold his 2.5-year-old Amazon FBA business for over $400k, which I thought was incredible.

The twist was it turned out the buyer was a familiar face as well. Spencer Haws of NichePursuits.com was the seller, and Ace Chapman of AceChapman.com was the buyer.

They are both previous guests of the show. Spencer was on episodes 18 and 70 of The Side Hustle Show talking about niche sites and software, and Ace was a guest on episode 182, talking about investing in digital real estate.

Why did Spencer decide to get into the Amazon FBA business?

“I had an idea for a product I used every day, couldn’t find exactly what I wanted on Amazon. So, I decided to find a manufacturer that can make a variation of what I like,” Spencer said.

Why was this business an attractive deal for Ace and his investors?

“The thing that I liked about the deal was the different sources of income,” Ace said.

I decided to invite them both on the Side Hustle Show to give you both sides of the deal.

You’ll hear how Spencer built up the business so quickly, why he decided to sell up, and how Ace found himself on the other end of the deal.

Tune in to hear how Spencer built an FBA business from $0-400k in less than 3 years with no prior experience in this private label space, and how Ace helps his clients raise the funds to buy online businesses.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Selling an Amazon FBA Business: My $425k Exit ... and the Guy Who Bought It

Paul Brodie is a former special needs teacher turned 11-time Amazon bestselling author.

What started as a side hustle writing about his own weight loss journey turned into a string of bestselling titles on Amazon, $3000 paid speaking gigs, 1-on-1 self-publishing coaching, and ultimately the group coaching program I invited Paul on the show to share more about.

Why go down the group coaching route?

After working with other authors on a 1-to-1 basis and seeing them achieve similar success self-publishing their books on Amazon, Paul had "an epiphany.”

By developing a group coaching program there was no limit to the number of authors he could work with.

Paul dove right in with a live webinar to test his idea for a group coaching program without a huge audience or list of his own. With 5 students signing up on the spot at $1.5k each, he started work on the content and drip-feeding modules out on a weekly basis.

Tune in to hear how Paul used the momentum from self-publishing books on Amazon to open up several other business opportunities before landing on the group coaching program.

He covers how he set the price for his program, the methods and tools he uses to automate accepting new students, delivering the weekly modules, and where he goes from here.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Set Up and Sell a Group Coaching Program

What are the quick, simple, and maybe a little "weird" productivity tricks entrepreneurs use to get more done?

Well, I'm always curious about that myself so I decided to ask 26 of my most productive and successful friends for the "hacks" and tools they use every day.

(And I added in one of my own to round out the list.)

This episode was a ton of fun to put together and I owe a huge thank you to everyone who participated! I know I learned of a few new tools to try and I'm sure you will to.

If you like this style of show, you might consider checking out last year's round-up episode as well, which asked 25 people how they made their first side hustle or business income.

You can see the participants and the approximate timestamps of their advice below. Enjoy!

Full Show Notes: 27 "Weird" Productivity Hacks You Can Try Today

It's such an elegantly simple -- yet powerful -- way of looking at what really matters in your business.

Perry Marshall's "Tactical Triangle" identifies the 3 primary levers in any business as:

And even more powerful, there's an 80/20 Pareto Principle inside each of those. Start tweaking a few of the most important variables and you start to see some serious impact on your bottom line.

(image credit)

Perry is the author of one of my all-time favorite books, 80/20 Sales and Marketing.

(You can get it on Amazon, but you might want to get it at PerryMarshall.com for just "a penny plus shipping" -- which will get you a front row seat to some of the best copywriting and upsell sequences in the biz.)

Over the last 15+ years, Perry has built a business as a copywriter, an author, and a sought-after trainer and consultant.

In this episode we dive into the Tactical Triangle, looking for areas to improve traffic, conversions, and economics to double your business in the next 30 days.

Tune in to hear Perry’s Star Principle, how to position your business to be #1, how to run an 80/20 survey to find out what your customers really want, and why you might consider adding a Power Guarantee to your business.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: The Tactical Triangle: How to Double your Business in 30 Days

John made $1614 before 11am the day we recorded this episode.

His business model? Buying industrial byproducts, the kind of stuff that’s used for shipping like pallets, cardboard boxes, crates, and so on, and selling them on for a profit.

John Wilker started out buying or being given pallets free by businesses that had no need for them and selling them to pallet yards.

Realizing the pallet yards were selling them on for a profit to businesses that did have a need for them, John saw an opportunity.

“Bottom line is I’m a middleman,” John said.

John hit the pavement and started knocking on the doors of industrial businesses, large warehouses, distributors, and scrap yards.

He asked if they had pallets and other shipping byproducts they didn’t need, what they were currently doing with these items, if they needed any items, and explained how he could help.

Wanting to operate without storage space and employees John has found the perfect balance between supply and demand. He spends his mornings picking up items from one business and selling them on to another just a few miles away.

“It’s quite simple…but has to be set up in the correct manner for it to work,” John said.

It’s certainly one of the more interesting side hustles, and it sets the cogs turning to think of other niches that can fit this model.

Tune in to hear how John found his first suppliers and buyers, how he sets his prices, and how he transports this stuff without having to store it.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: The Middleman Method: A Real-Life Example of Turning Trash into Treasure

Getting paid to turn away work?

Being in the position to turn away work as a freelancer or consultant is an envious place to be in, but being in the position to turn away that work AND get paid for it?

Even better!

John Doherty had spent years working in the digital marketing space, both as an employee and a freelancer.

As his SEO consulting business crew, he reached the capacity of how much he wanted to work, and started essentially selling leads to friends and colleagues he trusted.

That little side side hustle is now John's full-time focus, and today GetCredo.com is generating $500-600k worth of deals for its partner digital marketing agencies.

As the connector and facilitator of those deals, John takes a commission. It's affiliate marketing, just with a bit of a twist from the kind we've covered before.

“I purposely set out to build a brand that is outside of just me,” John said. “I’m really trying to make this a high-touch service to really help businesses connect with the right agencies for their needs.”

Tune in to hear how John earned his first finder's fee, how he's built up both sides of the Credo marketplace, and how he's priced his service in this high-touch affiliate marketing model.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: High-Touch Affiliate Marketing: How to Get Paid to Play Matchmaker in Your Niche

How much will you save from the new tax law?

It turns out that while there are some great "gives" from Uncle Sam for entrepreneurs, there are several potentially costly "takes" as well.

Death and taxes, right?

To help talk through how some of the most important tax law changes will impact your bottom line, I invited Josh Bauerle from CPAonFire.com back on the show.

You might remember Josh from episode 208 where he answered tax questions from the Side Hustle Nation community.

This time, Josh talks through the new benefits for pass-through entities, changes in C-Corp taxes, the new standard deduction amounts, changes to child tax credits, and more.

Tune in to hear Josh talk through the most important tax changes and how they affect you as a small business owner or side hustle entrepreneur.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How the New Tax Law Impacts Entrepreneurs and Side Hustlers

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 5th 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 blogging, affiliate marketing, productivity, my new email system, making time for your side hustle, the idea of guaranteed success, and more.

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

Full Show Notes: Brilliant Blogging, Ruthless Productivity, and Guaranteed Success: 20 Questions with Nick