Speaker 1: Mindy and I are so grateful for the following sponsors who make BiggerPockets Money possible.
Speaker 4: Side hustles can be great for earning extra income, but they can also be great at wasting your time for little in return. Today we’re chatting with Nick Loper from Side Hustle Nation about how to choose. So how do you choose the right side hustle for you? It doesn’t matter if everyone you know is making bank doing product representations and brand ambassadorships.
Speaker 3: If you’re an introvert, this probably isn’t the right side hustle for you.
Speaker 4: Nick has tips for getting started, including a prompt template to help you gather your strengths in one place so you can feed it into your AI of choice, so you can start exploring side hustles that might not be so mainstream but will be a perfect fit for you. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my former side hustler co-host, Scott Trench.
Speaker 5: Thanks, Mindy.
Speaker 1: Great to be here. I’ve substituted side hustling for having arguments about Bitcoin with random internet strangers. We are so excited to be joined by Nick Loper today. He is the brains behind sidehustlenation.com and the host of The Side Hustle Show, where he talks exclusively about side hustles and how you can set yourself up for success. We did a recent podcast episode talking about how someone could go from broke at 50 to retired at 60. And one of our recommendations there was go listen to Side Hustle Nation. Go listen to Nick’s Side Hustle Show and sign up for the site, and spend 1 hour a week, 1 way, on 1 drive of your commute. And we believe that you will earn not just the minimum hourly rate for like an Uber or a basic side hustle, but that you will have idea after idea germinate, and you’ll be making at least $10,000 per year if you apply yourself. Nick, welcome to BiggerPockets Money. And do you agree with that assumption? Is that a good pitch for why people should listen to The Side Hustle Show?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I appreciate that shout-out. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: From your experience, how do we get honest about what the realistic potential of side hustling is for someone with a full-time job? And what should people be looking for out of a side hustle? You know, in a realistic sense, in the first year, when they may not feel like they bring a lot of really unique skills to the table.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we can dive into all of that, especially the skill side, ’cause I really like that part of the conversation. But starting out, taking kind of an honest inventory of, well, what hours do I realistically have today to dedicate to this? Like, okay, if I’m working 8 to 5 plus commute plus kids plus afterschool activities plus, plus, plus, like how much is left, right? And so you can just kind of start with this time audit exercise. We all have the same number of hours in a week, but it looks different for everybody. And I, you know, a friend of mine was like, I’m pretty sure my 4 kids’ hours per week looks a bit different than a single 20-something person. So taking an honest inventory of where your time is currently going and saying, okay, could I realistically do half an hour in the morning before work? Could I realistically do half hour? And I kind of frame it that way, like the bookends of your days, because that’s where you probably have the most control over your own time, before you start putting out fires and reacting to everybody else’s agenda. And maybe I could do 4 or 5 hours one day on the weekend, and maybe it adds up to 10 hours a week, right? It’s kind of just as a ballpark, like being honest. First of all, like, what time do I have to dedicate to this? And then second, like, what is my dream scenario side hustle goal? Like, everybody’s like, okay, I want to be able to quit my job. It’s like, well, let’s dial it back. And I think on a previous episode, we talked about the side hustle snowball, where it’s like, could I cover my car payment? Could I cover my gym membership? Could I cover my cell phone bill, right? There’s little milestones, there’s little wins along the way, but you got to make it meaningful enough for you to keep going when the times get tough, when you’re like, I’m not seeing the results right away, or how do you have the motivation to see it through?
Speaker 1: My hypothesis, right? Let’s take somebody who is really just starting out. Like, we use this persona, we call her Barb or Nancy, depending on whether she has debt or not. She’s been a stay-at-home mom for 25 years and is now terrified and starting out on the next phase of wealth building. Entry-level job, 40 hours a week. You know, we thought, hey, you’re going to have to basically just grind. You’re going to change— you’re going to trade hours for dollars in the initial phases. And there’s a number of relatively low-skill options like Uber or dog walking or whatever that can get you started. Would you agree with that hypothesis? And then how would you suggest that this person begin the journey of identifying one of these future goals, right? At first, it’s just, I need extra money. But then it becomes, I think, something more. And there are multiple options there. How would you frame that journey for us?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you have to have kind of that both near-term, what am I going to do today, and pair that with, well, what does success look like 3 to 5 years from now? The plug-and-play type of apps that you mentioned, the Rovers and the Uber Eats and the DoorDashes and stuff like that, that’s a really good stopgap, like limited barrier to entry. It’s a skill you already have. Like, you can get started this weekend, right? But your earning power is capped, right? It’s a skill that almost everybody has. So it’s not particularly unique, or like— and even Uber’s like, well, we’re investing heavily in self-driving cars. Like, does this even exist in 5 years? You know? So there’s that, like, what does success look like 5 years from now? Because we tend to focus a lot on the downside risk of starting a business, of starting a side hustle. What if it fails? What if I look dumb? What if nobody cares? This is important because, like, you want to make sure you’re not taking a swing that’s going to bankrupt you, but playing for a swing that has a meaningful enough upside that that’s a win, right? It’s like, if you look at somebody else who’s walked that path that you’re considering, what does their life look like today? Are they still grinding 80-hour weeks, or do they have a little more freedom and flexibility in their days, right? That’s kind of the benchmark that you can use. Okay, if I can reverse engineer what they did and apply it to my own situation, that would be meaningful. And it’s hard because you don’t necessarily— like, trying to advocate, like, you don’t need to know steps 2 through 10 to be able to take step 1, because the analysis paralysis can be very real. But like, trying to point the trajectory in a way that would be a big win for you?
Speaker 1: I’m approaching it again with this lens of like an entrepreneurial mindset, where 9 out of 10 businesses fail. So the obvious response to that is not to not try businesses, but to start 10 businesses, right? And then one of them should succeed statistically. That’s how I bring it to the table. And I think that that goal is for a lot of people when they start side hustling. Like, when I was 23, I did a bunch of side hustles. I was a tutor. I tutored this high school kid in math for a little bit. It was really terrible hourly rate because I had to drive there, get paid like $10 an hour or whatever it was, then drive home. It was a horrible rate, although I liked him. And then, you know, I drove for Uber. I started these businesses and none of them really worked until things did work, right? Eventually. And that mentality is, I think, what I’m trying to bring to the table here. You don’t really know that goal. How do you pursue a path that either makes you much more per hour or provides you something much more fun or flexible? How do I think about that experimentation flow, which is probably what most people who go down the path of listening to your show, that’s probably the evolution that most of them take to get to wherever they end up?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would argue that the tutoring and the Uber driving probably set you up, like, kind of the mentality, like almost the identity of, I am a person who’s willing to do the extra work, even if it’s not like, okay, it wasn’t a home run success in terms of becoming a million-dollar business, but it was like almost this mental win. I’m able to earn money outside of a traditional job. And like, that’s really empowering for a lot of people. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Of course, yes. And so the question is, like, I didn’t do science behind that. I just tried something and then tried the next thing. Nowadays, we’ve got you. There’s a science, there’s a path, there’s like hundreds and thousands of examples that you’ve pursued there. So how would someone start, like, take that first step, but then actually begin incrementally moving in a better direction, even if they don’t have that goal defined yet?
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is probably the primary skill that separates the people who take action from the people who are, like, perpetually stuck on the sidelines. And year after year, I run the survey, and it’s like half of the audience is, like, almost this entrepreneurial voyeuristic, like, they’re like, oh, that sounds nice. I mean, they’re kind of like, they tell themselves they’re waiting for that perfect idea, this inspiration to strike. It’s like there’s no such thing as the perfect idea. The perfect idea is the one that you’re inspired enough, excited enough to take action on, to take that first step. A friend kind of likened it to your first move in a game of chess. Like, I’m just putting my pawn out into the world. I’m gonna see what kind of reaction it gets. So where I typically start is kind of this inventory of skills, interests, hobbies. Like, what have I gotten paid to do in the past? What do other people ask me for advice on? And we can get into the AI-assisted brainstorming sheet, but kind of where does my excitement lie if I’m looking for that type of side hustle with more upside potential than driving for Uber or something like that? That’s kind of where I start. And then I try and pair that with pains and problems. You could have the— call it like the What Sucks notes app in my phone, just taking inventory of what other people are complaining to me about, what my spouse, partner, coworker is like, what’s annoying to them, or what do I find annoying? What pains or problems have I overcome in my own day to day, and trying to figure out, okay, is there a match here where there could be a business idea on the other side? We had a woman who built a business, a pooper scooper business, pet waste removal business. She’s out there staring in her backyard, like kind of dreading this chore. And then the light bulb goes on, like, well, if it’s a chore for me, if it sucks for me, it probably sucks for other people too. Other people would probably be willing to pay to make this problem go away. And sure enough, they were. And like, when we recorded, she had 100 weekly recurring clients, and now she had others, a team of pooper scoopers going out and doing the work. And it was just kind of like that, using that pain point exercise.
Speaker 1: Smells like freedom. Thank you for the pity laugh here, Mindy. That actually might’ve been more than a pity laugh on that one.
Speaker 4: No, that was funny.
Speaker 1: Let’s talk about that person, if we can, or an example like that.
Speaker 2: This person, did they start with that?
Speaker 1: Was that their first one, their first concept that they explored, or was that the evolution after trying multiple other activities that sucked, frankly, and then got better over time? Then the idea for what would actually work as a side hustle appeared to them. How did they evolve to that point?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I’m not sure in her case specifically. We talked to another gentleman in a really similar business, and he’s like, okay, I ran a garage door company, or I ran a plumbing service. And it was kind of, you know, almost arrived at the same conclusion in a different way, where he’s like, my wife was pregnant, we hired this, you know, pooper scooper service to come out. And I don’t know why we’re on the poop train, but that’s just kind of top of mind for some reason.
Speaker 1: Let’s evolve to the ups and downs of the garage door business. Thank you, Mindy, again. Yeah, I appreciate your pity laugh there.
Speaker 4: That was a pity laugh.
Speaker 5: But in this case, it was like, look, my wife was pregnant, we didn’t have time to deal with this, so we hired the service. But you know, we never knew when the guy was showing up. He didn’t have a uniform or anything. The billing was really weird. It’s like the barrier to this seems so low to do better than the existing operators. And so it’s like, what if we just took an honest swing at this to see if we could get some market share? And that’s exactly what’s happening. That company is called Swoop Scoop, and they’ve cleaned like a quarter million yards at this point. They’re all throughout the Northwest. It’s like they’ve become a really, really, like, a multimillion-dollar pooper scooper business, kind of from that similar inspiration of, like, is this the best that’s out there? We’ve had people on the show saying the same thing. Like, I was trying to get my piano tuned, and nobody— like, the people doing it are 80 years old, and they just don’t return your call. Like, they don’t— they’re genuinely not hungry enough for the business to go after it.
Speaker 1: I think there’s a lot of truth to, if you could pick up the phone and respond. I mean, I use a plumbing business that’s way more expensive than an individual plumber for everything but the huge jobs, because of that dynamic, right? I’d much rather pay $300, $400 to deal with a problem securely that maybe I could get done for $200, than I would, you know. I think it’s a great concept. And the pooper scooper business is obviously along those lines.
Speaker 5: We’re kind of working through the framework here. If you’re that person who’s kind of business agnostic, or like, look, I don’t have any specialized skills, first, like, give yourself some credit. If you’ve existed on the planet for any length of time, you probably have some skills, and some might be worth paying for. Like, psychologists call it the curse of knowledge. All of us, we’ve been podcasting for years and years, and so it’s almost hard to imagine not knowing how to do it. How do you structure the show, or how do you produce this? It’s hard to imagine Einstein not knowing basic algebra, right? It’s like, once you know the thing, it’s hard to— so, first of all, you know, give yourself some credit, go through the exercise of, okay, what skills have I gotten paid to do? What do other people ask me for help with? All that stuff. You know, the very first tier is like that plug-and-play tier, where it’s just simple, you know, usually app-based, you know, you don’t have to do the marketing, it just, you know, the notification pops up: do you want to accept this gig? Do you not? The next tier is what I call kind of like business-in-a-box side hustles, where there’s maybe a little bit more upfront work, maybe a little bit more upfront investment involved, like in this category I would call vending machines, where it’s like, look, there’s a proven playbook out there. You just got to go find the location. You got to do the math on the equipment financing, and it’s there. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We had another guy who was doing mobility scooter rentals, and it was really similar. Like, the demand was already there. How do I step in front of that demand? And it’s just like, okay, I put on my marketing hat, and I have to make some upfront investment in equipment there. We had another guy who was doing like parking lot sweeping, where it’s like, this is an existing service that, you know, property management companies, like strip malls, property managers, either already pay for and they’re happy, or they’re not happy with their service, like choice A or B, or they don’t know that this exists, and now it’s your job to get in front of them. And so, kind of like going where there’s already demand, or trying to create a little bit of that demand, kind of like that business in a box, like follow somebody else’s playbook. I think that’s probably tier 2 of the, well, I don’t really care what kind of side hustle I start, I just wanna make some money.
Speaker 1: I want to push back here on a couple of these concepts, because I think one of the challenges we’re going to have here is the three of us are very entrepreneurial. I have no fear about starting a business. I don’t have issue forming it, getting insurance, getting the website stood up, creating intake forms for clients, figuring out where those people are searching for those, putting together a marketing campaign that’s creative and moving. Like, that’s an overwhelming body of activity to many people who are thinking about a side hustle, right? It seems like, okay, that’s like a checklist to complete. That’ll take a couple of days to try out, to maybe us as folks who have done a lot of entrepreneurial experience, small and large businesses. But for someone who’s just starting out, that’s a step I believe that’s beyond what we’re talking about here. And they’re going to be more like, well, I just want to make some money in the next month. That is good. And Uber, I understand I can do that, drive for Uber and get all that set up. And I’ll make, you know, maybe $10 to $20 an hour depending on how good I am at putting myself in position to get demand surging or whatever. But I’m thinking, like, what are other ways to get that first step going? The point I want to get across with today’s episode is it starts with driving for Uber or the equivalent. Then it moves to optimizing surge demand for Uber. Then it moves to this kind of next level, more realistic skill for you. Then it moves to a business in a box. Then maybe you hit a nice winner, like a multimillion-dollar pooper scooper business. But what’s that like realistic first and second step here? Because that’s what I think is more tangible, people can feel on the journey, I think is going to be much more representative of the typical side hustle journey than these big garage door businesses, even though the garage door business can be remote first.
Speaker 5: Maybe a helpful lens to look at it through is Nathan Barry has this framework he calls the ladders of wealth creation. He’s like, ladder number one is working a job, it’s trading time for money. It’s simple. It’s where almost everybody starts. And for him, he says, like, I was flipping burgers, making $5 an hour at Wendy’s. That was my first job. Tier two is that freelance service. And it could be, you know, Uber could be under this bucket, or DoorDash could be under this bucket, where it’s still time for money, but you’re kind of on your own. Maybe in this case, the apps are delivering you customers. And maybe a step higher on the ladder is, well, I’m doing my own marketing for customers here, but I’m doing a skill, solving a problem and getting paid for it, right? It’s still kind of time for money. Ladder three was, how do I productize that in some way where people can buy the solution without necessarily having to talk to me? They click a button on a website and then either I deliver the very packaged service — it’s like, I will design you a website with five pages, or I’ll do your LinkedIn ghostwriting posts for a month, or so, some set deliverable, set price. And either you’re delivering it yourself, or now you’ve started to build kind of a little agency. Maybe you have other people on your team delivering that service. That could be ladder number three. And he says ladder four, where Kit, the software company, plays, is software services, marketplaces, more complex businesses, where it’s much higher level of skill to build. And his argument was, look, you can skip some ladders, but you can’t skip learning the skills along the way. And I think that’s the point that you’re trying to make, is eventually, like, maybe I would love to have this million-dollar business, I’m still going to have to learn the service-based skills, the customer service, the billing, the marketing, all of the little steps along the way. You can’t skip those, even if I want to skip to another tier. Am I on the right track there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And so let’s take, you know, somebody who’s starting out and is not going to move up those next tiers. What are some inspirational ideas that we can get started with, or examples that you have that are — not pooper scooper big businesses, but hey, you’re going to make $12 to $20 an hour doing the basic apps, here’s ones that make $25 to $50 that might be accessible to you. What are some of the ideas there that you’ve come across?
Speaker 5: Gotcha, gotcha. Have we talked about ShareTown on the show before?
Speaker 1: No, I don’t think I’ve heard of this.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 5: Okay, this is a really interesting one that kind of came across my desk a few years ago. ShareTown is this company that is the reverse logistics provider for bed-in-a-box mattress companies, for exercise equipment, for — I think they do pizza ovens. Basically a direct-to-consumer brand that’s selling something big and bulky, they all have — especially on the mattress side, they all have the 100-night, better sleep or it’s free guarantee. And 7% of those mattresses end up getting returned. Like, you know what, my sleep wasn’t any better, take it back, I don’t want it anymore. So the mattress company can’t take this back, or they don’t really want to take it back. They can’t sell it as new. So they partner with ShareTown to handle these pickup requests. And rather than just landfilling it, they say, well, you can resell that into your local marketplace, clean it, sanitize it, whatever, mark it down for half off the normal retail price. And because you’re a private-party seller, it doesn’t really damage the brand reputation or anything like that. ShareTown then partners with hundreds and hundreds of local reps around the country to facilitate these pickup requests. Like, my wife and I, we bought some mattress a few years ago, before I even heard about this company, and they came, they picked it up. They had a little Honda Pilot with a little trailer thing on the back. And this — I think it was a husband and wife — like, you could tell they had done this before, right? They had this mattress in and out, folded, bagged, packaged, put on the trailer in like three minutes. And we’re like, dang, that was impressive. This was their whole gig, and they would go around and do these pickup requests. And the different ShareTown reps that I’ve talked to say, look, $150 to $250 per flip is kind of the target here. And it could be done nights and weekends. It could be done as a side hustle. We’ve talked to a few people doing it full-time, making several thousand dollars a month. But that’s one where you probably have a little bit more higher earning power. You do need to have transportation, you do need to have storage to be able to hold on to these big bulky items, but definitely higher earning power than a lot of your typical — what about some item activities or items that don’t require heavy lifting or big physical exertion?
Speaker 1: Because you mentioned blue collar for a good chunk of these, and scooping poop is, you know, after the third hour, probably fairly physically demanding to a certain point, very unpleasant. You know, moving mattresses can involve heavy lifting, or I presume that job comes with the occasional client who does not put it out nicely on the front step, and you have to navigate a bunch of stairs and all those kinds of things. Like, those are heavy.
Speaker 5: You can make money doing this, but it is work. You’ve got to be willing to do it and have a partner to lift these heavy things. One of the more popular ones lately that is 100% online is kind of in this realm of AI data training. So the one that I tested was called Remotasks, like remote tasks, but there’s also DataAnnotation, there’s also one called Outlier.ai. And this is kind of helping the large language models figure out which prompt is best. And if you’re anti-AI, obviously don’t touch this one with a 10-foot pole. But in my experience, it was like $15 an hour, fully remote. And if you have specialized skills in programming, it could be like $45 an hour. So that’s one that might be a little more interesting to test fully from home. My experience — really tedious. It’s like, oh my gosh, the onboarding took several hours, and it was like, am I ever going to get through this? I got to do it, I got to do it to be able to report on it. But then even the actual work is like, well, it’s just more of the same. It’s like, which prompt do you prefer? Did this answer the prompt? Did it follow the instructions, yes or no? And it’s like, how would you do it differently? It’s like, okay, I could do this, but it checks the box for being fully remote, something you can do evenings and weekends.
Speaker 1: Some of the ones that I was thinking about were — we had a baby last year, and we had a night nurse come one day a week, right? Because we’re like, we just want one night of sleep for the first few months.
Speaker 5: I can function if I just have one night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. It’s amazing how much better off you are after — because, you know, some nights you can trade off or whatever, but just have one full night for both of us to sleep. That was like $600 for each night, and they came and they slept in a bed for most of the night and woke up for the baby. That was the requirement with it. It was through an agency. We tried to hire one directly, and when we asked for — hey, we want, you know, a couple of things here, first, like, you agreed not to be using alcohol or drugs during the arrangement here — and that ended up not being a problem for this person to sign the agreement with, that fine. You know, we’re going to go with this agency or whatever. But I think that the direct relationships — because we had a bad experience with the babysitter once that did that, and we were never going to go through that again — stuff like that seems like, oh, if you’re willing to work and put in the sacrifice, you don’t have to lift heavy mattresses, but you do have to show — there are opportunities to show up on-site and do those types of things that are not necessarily fully remote. Do you have any more like that, where you can make really high dollars per hour without physical labor that’s involved?
Speaker 5: That sounds like a pretty good gig if I can make $600 a night, and maybe obviously they’re splitting that with the agency, but even if it’s half of that, $300 to wake up a few times in the night — like, that’s a pretty good gig.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, yes. This is like — and you’re really providing a service for folks like us that really needed like one or two good days. Like, it’s hard to lead a company when you’re waking up throughout the middle of the night a bunch of times, right?
Speaker 4: Scott, you called her a night nurse. Was she actually a nurse, or is this something that anybody could do? I’m assuming that the service will perform a background check and do all of that, but do you have to be trained as a nurse? Because I can wake up in the middle of the night and feed a baby and then put them back in the crib. I mean, I did that for free for four years.
Speaker 1: There were various criteria that I do not think are particularly onerous, like infant CPR, right? Like some of those things — I can’t remember, I’m stretching back a year for this, I probably should have looked that up. That’s what I was going to — is like, if you’re willing to sacrifice, like, there is a real sacrifice. You’re going to someone’s house, you’re going to stay up, you’re going to be waking up multiple times throughout the night, your sleep is going to be shot. That is going to happen.
Speaker 2: But you’re also earning really good dollar per hour, depending on where you’re at.
Speaker 1: That’s where I was wondering, if you’re willing to sacrifice but just physically can’t lift things or get on a ladder and do Christmas lights or whatever.
Speaker 5: I think the broader strategy here would be to find those local agencies — the night nurse agency that you ended up going through — and asking, well, how could I get added to your roster of available service providers? Because then, kind of similar to Uber, the agency is doing the marketing for you. You’re not expected to go bring your own clients, they kind of say, okay, this is your assignment this night, you’re going over here, or kind of a regular weekly thing until this baby grows out of this phase. So that’s probably the strategy that I would go for if that’s the service I want to do. Who are my target customers already doing business with? And it’s like, in this case, this agency that shows up in the search results, and kind of going through it, maybe the AI tools would be able to help brainstorm what are some of those off-the-wall or unthought-of services that are out there. Because typically, in the online world, it would be web design, ghostwriting, copywriting, graphic design, that type of stuff. But in the offline world, we talked a lot about these blue-collar services. But to your point, it could be something as simple as pet sitting or night nurse — something where, okay, I’d be willing to sacrifice one night a week to make an extra $300.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, that’s a big chunk of change right there. And I looked it up — there are night nurses, but there’s also night nannies.
Speaker 1: We might have — yeah, that might be using the terms interchangeably there. I’m not sophisticated at this point on the nuances in those terms.
Speaker 4: I mean, that’s not something that I ever considered, but when I was in my twenties, I could get by on no sleep, so I could have totally done that and cuddled with a cute baby and then put them back down again. Like, that’s a great side hustle, Scott.
Speaker 1: Oh, this person was — this person knew what was up too. Like, they arrived on time, they left on time, they knew exactly what the things were. They’re like, I’m doing this.
Speaker 2: I can’t do these.
Speaker 1: These are what — this is why, this is how things need to be set up for me. You know, this is how, where things need to be. When I — it was great. And it was like, thank you. We actually felt way better about that, because this person clearly had just been there and done that a million times.
Speaker 4: And taking into account, we’re talking about Barb and Nancy — both of these people are fictitious people who have recently been divorced and they are starting from scratch. They were both stay-at-home moms, so they’ve already done this job for free like I did, and now they can go and do this again. Yeah, it’s going to be a little difficult at first to get up in the middle of the night with an infant when you’re used to sleeping through the night, but I think that that’s a side hustle that they could thrive in. And I wish we would’ve talked to Nick before we had recorded that show, because that would’ve been great to suggest to them.
Speaker 5: Maybe, Mindy, going back to your point — the query that I might punch in or ask ChatGPT about would be, well, what are the services that affluent families are paying for that would really surprise you? And this might come up on that list. And then you can kind of reverse engineer — okay, that sounds interesting to me, number three sounds interesting to me, are there any agencies that provide that, how can I add myself to their roster in that case? This is kind of the same strategy my wife and her partner used for their wedding photography business. It was like, hey, we’ve shot at a handful of different venues, we really like this one — hey, email the coordinator, email the person, your contact person there — what does it take to get on your preferred vendor list? All of a sudden you cut through all the clutter. The brides are going directly to this venue — hey, who are your recommended photographers? Boom, boom, boom, here’s the top three. And it’s like all of a sudden all the other marketing channels kind of faded away because that was driving the bulk of the clients.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Chris Hutchins from the All the Hacks podcast told this story about how he had hired somebody to cook for his family. I have the recipes, I want you to cook this recipe this exact way, my wife and I don’t have time to make these recipes, but these are recipes we know our kids will eat. They found — I think it was a stay-at-home mom who would cook these meals for them, deliver them to them. And she batch-cooked them. She wasn’t delivering them hot every evening — here you go, your food’s already cooked, all you have to do is warm it up, your kids are going to eat it. And Nick, you have two kids, Scott, you’ve got two young kids, so maybe they haven’t discovered that they can be picky about what they eat. But knowing that your kids are going to eat the food that’s on their plate is a huge burden off of your head at every dinnertime. And when you don’t even have time to make the meal, having time to make sure they eat it is even less available.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, it’s just the decision fatigue of, well, what’s for dinner, the meal planning time, all of that.
Speaker 1: Another one here is — occasionally, my wife and I would love to go on a trip overnight, right? And the best way to do that is during the week and our kids are in daycare. Can someone watch our kids, pick them up, put them down to bed, drop them off in the morning and do that? That would be a wonderful service that we’ve had a lot of trouble hiring for, but that’s got to be a dream gig for somebody, right? Somebody shows up at our house, puts them to bed, watches TV for a few hours, sleeps through the night, and drops them off at daycare. Like, there’s got to be services out there that can do that. And then we can do a trip, just the two of us, for that. So those kinds of opportunities are the ones that I’m thinking are out there for folks that — you know, I don’t need a big skill set, like basic references and those types of things, and show up on time, and I’m confident in your presentation — those are the things I need. But there’s a basic trust there.
Speaker 4: I just typed into ChatGPT, “What are the household services affluent families are paying for?” And there’s meal prep and all of this other stuff, but household management or family assistant — this certainly falls into that, Scott. But Barb and Nancy have been unpaid household managers and family assistants when they were doing it for their own family, and now they could do it for other families. The key there is affluent families, because you definitely want rich clients when you can make somebody’s life easier and they have an abundance of money but not time, or an abundance of money and not an abundance of life — making that easy for them. I mean, somebody listening to this now needs to start a company that manages household managers and family assistants and connects wealthy families with them. Oh, Scott, you’ve got some time. You said you have no problem starting up a new business. Start up a business and hire these household managers and family assistants.
Speaker 1: Well, my business is interviewing Nick for these ideas on this.
Speaker 5: So you’ll be building up— that’s funny, we had a woman last year, that was her business. It was a virtual house management service. And it was like, “I’m not going to compete with the $5-an-hour virtual assistants overseas. I’m going to intentionally position this as a house manager for busy parents,” you know, busy affluent parents. I forget what she was charging, but it was not cheap. And so it was just kind of like, “We’ll figure out the summer camp calendar for your kids, or we’ll do the meal plan or meal prep, and maybe even we’ll coordinate the Instacart or whatever to come and bring it all to your house.” It was a pretty smart idea. And she’d grown kind of a roster of subcontractors. She started out doing it herself, but then eventually brought on other team members that she trusted to be the fulfillment side.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I’m mentioning Barb and Nancy specifically because they have been stay-at-home moms and, in air quotes, “don’t have skills.” They’re not going to go out and get a job that pays $250,000 a year today because they don’t have the resume that would support that. But this isn’t just for recently divorced women who used to be stay-at-home moms. All of these jobs are things that anybody can do.
Speaker 1: Once you get into, are you willing to do reasonably hard physical labor — there’s got to be really good arbitrage opportunities in your time there if you can get creative, right? That one’s easy for me conceptually. Like hanging Christmas tree lights, cleaning windows, picking up mattresses and moving them from point A to point B. I’m sure you’ve heard thousands of those at this point, Nick, from your community across those examples.
Speaker 5: Where’s the one where I get to mostly sleep and wake up a couple of times to help a baby?
Speaker 1: Or like, “I’m willing to be there, I’m willing to sacrifice, I just can’t — I’m not willing to put my body on the line.”
Speaker 4: Yeah, moving a bed is hard.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think these are a good starting point for sure.
Speaker 1: Give us some more tools that you’ve developed over the years. I think you have a great AI prompt and spreadsheet and those types of things. What are some of the tools, if you don’t like these specific suggestions that we have here, to continue to generate ideas that are worth exploring?
Speaker 5: Yeah, do you guys want to run through — you guys want to be my guinea pig here? We can do a live test. This is the AI-assisted brainstorming worksheet. If you ask a general AI, “What are some side hustle ideas?” you kind of get general responses because that’s the articles it’s pulling. It doesn’t know anything about you, right? But if you can feed it just a little bit of information, then you’re going to get way, way better results. So if you guys want to — Scott or Mindy — I don’t know, it’s probably going to come back with like, “Host a real estate and money podcast.” So we can give it a try.
Speaker 4: Let’s do Scott. Scott, what are you good at? You are good at running a business. You are good at vibe coding — this is harder than you think. What have you gotten paid to do in the past?
Speaker 1: My skills include — I’ve developed a CEO toolkit in growing BiggerPockets from X to Y, 100,000 members to 3 million between the years 2014 and 2024.
Speaker 5: It’s going to be like, “Why do you need a side hustle?”
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, let’s not, let’s not — let’s make up somebody. Let’s go back to Nancy or Barb as the example, right?
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 1: So Mindy, what are some of Nancy or Barb’s skills here? She’s a stay-at-home mom who has been out of the workforce for 25 years and feels like she doesn’t have any skills.
Speaker 4: Yes, because all of the stuff she’s doing is like second nature. So she’s a good cook, she is great at managing multiple different schedules, different calendars, because she’s got to get her daughter to ballet and her son to football and then get everybody home in time to have dinner. So she’s good at multitasking, she’s good at remembering people’s names, which is a skill — let me tell you, that is a really good skill. Her day job is stay-at-home mom right now. What has she gotten paid to do in the past?
Speaker 1: She—
Speaker 4: Well, she hasn’t really gotten paid for it, but I think this is a really important thing to note, that the management of an entire household — paying bills on time, taking the dog to the vet for annual shots, taking the kids to the pediatrician for their annual checkups — those are soft skills, but she’s also great at sourcing things because her daughter has extremely tiny feet, so she needs to get ballet slippers in a baby doll size.
Speaker 5: Okay, I was going to say, “sourcing hard-to-find products.”
Speaker 4: There you go. That’s a better way to phrase it.
Speaker 5: What does Nancy enjoy in her spare time?
Speaker 1: Nancy’s super good at showing up on time and is capable of appearing very professional, which is really so hard in some of these areas. And you don’t want to hire somebody who doesn’t show up on time and doesn’t appear… whew, that is a really good point.
Speaker 4: I mean, your punctuality is a great feature of you, even if you don’t think so or don’t realize it. Nancy’s hobbies include knitting and cooking. She really loves to cook. She loves to price match at the grocery store to make sure she’s getting the best deal on all of her groceries.
Speaker 5: Nice.
Speaker 4: If money were no object, she would like to go to the symphony more frequently and go on bike rides.
Speaker 1: Not the Broncos game?
Speaker 4: Not that last one. Nick’s up in the Pacific Northwest, so he’s got a team going to the Super Bowl.
Speaker 5: Oh, we’re doing it. Kids are very, very invested in the Hawks right now.
Speaker 1: I’m not even sure I’m going to watch the Super Bowl this year.
Speaker 4: Oh, you’ve got to watch the commercials.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so here’s a random side hustle aside. I’m testing this company called MediaProbe, where they send you a little sensor you wear — like on your palm, or you hold it — and they say, “Here’s a TV show that we want you to watch.” And what triggered it was, the first one they assigned to me was like the best Super Bowl commercials of the last 10 years. “Watch this, and we’re going to measure your biometric response to this, and we’ll pay you $5 after you watch this and answer a little survey.” So very curious to test this out. I love the Super Bowl commercials anyway — you’re going to pay me $5 to do this? So not a great hourly rate, but a random side hustle that I’m playing around with.
Speaker 4: And is it only $5, or do they give you different amounts for different shows?
Speaker 5: The 2 that they’ve sent me so far have both been $5 for an hour of programming.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 5: Okay, when I was a kid, what did Nancy love?
Speaker 4: Nancy really loved being outdoors. She loved riding her bike and playing with her friends. She’s not a shy person.
Speaker 1: Nancy sounds suspiciously familiar.
Speaker 5: The third component to this is, “What comes naturally to you?” And sometimes that can be difficult to answer. So the way to flip it around is, “Well, what do other people irrationally suck at?” And sometimes you’ll see people struggling with Excel — they have a list of numbers, and, like our friend literally was doing, they were adding up the cells on a calculator in their hand. It’s like, “Did you know that there’s a built-in formula that will do that for you?” So “what do other people irrationally suck at” is kind of the reframe of this perceived-expertise part.
Speaker 4: Okay, so Nancy is very compassionate and very empathetic. People often ask her for help with very difficult, emotionally difficult tasks because she’s good at that. She’s very empathetic, but she can also compartmentalize and just get the stuff done.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: Time constraints — she works a full-time job, so let’s give her 10 to 15 hours to do this right now.
Speaker 5: The full-time job — is it like traditional, normal business hours?
Speaker 4: 9 to 5. And how much does she want to earn from her side hustle? She would be delighted if she could earn $250 a week — so $1,000 a month.
Speaker 1: Nah, give her $30 an hour. That’s a more aggressive target, I think.
Speaker 4: Then she’d be even more delighted to get that.
Speaker 5: All right, $1,000 a month — I think that would be a great win. And so what this does is it magically — going back to Excel skills — it magically concatenates all of this into this ChatGPT prompt that you can copy and paste into ChatGPT or the AI of your choice. Okay, so we paste this into “Chatty,” and it is going to come back with some responses for us that I think are much more personalized, much more telling, than kind of just a generic Google search or generic prompt for, “Hey, give me some side hustle ideas.” To your point about this house manager, that’s going to be the first one that comes up. It’s like, “Yeah, this is the cleanest path,” it says, “to $1,000 a month.” It’s funny because that “mental load” was the exact phrase that the virtual house manager we had on the Side Hustle Show talked about — “We want to be your mental load assistant.”
Speaker 4: Oh, that’s great.
Speaker 5: Okay, so that’s suggestion number one. Suggestion number two: crisis concierge, difficult-task helper — “I need help when life feels overwhelming.” I don’t know if I love that one as much. Appointment and care coordinator for seniors — high demand, low competition, big trust premium here.
Speaker 1: That’s really interesting. I never thought about that. I like that a lot, actually. That’s probably a nice big market that’s going to grow over time.
Speaker 5: Anything senior care, I think this could be — that could be a pretty big one. Household ops manager — name it boldly, “the COO of your household.” I like that tagline, that’s kind of cool. This is really similar to the first one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but these are all skills that both Barb and Nancy could do easily, whereas walking dogs when they’re in their 50s and live in Wisconsin and it’s icy all the time isn’t the best choice for them.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And what’s cool about this is that it gives example tasks, but it also gives example pricing of, “How much do you think an affluent family might be willing to pay for this just to relieve themselves of some of that mental load burden?” If it says, “Hey, this could be easily worth $250 to $400 per month,” now it’s like, “Okay, now I just need to get 4 clients, or I just need to get 3 clients, and now I’m at my goal.” And I think that’s really helpful. Specialty grocery and hard-to-find product sourcing was suggestion number 5 — for diet-specific foods, that might be kind of interesting. If you have dietary restrictions in your family and you’re having trouble, I might pair that with kind of a meal-planning or even meal-prep type of service where it’s going to be vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, whatever the dietary restriction is, or a specific weight-loss intentional diet that you’re trying to follow for that family. Suggestion number 6 is a knitting business on Etsy. I don’t know, that could be a little more challenging, but if you’re going to be knitting in your spare time, maybe you put some of your patterns or some of your stuff up there for sale.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I had a friend — Rose, I’m talking about you — she knit at the stoplights. She would keep her knitting in her lap and she would drive, and then when the stoplight hit, she’d pick it up and knit. She loves knitting that much. So she was a pattern tester, because you have to make sure that the pattern works, I think for like a magazine or something. And she got all these free patterns, and I think they sent her yarn and needles too. And that was an awesome side hustle for her.
Speaker 1: Can we adjust this prompt with my thought? Because I’m still stuck on it — this is a problem I always have — but the overnight babysitting or weekend babysitting component, can you ask a follow-up? “Hey, consider night nursing, overnight babysitting, and weekend babysitting.” I’d be really interested to hear what that looks like for this person, because I’m not trusting the local high school kid as much — as great as they are, and they’re busy on the weekends, a lot of them — with that particular activity.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it’s kind of defaulting to my local Seattle area, but who knows where Nancy lives. But it says, well, there is demand here. Here’s some overnight babysitting — could earn $100 to $250 per night. So you do that 4 nights and you’re at your income goal.
Speaker 1: Or just on the weekends.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she’s working her entire Monday through Friday, and then she does it on Saturday, or she does it on Friday night because she still gets to sleep, right, Scott? She just has to wake up when the baby wakes up.
Speaker 1: My kids go to bed at 7:30 to 8, and they sleep through the night. If you want the infant, you could charge more for sure — that’s waking up through the night, in the early days. But once the kids are sleeping through the night, then it’s a very different job, I feel, because there’s a chance something goes wrong, that’s why we want somebody really responsible in there. But most nights they just sleep until the morning.
Speaker 5: It’s more than just the side-hustle listicles that I’ve published dozens of — it kind of gives you the next action step. Like, if this sounds interesting to you, if you could take on 4 or 5 clients and make $1,500 a month, here’s what I would do next. It tells you to get your certifications. It tells you what you might even do for marketing. It says, “I might pursue” — there was some note on here, like, “Post in parent groups on Facebook,” or “Start to network on Nextdoor,” or even on platforms like Care.com. So it kind of gives you the next step, and then you can have this conversation of, “How should I market this service?”
Speaker 4: And once you’re good, Scott, would you have recommended an excellent night nanny to somebody else in your neighborhood once you had an experience with somebody who was amazing?
Speaker 1: That’s it. What you do is, after you’ve delivered a good experience to the person and they’re clearly happy with it, you say, “Hey, would you mind sharing your review with me in your neighborhood’s Facebook group or your Nextdoor app or whatever? Just share that in there.” And you ask that every time, you’re going to get more business over time for some service like this, right?
Speaker 5: Yeah, with trusting somebody with your kids — like, this is — and ChatGPT even came back with that right away: “Look here, marketing matters less than trust.” I think that’s a really wise line for it to say. And we’ve had some guests kind of say something similar. This was a guy — not doing anything with kids — but he was doing college admissions essay prep consulting, a super, super niche service. And he’s like, “I don’t do any social media. I have one strategic partner who does other college admissions consulting, and she hates the essay part, so she just refers business to me.” That’s all it took to build this six-figure little side hustle consulting business.
Speaker 4: People are happy to recommend people that they’ve worked with that they love. But when it comes to your kids, moms talk, and moms will talk mad smack about you if you’re not good, and they will absolutely sing your praises when you are good. So the moms get together — “Oh, I have so many great things to say about my daughter’s night nanny.”
Speaker 5: It says it right there.
Speaker 4: What does it say?
Speaker 1: ChatGPT’s like — he’s scrolling on the screen and he’s like, “ChatGPT is making your point right here.”
Speaker 4: I mean, we will talk — the moms will talk, and we will absolutely recommend. Now, I’m the older mom in my neighborhood. There’s a lot of little babies in my neighborhood, so my kids are the babysitters, and my friend Sarah is like, “Oh yeah, hire Mindy’s daughter Daphne, she’s great. Hire Mindy’s daughter Claire, she’s great at babysitting.” So they have a ton of babysitting jobs just in the neighborhood. Those moms talk to moms in other neighborhoods, and it just kind of grows and spreads. So if you’re good, your name will get out there. And the same thing with household managers and crisis concierges — is that the plural for concierge? Okay, so Nick, that was an awesome Google Sheets file that you shared with us. Where can our listeners find that?
Speaker 5: sidehustlenation.com/bpmoney, and you’ll be able to download it for free there. Woohoo!
Speaker 4: Thank you, Nick, that is awesome for all of our listeners. If you’re thinking about a side hustle, that little AI prompt is really, really helpful to kick out a bunch of different ideas for you. And take your time with it — “My skills include…” — start thinking of it now, and then enter it in and use it over and over again. It isn’t a one-use-only thing. Use it over and over and see what you can refine. “Oh, these are great ideas, except I don’t want anything to do with cats because I’m allergic.” And then it’ll spit out a whole bunch of other things. AI is kind of crazy how good it is.
Speaker 5: Think of it as a starting point — a starting point of the conversation for brainstorming — where you can be like, “You know, on second thought, I’m already trading time for money at my day job. I’m willing to invest something like — don’t show me any service-based businesses, or don’t show me any client-work type of businesses.” And it’ll come back like, “Oh, here’s some media-based businesses or content-based businesses that you could try instead.”
Speaker 1: Yeah. And how do I not compete with minimum wage high school kids that are doing this kind of thing? Right. That’s going to be another challenge for some of these. And the way to do that is be that next level professionalism, the service that they can’t provide, the consistency. Those are all ways to look, I think, for those things. But I think this is fun. And I think this is a great starting point here. And I think the challenge is, how do you take some kind of action, even if it’s making minimum wage, if you’re interested in this or something very small, but then evolve quickly to something that is actually generating a better per hour rate, something that is more scalable, something that is more in the true business world, and treat it like an evolution. That was the big thing I wanted to come in with today. And it sounds like this is a great starting point for leapfrogging that minimum wage first step here, using your prompt and using that to form a better hypothesis than you might otherwise have come up with.
Speaker 4: Nick, where can people find you online?
Speaker 5: We’d love to have you tune into The Side Hustle Show. You’ll find it on all your favorite podcast apps and YouTube. And then check out the brainstorming prompt. Again, sidehustlenation.com/bpmoney, to take a look at, start playing around with that and see what kind of ideas it comes up with for you.
Speaker 4: Nick, how many episodes do you have now on The Side Hustle Show?
Speaker 5: 720-something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, 720 episodes with all different types of side hustles. There’s— if you can’t find an idea from Nick’s show, maybe side hustling isn’t for you.
Speaker 5: It’s almost been 14 years. That’s making me feel old.
Speaker 4: 14 years? Holy cow, that’s awesome. Nick, thank you again for your time. It’s always a delight to talk to you, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Speaker 5: Cheers. Thanks.
Speaker 4: All right, Scott, that was Nick Loper from Side Hustle Nation and The Side Hustle Show. What did you think of his amazing ideas for how to choose your next side hustle?
Speaker 1: I thought it was great. And I think I’m going to keep beating this drum a little bit around entrepreneurship and FIRE, because immediately Nick’s brain goes to all the business opportunities. Here’s how to do this. Just put some— figure out how to get in front of the demand. It’s running a business. It’s this entrepreneurial bug that some people—I think me, you, Nick, clearly have—and other people don’t. And it’s totally fine not to have that. And that’s why I was pushing so hard on what are jobs, or side hustles, that don’t require this true business mindset, that are just more like, I can just show up and I can get paid a much fairer, much higher rate per hour with even basic skills if I’m willing to sacrifice, but not necessarily sacrifice my body. That was the next piece, right? If you’re 24 and you’re willing to sacrifice your body on the weekends, you can make a lot of money, I think, if you’re willing to pick up heavy things or move them or get on ladders. I think there’s a big opportunity there. That’s obvious, I think, relatively speaking. But I think the bigger question is, how can somebody who doesn’t have that same desire or ability make money? And I thought that was— there was a really good discussion around that.
Speaker 4: I do too. And I think it’s really, really important for you to be honest with your skills, your time availability, your personality, your physical strength. Scott, you might not want to move mattresses, but you absolutely could move mattresses. Whereas I can probably get by with it. But there’s a lot of people who, like, that’s not an option. Mattresses are heavy, they’re awkward. The ShareTown, did exercise equipment—I am not moving a treadmill. In fact, I have a treadmill in my basement and I did not get it down there. We had to have somebody come and help Carl take it downstairs.
Speaker 1: Oh, man. Watching the guy move the treadmill was unbelievable, right? I can’t do that. And I mean, maybe I could do that, but I’m a powerlifter at this point, right? Amateur journeyman powerlifter. And so those things can really get big.
Speaker 4: And very, very heavy. So ShareTown might be awesome for you if you’re 6’8″ and weigh, you know, 300 pounds of solid muscle. But that might not be a great side hustle for the 4’8″ ladies in our audience who weigh 80 pounds. There’s lots of different options available for side hustling. I love his AI-assisted side hustle brainstorm document, our worksheet. Again, you can get that at sidehustlenation.com/bpmoney. Download that for free. It is a great starting point. And then once you’re into the AI, it’ll spit out some ideas and then you just refine. Like we said, I don’t wanna do a service-related, I don’t wanna do a physical job, or I wanna do more of this. It’s so easy to just get these ideas, and then you can really start thinking about and finding and pinpointing something that’s going to be a great fit for you. Because a side hustle that you hate is just like a job that you hate. You don’t want to do it at all.
Speaker 1: I love it. I’m looking forward to the next review for the BiggerPockets Money Podcast coming in saying, “I’ve listened to BiggerPockets Money since the very beginning in 2016, and now I quit my job and shovel poop for dog owners three to four days a week.” So that’s the big takeaway there. All jokes aside, there are lots of creative businesses, and if you can find activities that your neighbors, friends, family, peers don’t like to do, and want to do them for them, I think there’s a big opportunity, especially if you’re willing to humble yourself and do the work that nobody else wants to do.
Speaker 4: All right, Scott, should we get out of here?
Speaker 1: Let’s do it.
Speaker 4: That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Mindy Jensen, saying, “After a while, crocodile.”
Speaker 2: To connect with top talent ready to help your business grow, that’s upwork.com.
