Side Hustle Nation with Nick Loper

Jason Hartman interviews the founder of Side Hustle Nation, Nick Loper, to talk about the categories of business, podcasting, and content space. He shares some side hustles with the lowest barriers to entry and the types of freelancing service-based business that Side Hustle Nation focuses on. Nick also shares that 500+ online resources to increase productivity and reach your goals.

Announcer 0:03
Speakers, publishers, consultants, coaches and info marketers unite. The Speaking of Wealth show is your roadmap to success and significance. Learn the latest tools, technologies and tactics to get more bookings, sell more products and attract more clients. If you’re looking to increase your direct response sales, create a big time personal brand and become the go to guru. The Speaking of Wealth show is for you. Here’s your host, Jason Hartman.

Jason Hartman 0:40
It’s my pleasure to welcome Nick Loper to the show. He’s the founder of Side Hustle Nation and the host of the Side Hustle Nation podcast. He’s the number one best selling author of the side hustle how to turn your spare time into $1,000 a month or more, and buy buttons, the fast track strategy to make extra money and start a business in your spare time and work smarter 500 plus online resources today’s top entrepreneurs use to increase productivity and achieve their goals. Nick, welcome. How are you?

Nick Loper 1:14
Jason, thanks for having me.

Jason Hartman 1:15
It’s good to have you in. You’re coming to us from Northern California. So what are some of the best opportunities for people to earn extra income nowadays? This is a good topic for the times we’re in certainly.

Nick Loper 1:29
You bet. So first of all, creating self published books with extremely long subtitles, awesome way to go. Publishing out. The big three that side hustle nation really focuses on kind of the freelancing, service-based businesses, low overhead, what can I start today? What problems can I sell for clients? Or even going down the agency model of like, how do I play matchmaker between problems and customers and service providers? That’s one. Number two, be the online business model – blogs, podcasts, YouTube, like content-based businesses where ultimately you’re going to monetize with advertising, affiliate income, your own products and services down the road. And then the third would be an e-commerc business model. Amazon, eBay product flipping. Again, some low overhead ways to get started in in each of those. But those are the three that tend to pop up over and over again, through the through the archives.

Jason Hartman 2:24
Good good stuff. Well, you know, I definitely want to make sure we get a little bit of time today to talk about these 500 plus resources. Because, you know, there’s just so much out there nowadays, and if you can share any of those, you know, tips, ideas, best websites, or you know, software products, whatever, please make sure we get to a little bit of that. But first of all, maybe let’s take a little bit deeper dive into these three categories of businesses, and wherever you want to start.

Nick Loper 2:52
Well, let’s start with the some of the lowest barriers to entry. And I think, you know, if you’re looking to make money quickly, I think your best bets are either the product flipping model, like the you know, go find stuff at garage sales, yard sales, estate sales, and even take something from the free section of Craigslist, put it on Facebook marketplace, there seems to be a little bit of a disconnect in the demographics between those marketplaces right now. I met a woman who had effectively flipped $50 for her first purchase into $10,000 in sales on eBay and Facebook marketplace. It’s you start with whatever investment you’re comfortable with. buy low, sell high, right? It’s been around for generations. I think that’s a very,

Jason Hartman 3:35
Just got to ask everybody that is curious. Now, what is that? What was that product that example you just shared?

Nick Loper 3:42
What was their 50 cent thing I got to go look it up. But one of the stories that she shared with me was focusing on it because a lot of people will talk about I’ll flip clothes on poshmark or you know, just kind of the you making 5 10 bucks a piece where she focused on for the bulk of their sales was much larger items. And she shared the story of flipping a motorcycle sidecar for like three or $4,000 you know, picked it up, you know, secondhand of course. And it was just like so many questions like well, how you just roll up to the post office to ship this thing across the country. And she’s like, honey, you know, you just roll up to the back of the grocery store. They’ll give you a free pallet and then you get to build some some walls on it. You call up your freight shipping depot and then stick it on the back of a truck that’s going across the country. I’m like I would have not known any of this stuff. But this is fascinating. So I’ll look up and I’ll get you for the show notes what she what her 50 cent purchase so let’s because I think

Jason Hartman 4:36
Yeah, I’m just curious. But anyway, the point of you know, you buy at wholesale you sell at retail, right? Simple concept. Yes. We’re all familiar with. Yeah, excellent

Nick Loper 4:45
So she’s done really well with that. The other option if you are in the like, I gotta make money quickly mode is the freelancing or service based business and this could be freelance writing. This could be you know, the graphic design I mean, the online type have, you know, remote virtual work type of side hustles. Or it could be lawn mowing, gutter cleaning, mobile car detailing, and stuff like that we’ve had people do really well with some of these local offline businesses. And in fact, I’m probably more excited about the offline options right now, for a couple of reasons. And the first is that, you know, the market demand continues to grow as people become more and more specialized, and limited in their own hours, just saying, like, I don’t want to, I don’t want to deal with this anymore. I don’t want to, I just want I just want this problem to go away. A guest on the show started a pooper scooper business and was, she had like 80, something recurring weekly customers recurring revenue, very predictable, hire people to go out on the route and do this stuff. And I was inspired by that. And as

Jason Hartman 5:50
So you’re saying, just a just a dog pooper scooper business. Not a gardening business? Because usually the dog poop, right?

Nick Loper 6:00
I don’t know, maybe the gardeners didn’t in her area. But

Jason Hartman 6:03
No, I mean, or maybe she didn’t really have a lawn. Right, you know, maybe there was just, you know, rocks in the yard, or, or sand or something. And so, so that’s interesting, this would become a specialty. I mean, that’s that there’s a poop picker up or special, you gotta have a specialist for this now.

Nick Loper 6:26
Somebody gave me this stat, that 20 years ago, only 5% of people hired out like a lawn mowing service to come do this for them. And today that is closer to 40%. And so it’s just this continued specialization of labor, I don’t want to deal with it, I don’t want to, it’s just, it’s just not how I want to spend my free time. So I’m gonna hire that out. And so I think that’s one of the elements, that’s exciting them. The other element that’s exciting is from the competition front, in most medium to small sized towns, the competition is is still operating like it’s a generation ago, in terms of their internet savvy in terms of how they’re marketing. And so you can come in with a little bit of proactive effort. Get yourself onto the first page of Google Get yourself some Google reviews, and and be off to the races. Like I met another guest on the show who had a knife sharpening business, similar like local service based business, I could do it myself, but hey, there’s a guy who is a professional right here in town, he’ll do it. He’s got 100 positive reviews, let’s let’s make this work. So those are the areas where I would start looking if you’re in that, I gotta, I gotta make money. Quickly mode.

Jason Hartman 7:33
Okay, so in the, so what category is that called again then? That’s not the content category.

Nick Loper 7:41
Now, as I call that the kind of the e commerce or product flipping category, that’s option number one, and then the service based

Jason Hartman 7:48
And why is that the quickest?

Nick Loper 7:50
It’s just because there’s you don’t have to build an audience. You don’t have to necessarily even build a product. It’s just you could stick your flag in the sand and say, Hey, Nick Loper a gutter cleaner available for hire, right. Connecting with your peers and neighbors and local Facebook groups, on next door, flyers on the mailbox, low overhead, low barrier to entry and kind of quick to see your first customers there.

Jason Hartman 8:12
Okay, good. Good stuff. All right, what’s next?

Nick Loper 8:16
The other model and the model that I’ve been most involved with for the last 15 or so years is the online call it the audience based business model where you need to create a helpful resource that is usually in the form of content, blog, podcasts, YouTube videos type of stuff. But it could also be in the form of like, you know, Google is an example of an audience-based business as they built a helpful resource. Facebook is an example of an audience based business that ultimately is monetized with with advertising and stuff. For me, my original side, hustle was a footwear comparison shopping site wasn’t heavy on the content front, but it was heavy on kind of the data processing and telling people where they could find the best price on their next pair of shoes and integrating different, you know, coupons at the product level and all sorts of nerdy stuff. But it relied heavily on, you know, attracting tracking viewers to this site, in my case through through ads, mostly through Google ads.

Jason Hartman 9:17
So the audience space part of the business. Any other ideas in that category? That’s what we do. And we’ve done, you know, extremely well with that. I highly recommend that business. There are certainly a lot of people in it, though. There’s no question that there’s a lot of people looking for a limited amount of attention span out there. Right?

Nick Loper 9:35
It is there’s more competition for limited attention than probably ever before. And on the one hand, like if we give podcasting as one example in this space. As you know, we’re both podcasters here. The landscape has certainly changed over the last 567 years in podcasting. The exciting thing here is that half the population still doesn’t know what a podcast is. And that to me is maybe some people are discouraged by that, to me that’s like, oh, there’s still a tremendous level of growth still in this industry. And the other trend that we’ve probably seen is the introduction of big money, big media. So now you have ESPN, and you’re in the New York Times, like everybody, like these big media companies have their own podcasts now, which is awesome, because they bring they bring new listeners into the fold. But as a solo producer, that’s what you’re up against in people’s earbuds. So you have to maintain a certain level of quality, you’re not going to be able to compete on having a production staff of 14 people, which can’t compete on unique and compelling content, and try and build a following through from the ground up on on that. in that medium, I’m still, I still think there’s a rosy future for the future of podcasting.

Jason Hartman 10:50
You know, that’s interesting, because when I started podcasting back way, in the day, about 16 years ago, I mean, nobody knew what a podcast was back then. And, you know, I got to tell you, someone in the originals, but I was very early in the game now. And I kicked myself for not appreciating it enough back then. Because I think, had I understood the magnitude of what it would become, I would have treated it with more, you know, more like, respect. And it’s worked out very well. I mean, you know, I bet my different podcasts probably produced about $20 million dollars in revenue over the years, maybe more, well, probably more than that, actually. But, you know, it’s been a great run. But I think, had I known it would have become so big celebrities started, if you will start start, right, I would have really realized how big the opportunity was. And it’s interesting what you say, because you say, you know, half the people still don’t relate to it. And you know, I can attest to that. Nobody related to it back then. But even now, people, you know, like a podcast. Yeah, I’ve heard of a podcast, I know what it is, but like, how do I get to it? You know, they, they just don’t relate to that type of media yet. And so that means there’s a lot of market share left to come into the space.

Nick Loper 12:16
It is exciting. I mean, it’s a convoluted space, because there’s no, you know, dominant app link destination, right? where it’s like, Hey, I have a YouTube channel, like everybody understands, like, Oh, I can go to YouTube and find your thing versus like, Okay, I got a deal. I already have a podcast to have, how do I get this thing on my phone. That said, once you have somebody in your earbuds, or rather, you’re in their earbuds, and they your content is good enough that they stick around and they spend 3040 minutes with you week after week after week? That’s a really powerful relationship to build. Sure, much more so than what I’ve experienced on the blogging front. Like, yeah, I can create something and hopefully it hits on the first page of Google, but Okay, so somebody finds it, they, you know, scroll through your bullet points, and then they’re done. They’re out the door in three minutes. And it’s just not as definitely not as engaged in audience.

Jason Hartman 13:07
I agree. I agree. Okay, what else? Anything else on the content space you want to talk about?

Nick Loper 13:11
I mean, the big thing that I’m probably most excited about on the content space for like new content creators, obviously, I love podcasting. I still think there’s tremendous opportunity there. But video, YouTube is seems to be the place to go. And the the wildcard factor that YouTube has in its favor that podcasting doesn’t is this viral element, this element of, you know, hitting the algorithm just right and somehow skyrocketing your channel. And it’s, it’s a little bit of a lottery, it’s a little bit of a crapshoot, right. But you can if you put your best foot forward, and what I like about YouTube, in contrast to podcasting is it’s a much better discovery platform search intent, keyword driven, what problem can I solve for people? How can I answer their specific question in a way that makes sense in video format, even if it’s just talking head, even if it’s just a screen share video, like one of my best performing videos, is like years and years ago, it’s like how to create a folder in Gmail or something. And it still collects views, it still collects ad dollars every month. So video is is an angle that I would pay attention to going forward and going for, you know, I might go back and redo the podcast as a video podcast and slice it up and do all the fun stuff to answer specific questions in there.

Jason Hartman 14:27
Right? Yeah, good stuff. Okay. So the third major category

Nick Loper 14:34
That was, so that was the three. That was the ecommerce product flipping stuff, that was the end, you can go down private label and building your own brand and all that stuff in that category. There was the service based businesses to freelance based businesses. And then category three is that online audience face business.

Jason Hartman 14:49
Right, right. And so which is the longest ramp up? Is it the audience business?

Nick Loper 14:55
For me, it definitely was. It hit it, hit it viral out of the gate, especially you know, it’s celebrities are coming on with, you know, podcast. So they got, you know, millions of listeners right away. For most people probably not realistic, it was a long slow burn in my case. And so that’s the reason like I, it’s the most it’s the most potentially lucrative and time leveraged business model down the road. But it’s not, at least in my case, not super quick to that money milestone, like, I’m not going to see revenue quickly going down here, but it’s a labor of love and in need of producing something that you believe is genuinely helpful and ought to be out there in the world.

Jason Hartman 15:34
Sure, good stuff. Can you talk to us about some of these resources? You know, in, in your book, you talk about 500 plus online resources. Give us a little taste of some of that.

Nick Loper 15:47
Oh, my goodness. So the latest version of that is probably five or six years old at this point. So I would point instead to some, I would love to do an updated version, because it’s like, you know, the pace of change and everything. I’ll give you some of my tools that that I live live by on a daily basis. The first is LastPass as a password management tool, the know that I cannot express my love deeply enough for LastPass. And just not having to remember all that stuff, clutter up brain cells with that. Text expander is something that I use on a daily basis to, you know, create your own keyboard shortcuts for different snippets. Schedule once has been outstanding for me in terms of, you know, scheduling podcast interviews, and not having the five email back and forth of like, well, if this is time work for you What time is good for you? I think what else and these are, some of these are in the book as well. otter.ai is a new one for me, we use. Okay, for transcription, I was just making sure that the extension, correct their Active Campaign is my email service provider. I believe it’s the best bang for your email marketing and marketing automation buckets. amazingly powerful software for a low low price. Copy, I don’t know, this is one called I forget what it’s called. It’s either called clip x or copy clip, I want to say is maybe the Mac equivalent, but it’s a clipboard manager, which saves the last 25 things that you copy uses all day, every day. So that’s a helpful one.

Jason Hartman 17:22
What does that copy x? I’m gonna use that I need that.

Nick Loper 17:27
I think I think copy clip is the Mac version. Copy X is the Windows version.

Jason Hartman 17:33
Okay, thank you for that. Okay. Good, good stuff. Well, yeah, there’s so many tools out there. What What would you like to say to the person who’s you know, discouraged about, you know, the things that are going on in the world that, you know, maybe they’ve lost their job, or they’re feeling like they’re on the verge of it, you know, they’re, they’re really a lot more empowered than they think they are sometimes. Right?

Nick Loper 17:56
They are. I mean, a friend of mine, kind of compared it to it, especially early pandemic, you know, where the market dropped 30% is like, this is the fastest decline since the Great Depression. And the difference between then and now is, you know, we’re not seeing a run on the banks here, you could still work from home, we still have all these opportunities, whereas, you know, 100 years ago, it’s like, well, what are we going to do? The way that I would frame it is to think of side hustles. In general business in general, really, life in general, is it’s an experiment like a give yourself permission to put on that scientists lab coat, try something out. If it fails, great. Like if that if the proverbial test tube blows up in your face. You know, that’s not what was supposed to happen. That’s not what you thought would happen. But it’s hopefully not life threatening, and that I found that it’s really empowering for me, and for a lot of side hustle nation, readers and listeners to just try something out. Like, what would happen if I got up at 530 in the morning? What would happen if I write wrote 500 words every day, like what happens if I put in this consistent daily practice? Or what happens if I’ve raised my hand put myself out there as the pooper scooper gutter cleaner, mobile car detailing.

Jason Hartman 19:08
Couldn’t agree more, couldn’t agree more.

Nick Loper 19:11
It just opens opens up the whole world to you. And if you find out you don’t like it, no harm no foul, you know, dust off, try the next thing.

Jason Hartman 19:18
Just do something else. Yeah, it’s really not that big a commitment.

Nick Loper 19:22
Nick, give out your website. side hustle nation.com is the best place to find me. Of course, we’d love to have you tune in to the side hustle show as well.

Jason Hartman 19:29
Good stuff. Nick looper. Thank you for joining us.

Nick Loper 19:32
Thanks.

Jason Hartman 19:38
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