Nick Loper is an author. His recent book is $1k 100 Ways. He is also the podcast host of the famous and award-winning podcast The Side Hustle Show. He also writes on his blog over at SideHustleNation.com. Nick helps others learn how to build job-free income!
Please say hello to Ms. Christine on Twitter or Instagram. She loves to hear from you.
Nick Loper is an author. His recent book is $1k 100 Ways. He is also the podcast host of the famous and award-winning podcast The Side Hustle Show. He also writes on his blog over at SideHustleNation.com. Nick helps others learn how to build job-free income!
Please say hello to Ms. Christine on Twitter or Instagram. She loves to hear from you.
$1K 100 Ways with Nick Loper
Nick Loper: [00:00:00] Well, I think this spent a hundred top of my mind lately is just moving houses. So if you can avoid doing this, I would have highly recommended, severely underestimated the time and just mental bandwidth and anguish that it would take to just, you know, it was relatively simple pack up, move on pack like that.
If you can avoid it, if you can find that forever home or that good enough home, I think you're going to be better off because it kills like two or three weeks worth of productivity. And it's still like, we're still not a hundred percent there. So it definitely a productivity hack is staying in one spot.
Jared Easley: welcome back to starve the doubts. I'm one of your hosts, Jared. And of course joining me is Ms. Christine, miss Christine.
Nick Loper: Hello. Hello. I'm doing fine. How you doing? I am
Jared Easley: doing wonderful today. We are excited because we have Nick Loper with us. Now, Nick is a man of many talents. He's a parent is a husband.
He's an author. In fact, his recent book is [00:01:00] $1,000, 100 ways. He also has a podcast which is famous and award winning. It's the side hustle nation. And. Well, actually, that's not the name of the podcast. Is it the side hustle nation. Nick, what's the name of your show? Sorry. Show right.
Nick Loper: nation.com is the home base podcast.
The side hustle show, the side hustle show.
Jared Easley: So far me on that. And then of course you write blogs and stuff over@sandcastlenation.com. Basically you're helping others learn how to build job free income, which I love. So thank you for joining us today. You're no stranger to the podcast.
Nick Loper: Thanks for having me.
It's been probably four or five years. So I'm grateful for the
Jared Easley: inmate. Well, that four or five years that I've been keeping up with your stuff, but yeah, since we probably recorded it has been awhile. So in our first podcast that we did did ask you the concert question. I'm pretty sure. So this time we would ask you something different as an icebreaker, and that is you have to sing karaoke.
Nick, what song did you pick?
Oh,
Nick Loper: man. [00:02:00] Funny karaoke story. After this, I would pick something from Hamilton. I feel like I know that soundtrack pretty well or something from my, you know, Jimmy buffet. I, I know the Jimmy Buffett archives very well as well. That is a
Jared Easley: catalog I'm proud and a little nervous. So the karaoke story.
Nick Loper: Oh, you guys know Darren Rouse from pro blonder, right? It's he's like, I guess, as this complete aversion to being on stage, would you never know? Cause he's a great speaker, but he has no desire to do karaoke. And so we were out at fin con one night and the karaoke song he chooses was tequila. I was like, this man is a genius.
He just stands up there and they're like every three minutes motor's tequila. And it's like, that's how you
Jared Easley: do it. Or you pick the song. People though the lyrics do so they're going to drown you
Nick Loper: out. If you're going to help you sing along, right. You do some journey or something.
Jared Easley: Yeah. I've played that game.
I did Bohemian Rhapsody one time, not with [00:03:00] no expectation of being able to handle it, but knowing that people would sing and it worked, so, yeah. Good answer.
Nick Loper: Okay. We got another icebreaker for you. Now finish this sentence. If you ever set out on a stadium close, it is important to like take your time. Take your time.
Take your time. I am kind of on a bit of a stadium quest and the reason I say that is it has slowed considerably. In the last 10 years I was doing really well, like 2005, 2006, 2007. And I probably knocked out, you know, 18, 19 of the major league stadiums. But then. Progress is slow to a crawl in, uh, in recent years.
Sounds a little depressing.
Jared Easley: Well, and you've had other projects you've had, you know, if your kids you've had a few things that have kept you a little busy, so you're, you're forgiven. Is there a stadium or two that you are saying, Hey, if you, if you, if you can go.
Nick Loper: I mean a favor. It's obviously like there's some hometown bias here, but, uh, Safeco field or now [00:04:00] T-Mobile park in Seattle is an amazing venue.
A Husky stadium.
Husky stadium for college football is like, you know, they call it the greatest venue in college sports because you know, it's right there on the water on lake Washington. Uh, you know, people you'll see people out sale gating and stuff like that. I don't know, like wishlist wise, I was kind of bummed. And so most of the stadium quests for disclosure has been focused on baseball, but you know, my college guy, friends have a tradition to do a Husky road game.
And nobody wanted to go to Michigan. They just played at the big house last weekend, which they lost. Cause apparently we have no offense, but looking at some of the overhead shots of this, 107,000 person stadiums like, oh, what an amazing environment, the biggest college football stadium in the country, I would have loved to been there.
We just were in the process of moving and had all this other stuff. And of course there's the whole pandemic, the Hagen. So it didn't happen for us. But, uh, someday, someday
Jared Easley: that was okay. Yeah. Are you going to [00:05:00] attempt a Washington game?
Nick Loper: Yeah, we got a trip to Tucson on the books at the moment where the waffling has, has already began.
Given our, I want to start in the state of travel and diseases right now. It could be a long
Jared Easley: season. Soon. You've written multiple books and I've read several of them. What are some things that you learned from your previous book that helped you with writing?
Nick Loper: The writing process is never the same twice.
And that's kind of, the challenge is, you know, a typical writing process for me is kind of this outline slash mind map. And then I'll go into my existing body of content to see, wow, how much of this can I fill in without having to start completely from scratch? And sometimes I'm able to fill in 5,000 words, 7,000 words like, oh, okay, now this isn't as intimidating as a blank project anymore.
It's like, okay, now, now I'm more motivated to keep filling in the [00:06:00] blanks of this outline and have really written. Uh, chronologically, you know, something I'll just tackle different sections as they inspire me and stuff like that for this latest project, this, my thought was this is going to be the easiest of project in the world.
I'll just crowdsource this whole thing. And it's been on the back burner for years and years. One K 100 ways. Like I registered this domain, like in 20 15, 20 16 or so. Well way back in the day. And my thought was, I'll just put it out to the audience. How do you make an extra money? You know, answer these five questions, answer these seven questions and we'll, you know, mash together.
The results that'll be a piece of cake. And what I found was it was not as easy as anticipated because I got such a wide variety of different responses in terms of the length and level of detail, where it was like, okay, this. It's super interesting. Some people, you know, give you 1500 words. Great. You can always edit that down for length and brevity.
Uh, other people want to give you 150 words, so this is interesting, but [00:07:00] we could do, could you expand on that a little bit? Like it's we can always, we can always cut, but it's hard to put words in your mouth. And so it was a much more tedious process in terms of the curation and editing and back and forth.
Uh, I had anticipated. Okay. Now, is that realistic to make an additional thousand dollars a month on the side for someone that is working and has family respect? Well, that's the idea I've seen, you know, dozens, hundreds, thousands of people probably do it in the cytosol nation community. At this point. I won't say that it is easy to do, but I will say that it is likely worthwhile.
If it's something that you're considering just to have a little bit of financial breathing room, a little bit of margin in your life can, can really go a long. Yeah,
Jared Easley: we mentioned that you're a dad. So what are some ways for parents to encourage their kids to maybe try?
Nick Loper: This is something that is definitely top of mind for me.
Our kids are five and three and our oldest is kind of starting to be interested in money and he's gotten, you know, birthday gifts and stuff. So he has a little [00:08:00] like piggybank jar and he's, you know, made some Lego purchases with his, with his funds. And we're trying to instill that, you know, jobs come from.
I would rather money comes from doing work and he's like, okay, I can work. What can I do for you? I'll you know, all the idea that he gave was like, I will get mice out of our attic. It was like, well, I hope we don't have mice in our attic, but if we do like, that's, that's actually a legit activated removal business.
So they're a little bit younger. We're definitely trying to instill. So one of the cool things that we did during the pandemic. Our whole place backed up to this giant, like Comcast parking lot. So we'd go out. If we, I mean, this was like Groundhog day, like early on in quarantine. We can just go out there like every day.
This is what we do. Go ride bikes, go digging the dirt, go pick up branches. But because it was relatively isolated, you know, teenagers and stuff would come back and like drink in the parking lot. And so we'd go find like their cans of white claw and all [00:09:00] this liquor and stuff was back there. We started picking up the cans and taking them to the recycling center and they were thrilled, thrilled with like, you know, the $5 and 45 cents.
They got at the recycling center fraternity back in these cans. And so that was kind of their first taste of. You know, doing the work, like going out and collecting stuff, and then we getting paid for it. So they were pretty comfortable with that.
Now, what type of questions do you ask yourself when considering a side house? The typical questions, and you've probably seen the chart. It's like, you want to find something where your skills and your interests and what people will pay for all overlap. And, you know, that's the magic sweet spot in the middle, but for a lot of people, it's like, what if your circles aren't concentric at all?
I'm like, well, my interests over here and my skills are way over here. And then I don't know if anybody would pay me for either of those. So the place where I recommend would start instead, it would be, you know, thinking of the [00:10:00] pains and probably. Either in your own life or that people are already coming to you for help with is that's like most business ideas are in this problem solving mode where I can take this pain away.
Either for myself, I can scratch my own itch or I can make it go away for somebody else. So there is a pooper scooper example in the book where this is somebody's side hustle, like cleaning up pet waste and they're in their yard. And it was a side hustle show episode, probably a couple of years ago at this.
The, where a woman out of Michigan was. I mean, this is Erica, such a cool business man, but the light bulb goes off and she's out in the backyard, cleaning up after her own dog is not the greatest chore in the world, but you know, what, if it's a pain point for me, it's probably a pain point for other people.
So she started doing some Googling and found, yes, there were other services in her area that offered this type of service. And Chelsea throws her hat in the ring and starts up this thing. And she's. Graduated a little bit. You know, and this [00:11:00] kind of a common side hustle path, right? Like she started doing the work herself on the side.
She has, you know, and then she quit her job to do that. You know, focus on this thing. She has now, uh, hired extra contractors to help fulfill some of these routes. So she's not doing it all herself and she's playing operator, administrator and marketer. And she's what was cool about this. It was like recurring weekly revenue, like as long as.
Dog is still around. And that customer hasn't moved, you know, once they're used to paying for a particular service, like it becomes kind of this just lifestyle line item on the budget and they tend to stick around for quite a while. So I was inspired by that one, but that's where the business ideas tend to come from, like coming up from a different.
Pain point and you can call, I call it kinda like the, what sucks exercise, where I normally like to be a little more optimistic, but if you you'd put on your pessimists hat for a day or a week and just have a notes app on your phone, like what socks? Like what's everything that's annoying about your day.
What do people complain to you about and start to brainstorm some ideas that way that's good. [00:12:00] What do
Jared Easley: you say to someone who's considering a side hustle? Whether or not it should have a finite lifespan or something that's more ongoing.
Nick Loper: And that's a good question. And maybe one other question to ask, as you're considering different business ideas is what does success look like?
I think a lot of people will ask them, well, what happens if this fails, which I think is also a valid question. And hopefully the answer is not like life-threatening and that kind of downplays the fears of failure that I think are totally natural. But what happens if it succeeds? Like. A realistic picture of success look like three to five years down the road.
And is that in alignment with my goals? I think the best way to do that is to find somebody who has walked the path before you, and, you know, from the outside in, or even asking directly like what's the day to day, week to week look like for you. Is that going to be a win cause you don't want to sign yourself up for something where even like best case scenario, it does work.
It's still not something that likes you, but not something that you look forward to. Is it, you don't want to sign yourself [00:13:00] up for a second job that you kind of dread working on, but to the point about, you know, should this be a short-term thing? Should this be a long-term thing? I think. You almost have to go into it with the mindset of it's it's a short term thing, because you don't know what the future holds.
And I think if you go into it with a mentality of like, I need to know the entire path up the mountain, you might get intimidated. And at least I, you know, I've certainly that way. Like I want to have the plan laid out in front of me, but really you just need to know, you know, step one, step two, and then you kind of figure it out or.
From there, it positioning it in your mind as an experiment rather than, you know, choosing what's next to me, it's choosing what's forever and I'm committed to this thing for life. I think that's kind of a stressful way to start out. Uh, one of your side hustles for our virtual assistance. Can you tell us about, yeah, this was a fun project of mine site us a project that dated back to 2011 on the back of my own.
And new challenges in remote hiring. Like how do I figure out which of these [00:14:00] outsourcing companies is legit? Like, I need, I need some help in my business, but I don't want anybody to like, come over and work at my kitchen table necessarily. Like what other options are out there. So over the course of the.
Almost a decade had built out this directory and review platform for virtual assistant services and outsourcing companies called virtual assistant assistant. And I sold that about a year ago, a little, uh, kind of like end of 2020. And this was, this was actually a really formative project for me in a lot of ways.
My first social media accounts, first Twitter account for a time building an email list. First time, uh, you know, making YouTube videos, like first time using WordPress for anything other than just a straight up blog. There's a really cool, really cool project and really fun to kind of embed myself in this industry as.
Not necessarily like the outsourcing guru, but just kind of a curious, a curious customer. Like how do I figure out which of these companies are decent operators and build up this critical mass of customers? [00:15:00] Okay. You
Jared Easley: love local home-based services. Well, what are some creative ways to find money on the side from local circuits,
Nick Loper: local services?
So starting with this pain point, one reason I'm high on these types of businesses is the pie is kind of keeps getting bigger. At least that seems to be the trend where someone gave the stat on this. Actually Nick Huber from the sweaty startup is an excellent podcast to check out on a local home shirts, home services.
He gave us that like, okay, 20 years ago, 5% of homeowners are outsourcing their lawn mowing and yard care. And today it was like 40%. I was like, oh, okay. So it's not necessarily coming in. And conquesting market share from somebody. But it's, the pie just keeps getting bigger. So not necessarily having to come up with a super innovative, never before seen business ideas, it's like, you know, throwing your hat in the ring and, you know, it's a pain point.
That's been pre-validated that people are paying for them. But I mean, you can go down. I mean, I just pay attention to the trucks that you see, or the [00:16:00] vans that you see driving around your hometown, because they'll often have the logos and company names on the site. Like, well, what did they do? And. You know, chimney cleaning is gutter, gutter, cleaning, you know, driveway, pressure washing.
There's a huge variety of different, different options. We do window washing. We do mobile oil changes. I don't know. There's a huge realm of possibility. There is paying attention to the cars and trucks in your hometown or the yard signs that you see often. No gutter protection done by such and such a company and start to see what is in the realm of possibility out there.
how freelancing is snowballing. Can you share some of that data? And, uh, also what freelancing side hustle opportunities do you personally. I don't know who they are, the latest stats on this, but it's definitely becoming a freelance first economy with, you know, I saw [00:17:00] something, I swear it was like half of.
The country is projected to become freelancers by 2025 or something like that's not too far in the future. So even if you have a steady job, probably doesn't hurt to learn this skill set on the side, just as a backup plan. One freelancing model that I am excited about is kind of the software. We call it the software with a service model where you are hitching your cart to a popular software product.
And we've seen people do this. Uh, sauna with Salesforce, with SEM, rush with QuickBooks and saying, okay, the target user base for this, for the software is a small business or some sort of other business operator, and maybe they know how to use it, or maybe they bought it, but maybe they need some help with that.
And that's where you can kind of come in and establish yourself as an expert there in the Asana example. One cool way to do that was from. Uh, virtual consultant out of New Zealand who has just started making YouTube [00:18:00] videos, like how to do plank in a sauna is like the title of a lot of his videos, especially back in the day.
And he'd introduced himself like, Hey, I'm call, I'm gonna sign a consultant. And here's how to do blah, blah, blah, in a sauna. And then he'd get right into it. But because people were searching for this stuff and he was introducing himself in such a way, like, yeah, That was super helpful. Could you like do a remote training for our team?
And so he was getting these, you know, multi-thousand dollar consulting contracts doing that type of thing remotely. So I was excited about that, a software with a service model as one example. But the other thing is, you know, look at your inventory of skills. Is there a way to turn that, you know, if you're already doing something or you did something in the past, is there a way to either do the same thing or pivot it slightly to.
Audience cause you don't want to mess around with conflict of interest and non-competes with the day job, but is there a way to do that online in some way? It's good. Uh,
Jared Easley: we use, uh, when I say we implement podcast movement, we use sauna heavily. So man, that's a really good example. So for people [00:19:00] that maybe aren't tech savvy and they probably never created a website or maintain a website, but they want to maybe have an online business.
Can you recommend some possible opportunities that might be a good fit for someone who's not overly tech?
Nick Loper: Hopefully nearly technical home. Um, there, I mean, you can go as, as simple and straightforward as you want. I mean, there's always the skills that you're gonna need to learn, you know, whether it's, you know, working your way through a Canva or design or, you know, YouTube thumbnails or something, even podcasting, like there's this host.
So-called technical skills. It didn't seem super technical at the, at the beginning, but by the time you're done learning it, you're like, now I know what left star or something like that. So don't discount. Like you can obviously learn new skills and that's probably the most important skill that you have as an entrepreneur, or would be entrepreneur the skill of learning.
But a couple of the less technical online business models that I kind of like our print on demand, which is super fun, just [00:20:00] as a hobby side hustle for my wife and I like making t-shirts. If you go to your farmer's market, if you're walking through downtown, you just take note of what people are wearing.
You see these clever sayings or funny shirts and those kind of spark inspiration, and maybe you even have. And niche, maybe you start making podcasts t-shirts or inside jokes or podcasts, or is there something for personal finance nerds and becomes a little bit about print on demand t-shirt empire, you could do it through red bubble.
You could do it through merch, by Amazon where it's super cool because you just have no inventory. You just upload this digital design and they print ship, fulfill it, like all on your behalf. And I think that's a cool way to go about it. The other, and it's, doesn't have to be super technical, but like, A faster path to building an audience on YouTube than I have through like traditional blogging in recent years.
And I think the reason for that is even though it's owned by Google, the search algorithms, maybe aren't. Sophisticated or aren't as dependent [00:21:00] on, you know, domain, age and authority and inbound links and all of that type of stuff that you just kind of a factor of being around for awhile. So the YouTube model that I kind of like is like tutorial based YouTube.
Yeah. You just like, like, like what Paul was doing, like how to solve this problem in a sauna. Like if you have a problem that you've overcome, you can make the video about it. And you know, I have some of these from years ago, like how to make a folder in Gmail. What's one of mine that still racks up views on a daily and monthly basis.
Still racks up a little ad. I think you should add revenue, but you need to have, you know, for the sake of disclosure, I want to say a thousand describers or than a thousand subscribers. 4,000 ish hours of watch time before your channel can be monetized. But if you have a video that takes off, you know, it can work pretty well.
How to download high resolution pictures from Instagram, like was another video of mine that had 10,000 views before they changed the interface in my little hack didn't work anymore. So it's like, if you figure out how to do something, you can make that little video [00:22:00] about it. I think that's a cool way to go.
Yeah. Now what are some e-commerce and physical product pitfalls or mistakes said some new side hustlers made when billing with e-commerce or physical product. Amanda. The biggest thing that scares me is plowing a ton of money into inventory without validating or without validation that yeah, this thing is going to sell because if you go to Alibaba and you're trying to, like, you have this idea for a product and you find a manufacturer and they're like, that's great.
Our minimum order quantity is 500 units, times $10 purchase price. All of a sudden you're like, oh gosh, it's gonna be five grand. Just to start this thing off. Could you, could you pre-sell this somehow, you know, with the artist rendering digital mock-up even just like ordering a couple of samples, they just minimize your downside there.
And then we see people getting started in the product space, just on a really low scale. And this is super popular amongst the Gary V's of the world. It's like the yard sale [00:23:00] flipping garage sale. But it's, it's true. And it, a hundred percent works. It's like there's money to be made in your hometown. And you can start out with the stuff that's collecting dust in your own garage and your own.
You've seen some really inspiring stories of people on the side hustle show doing just that and, you know, taking something from a local audience on Craigslist, on Facebook marketplace and just turning around, like not being afraid of the shipping and stuff, but turning around and selling that to a national or even international audience on eBay and doing that really well.
And one of my favorite stories was, I didn't want to say Jamie McLaughlin, who was a eBay consignment seller. So it's like, If you don't have any inventory to sell yourself, but you know, maybe your friends and neighbors do. It's like how sell it for you? Because listing it is a pain in the bud. You got to take pictures and create this listing and write this all up and then communicate with the sellers.
And then you got to go to the post office. Like that's the reason why stuff's around in the attic for years and years and years. So she offered to take that pain off of [00:24:00] people's. And just sell it for that for a fee. And I want to say she was like 30, 35% or something was her consignment fee and passing the rest onto the seller.
And so I was like, oh, that's a cool way to come up with, you know, kind of risk-free inventory. Like she's not out anything if it doesn't sell. So some different ways to get that done too.
well, super
Jared Easley: wrap up your neck to protect your voice. And I just appreciate. But, uh, who's doing something that interests you
Nick Loper: and is doing something interesting. Another model that I am interested in is going to be newsletter based business model. And so some of the newsletters that I like to follow, one of the best ones is called eBiz facts by an aisle Doherty.
And he's got another element to his business, you know, SEO and affiliate marketing, and course reviews and stuff too. But I really liked this newsletter. Because, you know, number one, it's kind of like this curation game [00:25:00] where you become a trusted, I trusted person in my inbox. Like, you know, maybe you pick gardening or parenting or, you know, artificial intelligence, like whatever you're into, you could become the trusted resource.
Like here's, here's the three best articles that I found on this topic every week or every day, depending on the volume that's being published. And you start to develop this habit. Well, I look forward to this every Sunday because as part of my routine. And so over time has that audience and that trust grows.
You got a lot of different monetization opportunities, either your own products or services, but, you know, as sponsorships, affiliate partners, A lot of different ways that you could go. And so if I was starting over today, I would follow along with the convert kit podcast. They're interviewing a lot of newsletter creators pay attention to what's working well on sub stack.
We interviewed Codie Sanchez who runs a contrarian thinking and about alternative investment, alternative cashflow type of strategy [00:26:00] newsletter. I think it's fascinating. So those are kind of what I would look to if I were starting over. Okay, Nick. Now what's the best place for our listeners to pick up a copy of your book, check out your podcast and stay connected with, uh, you can find the book it's one K 100 ways.
You find it@onekonehundredways.com, which will get you over to Amazon side hustle. nation.com is the home base. Of course, we'd love to have you tuning into the side hustle show and your favorite podcast app. We'll
Jared Easley: do. And Nick, we always close out with final thoughts. Do you have
Nick Loper: any. The final thought one thing is put on the top of my mind lately is, uh, is just moving houses.
So if you can avoid doing this, I would highly recommend it severely underestimated the time and just mentally. Bandwidth and anguish that it would take to just, you know, it was relatively simple pack up, move, unpack. Like that's, it it's just, it was really stressful to, is it all gonna fit in the truck?
Like we gave away so much stuff and I don't know. There's probably, I mean, there's dozens of businesses built [00:27:00] around helping people move, but it was just, if you can avoid it, if you can find that a forever home or that good enough home, I think you're, you're going to be better off because it kills like two or three weeks worth of productivity.
And it's still like, we're still not a hundred percent there. It definitely a productivity hack is staying in one spot.
Jared Easley: We just moved Nick. I don't know if he knew that sitting here saying in my head, I'm like, yes. Amen. Amen. Well, we sold our house and then now we're living with. Parents temporarily until the market kind of cools down again.
So,
Nick Loper: okay. Let's stick in the second round. South Florida.
Jared Easley: So our stuff's in storage and then yeah. What other stuff we could bring along? We brought that along, so yeah. So sticking around Florida. Yeah. Alrighty that can't leave. Christine. She's
got to keep it real in Florida. So, all right, Nick. Well, we grateful and appreciate it and congrats on the book and all the things that you're working on and look forward [00:28:00] to putting this out there and catching up again. Oh, he's going to be in Austin, Texas by chance.
Nick Loper: So far, that's the plan. Oh,
Jared Easley: well then I'll get to see you in person then I hope.
Nick Loper: Yeah, I hope so too. I keep seeing notices of people canceling, pulling out at the last minute.
Even as a self-identified introvert, I find I get so much creative energy from being around other people, doing the same thing. They just, they get you, you can geek out on SEO and affiliate marketing and podcasting versus day to day. You just don't get that. So I've missed that over the last year and a half, and I'm planning to be there.
I'm registered for the podcast movement, a happy hour meetup and hope.
Jared Easley: Okay, well then hopefully I'll see you on Wednesday night. All right, Nick. Thanks again, man.[00:29:00] .