---
title: 'I Tried Real Life Side Hustles For A Week (Lawn Mowing, Car Detailing)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=Nui9g7dNqR4'
video_id: 'Nui9g7dNqR4'
date: 2026-07-23
duration_sec: 617
channel: 'Extra Landen Levine'
---

# I Tried Real Life Side Hustles For A Week (Lawn Mowing, Car Detailing)

> Source: [I Tried Real Life Side Hustles For A Week (Lawn Mowing, Car Detailing)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Nui9g7dNqR4)

## Summary

The video follows the creator and a friend as they attempt two in-person side hustles: lawn mowing and car detailing. They start with lawn mowing, knocking on doors and offering cheap services to gain experience and clients, then switch to car detailing, which proves more challenging due to equipment issues. The video highlights the realities of starting a service-based business, including rejections, low initial earnings, and the importance of persistence.

### Key Points

- **Starting with Lawn Mowing** [00:02] — The creator and friend decide to try lawn mowing as a side hustle, using basic equipment and knocking on doors to offer services.
- **First Client at $10** [00:42] — After three rejections, the fourth person agrees to pay $10 for a small lawn mowing job, which takes about 15 minutes.
- **Switching to Car Detailing** [02:13] — They switch to car detailing, but face issues with streaks and marks due to poor equipment and technique.
- **Leveraging Social Proof** [03:47] — After mowing a neighbor's lawn, they use that as social proof to get more clients, successfully converting a 'no' into a 'yes' by mentioning they just helped a neighbor.
- **Securing a Future Client** [05:10] — A couple agrees to cancel their current lawn service and hire them, providing a future client.
- **Another Lawn Job for $40** [06:05] — They mow an overgrown lawn for $40, which takes 1.5 hours including raking and disposal, earning $20 each ($13.33/hr).
- **Final Lawn Job for $20** [08:28] — Tired but persistent, they knock on another door and get a $20 lawn job that takes 20 minutes.
- **Total Earnings and Reflection** [09:08] — After 2 hours 22 minutes of car detailing (with poor results) and multiple lawn jobs, total earnings are $74. The creator reflects that lawn mowing was more profitable and easier to start.

### Conclusion

Lawn mowing proved more accessible and profitable than car detailing for beginners, despite low initial rates. The key takeaway is that service-based side hustles can generate immediate income with minimal investment, but persistence and learning from mistakes are crucial.

## Transcript

if you have the right equipment you could literally get up right now and go so I'm going to be trying out some inperson side houss and knocking on wondering after I knock on their door and they answer what am I actually going
to be trying to sell them well I'm going to try car detailing and Landscaping SL actually makes more money starting with lawnscaping I went and picked up my skill and we already know how to use our equipment we got straight to knocking on
my my friend had to practice on our cars just to make sure we knew what we were doing so after walking around and scouting some Lawns we knocked on a few doors but everyone said the same thing oh no my wife has a a company that does
it every twice a month until finally after getting rejected three times in 20 minutes passing looking for lawns the fourth person said this yeah I here's basically what happened hi we were just talking to one of your
were wondering if you'd be interested in something like that I mean how much already the neighborhood we could do it for pretty cheap do you just want this down the side over there okay yeah since it's not that big we could just do it
for only $10 I mean sure that sounds good I'll just be out here watching you minutes I have to go get my Mower and weed whacker real quick and so I went big thing but this is the thing that we're going to use for this yard uh it
does have spider spider webs all over it's really dirty I want to see if it'll even start Actually I don't even know if it has gas in it okay has something in it has gas in it okay has something in there I'll see if it'll start
I'm going to see if I could fit this in the car I don't think I will I think he is there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to fit that lawn mower grabbed the weed waxer and a broom and tried to fit them in my back seat I had
this because it did get kind of dirty the trunk and leaving the hatch open I was able to barely fit the mower in so I and we got started it was a really quick job and I didn't really record because
he was watching us the whole time but it only took about 15 minutes all right Umberto how do you feel we did that for $7 not that great you think it was too cheap honestly yeah it was only it only took like 15 minutes though it's not bad
a different neighbor invited me and my friend for some limited and it was a hot day so we definitely could not say no so within an hour although it was cheap we Landscaping but let's switch over to car detail even though the equipment needed
stuff that we needed but I watched the video to find everything I would need stuff that I already had I found a lot of the things that I needed but some of the stuff was kind of used old and uh questionable a hell no but I had enough
some random stuff I had plugging in my vacuum and emptying out a couple buckets practice on the exterior of my car and the interior of his so we started with then started washing it down with some car wash soap but we ran into a problem
try and wipe it down it would leave some sort of streaks or marks and my solution wasn't that it was our fault it was to buy better equipment and so we went to the store looks like we should have gone with a landscaping yeah I think this
with a landscaping yeah I think this would might be not we bought a few things but first I wanted to try out this tire cleaner and
brush this actually nice and it worked pretty well but we it with our new towel it worked better than before but it definitely was not polish that we found at the store but it went really really bad yeah I don't even
instructions on the bottle but I'm probably going to get flam for this in a good time to switch back to see how knocking door to door Mo Lawns was doing perfect summary of how car detailing was going so a little flashback me and my
$7 each and we stopped at our neighbors because they offered us lemonade but all part of the plan because we now could say this hi how's it going good we neighbor's lawn yeah that gives us a lot more social proof being able to say that
because this was the response we got most of the time oh no my wife has a a company that does it every twice a month actually twice a month really yeah but salesman I couldn't stop at just one rejection I had to keep going but I
could do it for pretty cheap just cuz we're already here and we have like all the supplies like it's my uh lawnmowers hanging out the trunk right now just as hanging out the trunk right now just as we did your
I mean he went from no we already have a company that does it to asking how much we charge let's see do you want the back done at all or just the front hey su he probably his wife and we re-explained our pitch to her and she also said this
how much would you charge me do you want the front and the back or okay I'd have to see how big it is all right let me just check go around real quick I'll let said he'd let us take a look at his backyard so that we could give them a
his backyard was actually going through his house so me and my friend actually mom if you're watching this I'm sorry but I'm okay and I think I could take so we went to a window where we could see the back and we gave them a price we
works for you guys how's that sound serious they had their company coming names down and numbers so they could cancel with the other company and have successfully got a future client but we went and knocked on some more doors so
we could make some more money right now we went on a streak of like five houses with no answer until we finally got an answer and I guess I was so stuttering hey how's it going we just we just finished uh mowing when your
interested in something like that you know normally I would say yes but my boyfriend actually owns so he does the mowing he doesn't Mo and just like the pushing a little bit I mean since we're already here we could do it for a good
cheap oh I he would probably get up but I could tell she was not interested and unlike a typical door to door salesman I actually left her alone thank you so we headed to the next house that was extremely overgrown and knocked
bad on the last house I was trying really hard not to mess up and just finished um finishing or we just finished uh mowing your neighbor's lawn interesting in something like that oh but somehow she didn't decline us right
away and ask the golden question how much you charg so we did what's typical yard was but one thing I forgot to mention earlier in the video is that the clippings would go all over the place that's fine on a smaller lawn but since
asked us if we could rake it up and put it in a trash can and throw it on the sure but this is how much we agreed to do it for 40 sure yeah looking back on it it doesn't seem like that much but it was a
$7 each and on this channel I've done some things for a pretty low hourly wage like last summer where I was mowing lawns for almost $5 an hour but we had a friend's getting started weed whacking and while my friend weed whacked I mowed
we had to go over a couple of times the worst part definitely though was raking up all the grass putting it in the bin and dumping it out back because the lawn in this video is like the third time we went over the lawn and just rap as much
results of that let's switch back to see how car detailing was going when we last not go very well after not being able to dve off the car without any streaks so his car to see if we could do any better with that we started off by just taking
out some jackets he had in his back seat we can take that stuff out then I the Interior cleaning Plies we picked up earlier like a brush some rags and an lie vacuuming was pretty satisfying and don't worry I didn't do this crappy of a
me vacuuming and it was kind of hard to clean and record but I took the mat out just made sure everything was clean and as far as we could clean it looked stains and I have no clue how to remove those I've seen people use some special
and I don't think we could have used any of the supplies we had to remove them I but to be honest I didn't really record any because I wasn't super confident we after what happened with the exterior and before I get into what we did next
let's check back in to see how mowing that lawn was doing so we mowed weed bin and threw them out back I didn't record a ton because I didn't even know at the time but it ended up taking about an hour and a half we made $40 so divide
that between two people equals $20 and divide that by 1.5 because it took an than minimum wage for some manual labor work buty it's a dub in my book because last summer and we decided to knock on
known in the neighborhood and saying that we just helped him out could and my friend were already pretty tired and we weren't really expecting to mow knocking on the first door but the lady actually said yes of course at first she
little bit like I had done with the last couple of people and said we could do it $20 bill and said she had to leave but got started it was a pretty easy one to do and it only took us about 20 minutes
and I left a not for her and slid my number so that she could possibly call time and after that afternoon of work we were left with a grand total of $74 the time we spent knocking doors and we were still kind of practicing as far as
great either but instead of making a small amount of money we made none and longer than it should have it's been 2 hours and 22 minutes we did the exterior of mine the interior of his I'm going to clean all this up that sucked and it
the next day I went back and mowed some more lawns in the same neighborhood I've a couple of times most recently doing it myself for $50 so should you try either and even though me and my friends didn't show a great example that's the reality
get more paying clients and start charging even more or in the case of car then from there obviously you could just Outsource the work to other people for door too service like even window washing is a great thing to start if you
because you can go out and just do it with making money online usually it with these service-based jobs you can just make money pretty much instantly you want to try and just start you don't have to be perfect but if you thought
appreciate it if you could subscribe more videos coming soon but I appreciate more videos coming soon but I appreciate it and I'll see you guys in the next