3 Bizarre Side Hustles That Actually Scale (feat. Jason VanDevere)

[00:01] three headlines. Two are real, one is fake. Your job is to pick the fake one. Headline number one, I make two to $10,000 a month selling watches that don't tell time. That's number one.

[00:15] Number two, 52-year-old librarian earns $4,200 per month narrating other people's voicemails. The voicemail narration side hustle. And number three, flight attendant rakes in $28,000 a month with her weekend balloon side

[00:31] hustle. So, those are our three candidates. Which one do you think is the fake one? Wow. How much would How much did you say the balloon side hustle was? The balloon

[00:43] balloon side hustle was? The balloon side hustle was $2,800 a month. librarian one. Well, you would be the winner. The [laughter] it away? Uh I just didn't seem that being seeing

[00:57] it being very practical to have my voicemails narrated by somebody else. weird cuz we've seen plenty of precedents around people narrating uh Reddit threads on you know, on YouTube, even creating podcasts around this. Um

[01:13] the the telltale sign. But, I love the specificity of you know, it's always you know, something unexpected plus some dollar amount plus something even more unexpected and you're like, wait, that's random. You can make money doing that.

[01:27] Well, Jason uh Van Der Werf is here. He is the creator of the Goal Planner at goalcrazy.com. Goal like a soccer goal. He's the author of Dream Driven, the step-by-step process to discover your perfect

[01:41] business idea and launch it this year. Also, a long-time real estate investor, a serial side hustler, if you will. And so, we've got a handful of headlines to uh work through today. Um in addition to rounds uh two and three with Jason, the

[01:56] business idea donation plus the triple threat coming up after that. But, the one I wanted to start off with cuz I know you got some experience in the car business as as do I is this uh professional car buying negotiator. This

[02:10] is Tommy Mccoola, 33-year-old uh former car salesman from North Carolina earning >> Crazy. >> at $1,000 a deal helping negotiate um

[02:22] the best price on your new car purchase. And I think he has a uh a pretty sizable social media presence at this point. So, people hire him to negotiate on their behalf. What's your take on this one? I mean, I think it's a great idea. I

[02:37] know that there are lots of games played out there with car dealers. I think probably the biggest benefit is it's just saving people time. So, you brought car dealerships in our area. So, I worked there. And I had worked with

[02:51] never this guy, but there were professional car buyers who would reach out that would facilitate a deal for their customer. And uh the customer. I was at the salesman on the other end of it and it just saves

[03:05] them time. Did you like dealing with this this middleman negotiator or was that kind of like a red flag? Um we were very transparent with our pricing. So, I feel like I didn't have

[03:17] to hold anything back. Uh I wasn't worried about like not making my commission or anything cuz I just wasn't paid on commission. I would say the hardest part was you didn't know if you were putting in all the work for no

[03:29] reason. Cuz they are calling asking for very specific things that take time. And them. But, since I can't talk to the buyer, it's like, am I just getting this is somebody actually interested in moving forward on this right now? But,

[03:45] in the time to get them the information and leave it in their court and they would either come back as like super easy deal or it would come back as I would never hear from them again. Yeah, and I guess I would expect the

[03:58] negotiator middleman to be kind of on the fleet acquisition side. Look, I need the fleet acquisition side. Look, I need 100 F-150s for whatever company it is best deal. But, to do it on an individual basis and try and source this

[04:15] specific model of car and try and find the best price. It seems like it is a lot of legwork and upfront. But, I imagine that Tommy kind of has the a template or a process and you can go and watch his videos. He's got 600,000

[04:29] >> Yeah. YouTube and TikTok. And some people in this article references where they'll just kind of learn his scripts and mannerisms and then go and and try it's interesting. When I was doing the

[04:43] research I on this guy, I feel like that seems like the biggest asset of what he's doing. Because like if you want to go help somebody buy a car, you're trying to get leads from people who are also trying to buy cars. And car dealers

[04:57] have giant marketing budgets to try and get those leads. You know, of of who's interested in buying a car. But, what he's doing is he's using the process to he's making these videos that are maybe controversial like the the conversations

[05:11] sales manager or him and a a salesperson. But, then he's growing this big audience using that content which then gives him leads. But, then he's growing an audience and an audience has a lot of value in itself. So,

[05:25] I I'd view it as it was a really creative way to make viral content online. Yeah, there was a a note here that he started uh by offering the service for free, I believe through Reddit. So, he

[05:37] closed 50 deals uh for strangers that he met online and said, "Look, there is proof of concept. I can do this. I can do this repeatedly." And then he started up for sale. So, the site that he's doing it through is called delivered uh

[05:52] delivered2.me without some vowels. So, we'll link that up in the show notes if you want to go and and check that out. >> Yeah. And I think there could be a lot >> Yeah. And I think there could be a lot of opportunity in your own area because

[06:05] car dealership. It's like some people are afraid to call the pizza man. Yeah. you can just book it through a guy online and have him work out the logistics, it'll save you the pressure of dealing with somebody.

[06:18] Yeah, I think there is something uh something to that where it's like just buying is probably moving towards just that one fixed price are we doing this dance? If this is the If this is your best deal, why don't you

[06:34] oh, it's all about holding onto the whatever gross margin that you can. But, I thought this was a really interesting productized service. We've seen examples in video production or content writing or any number of uh different skills

[06:48] that people have. His happened to be you know, these car buying negotiations. One uh business idea that we've tossed out uh over the years is kind of the used car concierge. Where it's like, look, I know what I want, but you know, the the

[07:02] filtering and the haggling, you know, all and the inspections and all this different stuff that goes into that process is such a tedious pain. Where it's like, you know, maybe somebody who knows that world could could provide

[07:15] maybe there's something there, too. But, I thought I thought this was a cool example of leveraging a skill that the guy kind of learned on the job and kind can help customers now. Yeah. Yeah, well, it goes back to I know

[07:28] talked about on your in your own content This guy was a good negotiator because he worked at car dealership and he used that in a different way. But, he used a skill he already have had.

[07:42] says he's gaining a little bit of notoriety in certain dealer communities where people start to recognize his voice. And sometimes the sales person's >> But, other times it's like, I don't want to talk to this guy, you know, I'm give

[07:55] up give up on this deal. He so he says, "I'm contemplating investing in a voice changer." Yeah. Well, the one I watched, he had a assistant who was trying to do a lot of it. So, maybe that's a temporary way to solve that, train other

[08:09] Yeah, that's probably how it scales. If he's doing 200 deals a month to get to that $200,000 be doing all by yourself. So, you got to bring on a team and it is kind of one

[08:23] and done. And maybe how often does somebody buy a car? And so, it's like Yeah. Yeah, I feel like you'd have to build a good referral system on the back end because if you really enjoyed it, I could seeing a lot of referrals coming

[08:38] from it. Uh you know, it's kind of like when you buy a car, people typically ask you get that car? And if you can explain the process and Yeah. I will say my underrated negotiating

[08:51] I will say my underrated negotiating tactic is just silence. You know, the the sales person wants the deal probably worse than you do. And so, if you can just sit for a couple days, see what they come back with. I mean, use this

[09:04] on accident. Right? We'll be like off the grid, just not checking email for a couple days and people will come back, sorry, you know, what about this price instead? Like, oh, the other one probably was going to be okay. But, if

[09:17] not responding, that's also okay. >> Yeah. Yeah, say no. I feel like from me coming from the car business, uh saying no several times to the salesman. I anything, say no a few times, let them lower their price. And if you go in at

[09:32] the end of the month, the chances that you can get a really good deal is higher. Because they have their number to hit and they have huge incentives to hit that number. So, they're willing to get aggressive.

[09:45] that way. Where it's like it's all about the making the month. And you know, we have a friend who would work at uh at this luxury manufacturer and they would be pulling forward all these sales, doing weird like lease,

[09:59] like, "Aren't you just screwing yourself over for next month?" It's like, "We'll worry about that in 30 days." [laughter] It's just like, "Okay, man." We'll do >> But, uh definitely check out delivered to.me. We'll link that up in the show

[10:13] notes. The uh next headline that I want to share is that uh watch headline, the uh $2 to $10,000 a month selling watches that don't tell time. This is the now that don't tell time. This is the now watch now watch uh dot org. I will try

[10:27] and bring this up. It is a watch that like it is described it just says now on like real watches. I think he does have a model that actually uh

[10:40] it actually does tell time. >> But, if you if you want a combination of you know, have some functionality [laughter] along with it. Yeah. I mean, I love just the niche ideas of

[10:54] this. And I think like this idea seems like a business that in social media and influencers. You can find these people who are really curious before the internet, this would have been extremely hard to sell, but

[11:10] it it's interesting. I When I was reading about this guy, he said it was actually kind of hard to find a supplier of watches who would make this for them. it like defeats the purpose of a watch. Yeah, yeah. What's What's it's like a

[11:22] it. Yeah. But, uh I like it. I think I'd be curious to see like how many are Do they have any way to get repeat buyers? Cuz otherwise, it

[11:35] seems very much like a a one-and-done sort of business, right? It's like, what's the next mindfulness tool you can sell them? for. Yeah, what's How can you branch that

[11:49] an app version where like changes the lock screen on your phone to like instead of selling the time, it says now or it says the time like really small, but it still has like a much bigger reminder to be present than um

[12:02] than kind of the default setting is. I'm thinking like if he has an email mindfulness, if you launch like a journal that has a handful of mindful journal that has a handful of mindful prompts in it or uh meditation app, just

[12:15] prompts in it or uh meditation app, just something else to sell them. That was when I was researching this is you have the customers. How you going to turn it into more sales? Yeah. We'll get into an app example uh a

[12:28] little bit later, but I've been messing around with vibe coding uh an app of my around with vibe coding uh an app of my own. And it's pretty straightforward. troubleshooting and stuff that doesn't work right out of the box, but it's I

[12:42] don't know. It's been pretty fun uh so far. So, maybe there is an app version of this now watch uh type of thing. The interesting thing is the founder Greg says for the first five years of this business, like he So, he has the idea.

[12:54] First five years of the business says it made almost nothing. Then someday uh along the road, like this influencer finds it, discovers it, posts about it. And it and it takes off. It goes viral and like all of a sudden everybody wants

[13:08] one. And it's just kind of this you know, almost sticking with it very much as a side hustle during the during those years. And like I don't know. It's novel gift idea, but is it ever going to be a full-time thing? Maybe not. It

[13:22] sounds like now he's trying to do more intentional influencer marketing and try Yeah. Yeah, I think influencer marketing and I about on your email list is courses or

[13:36] like digital PDFs or something. If this guy had a basic course on mindfulness power comes in is like you can sell a physical product, pay money on ads,

[13:49] selling that physical product, but really you're building an audience of these mindfulness people. And it's like, what's the next thing you can sell them? Your product is just the front end way to start the relationship.

[14:02] Yeah, cuz his pricing is, you know, 29 to It's not Yeah, and you've got manufacturing costs, you've got shipping costs, you may have ad costs. Yeah, you you're

[14:15] playing a volume game. Mhm. Yeah, you need some products on the Yeah. So, this is a cool idea though. I'm in into this now why this seems like a a natural fit for kind of the stoic

[14:29] >> There's I think he even mentions in one of his posts like there's this line in a Jimmy Buffett song about buying this watch from a crazy man. Uh you know, it doesn't use numbers or moving hands. It always just says now. And now you might

[14:42] this watch is never wrong. And it's like, hey, audiences. Yeah. Maybe was he influenced by the uh when he made this? Yeah, yeah. The found

[14:55] now watch guy definitely credits that as being an inspiration. inspiration. Cuz it's like there's so many mindfulness books. If you could mail those watches out to the authors, they might just think it's funny or creative, but posted

[15:08] and they also have an audience of these mindful people. And if the author wears it, it's like, "Oh, wow, that's I need the watch now, too." yeah, cuz it's like uh imagine your manufacturing cost maybe $5 on the low

[15:23] end for some of these. Like you Yeah, what's the cost you to potential people who could drive a ton of sales. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Spring is this natural reset point. And

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[18:33] you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for sponsored jobs. the air filter in the car, which is about the level of vehicle maintenance

[18:47] I'm qualified to do. So, I Google up the part number. I find this random store that's selling it. And then to my absolute delight, I see with it running on Shopify. How could I tell? That little purple Shop Pay button at

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[19:41] shopify.com/ sidehustle. All right, the next one I want to uh share is $25,000 a month from a vibe share is $25,000 a month from a vibe coded app. This is by Mau Baron who

[19:55] built an app called prayer lock, a Christian prayer app. He says it took him just 3 days to build. The concept of this is pretty simple. It locks your phone until you complete a prayer session. The tagline is, do you have 1

[20:07] minute for God? And I imagine you might either say, well, yeah, of How do you say no to that idea? It might make you think twice about unlocking that right now? Yeah. I mean, I I love it. So when I was

[20:22] he did this in 3 days, but maybe that's haven't gone too deep into that yet. But when you looked at what he did to get distributing it, and helping with an onboard process,

[20:36] it seems like he worked really hard. You know, like he took a going to actually build this. He wasn't just looking for the the quick cash. Yeah, the vibe code did make it quicker,

[20:48] really well. Was that kind of the impression you got from it? Yeah, so it was started out with kind of organic ASO or app store monetization, people searching for prayer or those types of keywords, then going to paid

[21:05] influencer marketing, and then scaling with paid advertising. Mhm. Starting Well, now he says spending $2,500 a month to to drive traffic that way, or maybe even a little bit more cuz he says

[21:19] maybe even a little bit more cuz he says $25,000 a month is with 50% profit My guess is that probably doesn't include the app store's 30% take, and it probably you know, has some ad costs in there. So maybe net

[21:33] is $12,500 a month. Mhm. Yeah, that's good. Cuz I feel like I know for me as an entrepreneur, when things got really exciting was when I finally had something to sell that I believed in. Right? Like the first thing

[21:46] for me was my planner, but like if it's an app, the vibe coding can make that so much quicker where you can have it vibe coded, but it's still going to require you put in the work to market it. But I know that's what I've been craving for

[21:59] It's like I just need the right product or I need the right idea to get started on all these tactics I was learning. And I think vibe coding can help you get, something to dedicate your energy to selling.

[22:13] So Mau says the the creator of the prayer lock app says it took me 3 years and 10 different app building attempts to make this $25,000 a month. And he but I decided I never wanted to work a job in my life. So,

[22:27] not sure how he's paying the bills during those 3 years, but this is wasn't, you know, the very first thing that he built was a home run out of the going to test, I'm going to iterate. Yeah, this one only took me 3 days, but

[22:40] I've been at this for 3 years. It's kind of like every overnight success is 10 years in the making. Yeah. Yeah, good thing to remember. Get started, right? Just see you got to put in your dues to find the winner.

[22:53] Yeah. The subscriptions are ranging from around $10 to $80. It's $9.99 to $79.99. you know, per week, per month, per year, like depending on how big a time time

[23:06] frame you you chunk off on that. Wow. It's really interesting. Another talking about this, which we kind of talked about with the watch idea, but the power of having an audience. Like, you make your app, but then you

[23:20] need somebody to sell it to. And even if you've done eight different apps in the past and they all quote unquote failed because they didn't catch on. If you were building a list of customers who now know the style apps that you make,

[23:33] are curious about you, that's the big asset. Because then if you want to launch another app, it's way easier if you already have a list of people to send it to rather than starting completely from scratch.

[23:46] Right. Yeah, there's some some benefit to working in public. And I don't know years of, you know, trying stuff. Maybe some of it works, maybe some of it some of it works, maybe some of it doesn't. Um or if this is just a pure um

[23:58] it out into the market, and if it gets any sort of traction, then I'll double down and build out some more features. Yeah. Yeah. So he's also working on a you know, hey look, if this concept worked, how can I

[24:11] tapping into the functionality of the phone. So he said he's working on a step app next where it's like, well, you want to unlock your phone, go give me 100 talk. So I was like, wait, what other what other different pivots could there

[24:26] proven to work? And I think it's kind of tapping into the broader, you know, like the now watch, kind of this broader trends toward mindfulness and less time. And I think there's definitely something

[24:40] there. So he's doing well with it. Yeah. Yeah, and hopefully the next one will be easier. Now he's like kind of learned the hard things, and he can use really neat. Yeah, it's funny the app store

[24:53] renaissance where it's like, you know, early days of the iPhone, 2007, 8, 9, you know, it was a lot of interest the technical skills to do it. And now all of a sudden, here we are almost 20

[25:07] years later, and there's been this resurgence of app store submissions cuz point. Everybody can build an app. Yeah, so now the real struggle is getting people to buy yours.

[25:19] Cuz there's so And like I'm thinking back to that watch company. It's like if that guy already has the contacts, all these people, now it's just so much easier for him if he wants to make a mindfulness app, the the

[25:32] hard part is building the audience. Um them. So he already has that. Yeah, he's already got 7,000 physical product customers to market to. Yeah.

[25:45] testament to building in public for sure. This is the AI agent made him $250,000 while he slept. That's the clickbaity headline. We'll dive into the

[25:57] details here, but this is from Nat Eliason who's been uh you know, working in public or a you know, relatively public content creator especially on X for for many, many years. So he sets up Felix with

[26:11] OpenClaw. This is the name that he's given to his little OpenClaw bot. And it says, look, you are going to be the CEO, you're the CEO of this company, and your business. So these are kind of the the marching orders that he gives his his

[26:26] And it goes on to make, you know, the headline number $250,000 a relatively short period of time. And it's a little bit tricky to figure out what he's actually selling here. Um but

[26:40] I think the first thing was digital product sales related to, you know, how it's almost kind of circular referencing in a way

[26:53] it doesn't look like it's going out into the world and like solving other that like how to build your own AI isn't a problem, but it's very circular in a way. Yeah. He hired he created an AI agent to

[27:07] teach other people how to hire AI agents, right? There's a circle there It's like the old joke of, you know, how do you make money on the internet? It's >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a I feel like when I

[27:21] was reading about this guy, it just pushed my thinking on I am not expecting enough out of AI or I'm not like pushing it to do things that it could be. I had read this other article that I was reminded of with this one

[27:35] where somebody asked AI, what can I invest $1,000 in that would earn me the most over the next 30 days? And it said, basically told it give it $1,000 to make uh poly market bids where you like bid

[27:48] on things going on in the market. They're like a couple cents each. And uh but if you win, you might win like 6 cents, but you're five, six x'ing your money. But the guy has gone up to like almost 90 grand in

[28:01] has gone up to like almost 90 grand in an account now uh from AI, which is just both those stories like, why aren't I trying to create this AI machine to help make me more money? Yeah, it could find this little micro edge and kind of make

[28:16] these asymmetric bets. Yeah. Yeah, it's just uh responsibilities. Like now that I even have my own business of what's the AI bot that I can be giving to say, hey, I want you to do this. How

[28:32] can you opt like give it an actual role and just let it run wild with it and see and just let it run wild with it and see how far it can go. about what Nat's AI bot does. It says, it has an

[28:47] agency that builds and maintains fully functional AI employees for other companies. So not just digital products, but actually building and providing the service to other companies. The bot is handling the sales pipeline, emails,

[29:01] invoicing, all that stuff. Where it gets a little bit fuzzy is there's this whole, you know, crypto token element to it where a big chunk of the revenue, probably 2/3 or more. Yeah, like 150 of it, I

[29:15] Yeah, the revenue is is in Felix tokens. It's it's created its own cryptocurrency, which uh is ripe for you know, who knows. What what what's

[29:27] the inherent value in these tokens that he's he's created? I don't know, it's doing something. I interesting was the guy put in a lot of work to

[29:39] create what he called a soul. He like really formed this identity for this AI bot so that he had the capacity to go out and and have guidance on how to act within our world.

[29:56] to be doing for these AI bots. Yeah, it's a weird it's a weird time to be around. I've gotten a few cold email pitches from Pulsia, I believe it's called cuz the the signature on this says this company

[30:11] runs autonomously. And I'm like wait, what? You know, let me click on it. It's obviously written by AI, but like let me click on this see what it is. And you click on it and it's like oh, we're running thousands of companies

[30:23] research, it's doing outreach, it's doing payments, it's doing fulfillment. And it's like this is wild. Like at what point do we truly become kind of this the the trendy headline right now. Could you build a zero-person company? I was

[30:38] like well, where does that leave me? But it's a weird space. Yeah, it's interesting stuff. But for people who are doing this as a side hustle, creating those AI bots can make your time go so much further, right? If

[30:52] week to dedicate towards your side hustle, hopefully that can multiply it to be doing a lot of the tedious legwork. Yeah, we've got a full open claw episode coming up to figure

[31:06] out well, how do I build one of these for myself? Cuz this is like I'm infrastructure and well, how much access do you really give it and and everything like that, but we'll see. I think there's some definitely some use

[31:21] cases probably more within I don't know. I mean the exam the Polymarket trading example is like finding little arbitrage things before they get erased and wiped out. Like that's an interesting use case and you

[31:33] minimize your downside risk, experiment with it, have some fun, see what happens. But probably a better use case is to plug it in business. Like what could you do? What processes can you speed up or improve

[31:47] with an always-on assistant? Yeah. Yeah. All right, next one we're going Well, this is still an online example, but no AI involved. This is Christine

[32:00] Tyler Hill Elementary School Crossing Guard makes $14,000 with a monthly mailer, a physical paper mailer, good old-fashioned email. No no AI required

[32:12] here. So Christine is an artist and illustrator in Vermont and she starts noticing just like these little moments of gratitude and beauty in nature at the

[32:24] crosswalk every morning. The the geese that are flying by, the clouds, you know, the cute dog that's walking by in a sweater. And so she starts posting these monthly cloud reports, she calls them on Instagram. And and these are

[32:38] kind of hand, you know, illustrated, like kind of nice-looking things. So she builds up quite a following over there. In fact, at the time of this recording, In fact, at the time of this recording, she is over 50,000 followers. So this is

[32:50] probably predicated on, you know, audience first, product second. But then she launches the cloud report earlier this year. This is the eight-page written paper zine, uh, that she calls it, printed on, you know, nice cardstock

[33:04] and she mails it out to subscribers every month. $8 a month or $80 annually. And lands over 2,000 paying customers. Wall Street Journal reports, uh, $14,000

[33:16] observations at the crosswalk where she's making 14 bucks an hour. Yeah. It's incredible. I mean, this gets me excited cuz I different, but similar in a way. It's a paper product that you mail to somebody.

[33:30] I feel like now people are curious about holding something physical like that. There's such a different feel from like let me send you my free PDF of this to I'll mail it to your house and you can touch it, feel it, interact with it. It

[33:43] shows up in a certain type of packaging. It just creates more of a relationship people are physically reminded of you. You're not just another email in their I She's an artist, too. And I was looking

[33:58] on her Instagram. She does a good job of putting her personality what people are attracted to is she has this personality, very blue-collar, but relatable job,

[34:12] of the vibe you were getting? She's done a good job of putting her personality into it. Yeah, people I think want to support her first and foremost rather than like

[34:26] you know, if you don't get your little paper thing in the mail, like to be proactive and I want to support her as an artist. vibe than what's put out there. So many people on social media are like look at

[34:40] my Ferrari, like you should come buy my stuff, right? And she's like look at me, I'm directing traffic and I got pooped on by a bird today and come buy my so different. Yeah, I like this one for the recurring

[34:56] revenue element to it. I imagine as the social account continues to grow, then then so does the the customer base for the print Mhm. Yeah. And so I don't know if this is

[35:11] something that she's doing yet, but I know with my paper products, which it's very natural to put in a call to action for the next step bought one, you could have the call to action to go subscribe or to go

[35:26] get something else, but it's just it's natural and they they touch it, they feel it and they don't feel super sold because they still receive something physical of value. So I think it builds a good relationship.

[35:43] plug the Goal Crazy Planner and the physical product that you've got going on. So we will be back with more with Jason including his business idea donation for Side Hustle Show listeners coming up right after this.

[36:07] Veer from goalcrazy.com. Let's hear your business idea donation All right, is it all right if I give two? And they're for like two different types of people. Okay. And so the first one

[36:22] that comes to mind is if you've ever had like an an older dementia, Alzheimer's, you need something to do grandpa, he had Alzheimer's, we would look through lots of like scrapbooks.

[36:36] But I think it'd be so powerful if you made a book specifically targeted for older people. And kind of what's in my mind is like a children's book. You don't need to get a kids book. There's only a few pages. Lots times they're

[36:49] like cardboard paper or they're thicker paper, so it's easy to turn the pages. Mostly a picture, a couple sentences. Kind of like that style, like what would be a for a kid, but for the older people. So maybe instead of it being a a

[37:02] story about a a unicorn, it's a story about short story about somebody who was in World War II. Or somebody raising a family, somebody who was raising a farm, like something that they could relate to. But

[37:14] I think it could give them something to read, but then something their family and friends could sit down and read with them. And right now from me looking, I didn't see products like this on the market. You can get normal books with

[37:28] market. You can get normal books with extra large font, but there wasn't like like how children's books are. Like a new genre of book specifically targeted older people. And so I think like that could be great

[37:43] idea, but I think with AI, it would be pretty easy to build. You could have AI help you write a story, have it help you illustrate it. And if you're familiar with print on demand, and Amazon does print on demand where they can print

[37:55] your products on demand or there's a bunch of other companies out there, you could have AI help you write the story, design it, list it on Amazon and you won't even have to wrap up any inventory costs. It's just then getting the sales

[38:08] of this product. So tell tell me your thoughts >> Yeah, well, my my first thought is like you know, yeah, dementia is brutal and we've had some Alzheimer's in in the family and you kind of watch this slow

[38:23] almost be an unrecognizable as as the person that you once knew. And so it gives you I like that it gives you kind of a an activity when you go to visit or talk about. I like the scrapbook idea, you know,

[38:38] you I know that memory is in there somewhere. Like can we can we pull it Um it seems like maybe maybe this is a blue ocean. Like nobody else is doing it. I'm not sure what the market demand would be

[38:51] like here. Yeah. The nice thing is I don't think it would take a lot of upfront capital to try it. Like I'm thinking you could do it, have a dozen of these books printed out and

[39:03] just go to your local nursing home. And say like would you guys want to buy these? Or offer to give them to them for free and Do people actually use these? Is this just like a silly idea? But I think it

[39:16] could be pretty easily validated and if it works, I think you could burn and turn these books pretty quickly with AI and make a bunch of bucks. Yeah, does it seem does it seem ageist? Do you see I see the rejection being like, dude, I

[39:28] want a real book. Don't give me this, you know, kids Tyvek cardboard you know, board. Sorry. Maybe the cardboard pages is pushing it too much. I mean, this isn't like the the touch and feel. Like oh, feel the little furry page. Like for

[39:41] oh, feel the little furry page. Like for your kids book. But, uh Uh I just know when I've had family members who are at that, there's just this need. It's like, I want to sit

[39:54] with Grandpa and talk to him. But, what do you talk about? Because I can just talk about myself, but uh he's not in a place where he can answer questions. So, it's an activity to do.

[40:08] makes some scrapbooks, I think that would trump this idea for sure. But, some people, that's not their thing. Yeah. Well, a low-cost, easy to validate

[40:20] kind of on a low-risk basis and see what it what takes off. Yeah. Okay. So, this is like the idea that I'm thinking of more for like the at-home person who's a little more technical savvy. Other idea I have is flipping play sets.

[40:35] flipping couches. I feel like that's gotten some attention on the online. for our kids. And if you look on Facebook Marketplace, so many people have them listed for free. Because they just want to get their play set gone.

[40:50] them because they don't have the capacity to to go there. They don't have a vehicle to get this thing, unassemble it, and drive it back to their house. So, I'm thinking you start a business where you flip these. Like, if Nick If

[41:04] you have a play set listed on Facebook Marketplace for free, I would see that, screenshot it, list it for 500 bucks with free delivery. And then, if it, I'm going to message you and be like, "Hey, can I pick it up Thursday?"

[41:17] Get it from you for free and drive it to this person's house and keep 500 bucks. Now, this is going to require work and some sort of big vehicle. But, for more of the blue-collar or like like to do things with your hands, I think there

[41:32] could be good opportunity for this. Free products and you're providing a service of free delivery because that's what people need. Okay. Cuz at first, I was like, if your if your competitors are listing all

[41:45] these things for free. Okay, sure. I can just source free inventory. Great. there's still a bunch of free listings Why's Why's the customer going to buy from me if they could go and get it for

[41:58] free?" But, I really like this idea of, you know, almost selling it before you have it. Um which is somewhat risky cuz free stuff on Marketplace like does get scooped up pretty fast. But, I like this idea of well, maybe I could, you know,

[42:11] get a get a verbal yes from the from the seller and uh and then a verbal yes from here. And I like this way of, you know, screenshotting. I don't even have it I'm going to do this set up and tear down and I'll bring it to your house.

[42:26] Yeah. Yeah, cuz really what I'm selling is the service of picking it up. Or even if I saw you were selling a play set, I could send you a message and be like, "Hey, uh I'll I'll offer free delivery for 500

[42:40] bucks if you want to sell it for $500. Or kind of work it out with the seller, but otherwise, you just flip it. And if you start getting traction with it, it's well, good-size business flipping couches. And eventually, he had a store

[42:53] and a warehouse and employees. It's like, if you get traction with it, maybe and having a a yard where people can come look at them and buy them just like any other play set store, just heavily discounted.

[43:08] discounted. I like this arbitrage play where you In oftentimes, you'll find it in big, bulky, hard-to-move items where people stuff. And so, if you can come in with a pickup truck, with a dolly, or something

[43:21] like that and be willing to deal with the logistical pain of it, all of a Yeah. Just go there, unassemble it, put person's house. Yeah. I could you could easily make your

[43:35] in half a day doing this, I think. Depending on depending on how complex this is to tear down and rebuild. complete junk. So, you're going to have to get good at weighing that out so you

[43:48] ones. Play sets is a really interesting niche just once once your kids outgrow it, you're like, "Well, what do I do with this? I just need it gone." It's taking up space or we need to, you

[44:01] know, put a soccer net there instead or a baseball batting cage there instead. And now, you know, we got to get rid of this thing. Yeah. Um one thing that I couch sales, but I think it could is my friend who was flipping these couches.

[44:15] He would go to the couch stores that sell them new and he would just say, wants to get rid of an old couch, I'll pick it up for free uh and get it out of their house." And so then, those big box stores were sending him leads. Like,

[44:29] a couch from us. They have an old one. to pick it up and get rid of it. Well, now my other friend would just pick it customer, for the company that sold the new couch. But, I wonder if something

[44:43] similar happens with these play sets. Maybe not cuz probably buy one play set. But, you look at some of these play sets that are really they're pretty intense. a house that has a little little play set. And then, you got the

[44:57] person who has a lot of money and wants to buy the the big playground for the >> If you can offer, "Hey, when you sell one, if they have an existing, I'll pick it up for free, get it out of there completely free of charge." And then,

[45:09] they're sending you leads. Yeah, that's what I love that couch strategic partnership with the furniture stores. So, we bought some appliances a few years ago for a remodel and I forget if it was like, you know, free disposal

[45:21] of your old one or, you know, maybe it was a $40 charge. We'll haul the old the old stove away or something. But, he's like, "Well, do they scrap that? Do they send What do they do with that, right?" So, it's like, yeah, could you

[45:34] insert yourself into the middle of this transaction that's already happening? And saying, "Oh, that has value to me as a as a reseller. I will come in and pick Yeah. Yeah. So, hopefully somebody can give it a try and let us know in the the

[45:47] comments if it works. Yes, very cool. All right, let's move on to round three, the triple threat. The first step here is a marketing tactic that is working planner business. It could be on anything else that you're working on.

[46:01] Yeah. So, something unique that I've been able to do with my planner business familiar with the concept of FBA, selling on Amazon, having them fulfill products. So, I sell my planners and market them

[46:13] market them pretty aggressively on Amazon, but I use that as an engine to grow an audience. People buy my planner, it shows up, they get all these extra about once they open it that they can need to go put their email address in

[46:26] for. And then, I'm able to grow my own audience. Where I feel like other people who are selling on Amazon, they're spending money on ads on Amazon, but it's all to grow the Amazon ecosystem, which you're playing on somebody else's

[46:40] turf there. Whereas, I'm using it to grow an audience off of Amazon where then I can sell them other products, digital products, courses, coaching, whatever. But, Amazon is the lead engine. So, especially if somebody's in

[46:52] that FBA space already, it's like, how can you use that as an engine to grow your own audience, not just improve your ranking within there? Yeah, I look at Amazon as a as a lead source. Like, yeah, if I make money

[47:05] selling any of my books, great. But, I actually have one that I just updated up there for free on Kindle for exactly that reason. And inside the book are tons of references to the podcast, to the Facebook group, to, you know, bonus

[47:18] material. It's like, this is the entry point into the world, into the Side Hustle Nation ecosystem. And I want to have that like super low friction. But, paid to sell the product and by the way, come on in, the water's warm. There's

[47:32] where having a subscription product does make things easier cuz like, okay, if a subscription product. They're going to need another one once they finish it. Yeah, last three or four months and then, okay, now we're on to if I if I

[47:47] want another one. You need another one. Yeah. What kind of bonuses or incentives are you giving people to sign up for the email list? Free trainings, uh free like training videos on how to use the planner. And

[48:01] then, many of the exercises within there, they're download a printable version of it. Cuz sometimes, they might want to do it more than once depending on how many goals they have. So, they can get those assets

[48:14] from the planner. And something I've done now to incorporate my podcast in there is maybe there's a section on habit tracking, right? And in that section, I'll say, "Hey, if you want to list of training specific on habits, go

[48:28] download it here." And I'll send them to where I get their email address, but it'll be a list of podcast episodes of my own where where we talked about habits. So, then I'm still growing my email list and I'm growing my podcast

[48:40] all from starting with that planner. Okay. And you have a coaching service on know, the even if it's a subscription physical product, it's still, you know, somewhat limited or units. >> Yeah, cuz once I get them on my email

[48:53] them get a relationship with me and have regular calls to action to book a call regular calls to action to book a call with me about coaching.

[49:06] loving right now. Uh Manus. Maybe everybody else has already heard of it, but the Manus AI bot uh agent to to help me out with things. Like, it's

[49:19] got its own computer screen. Uh it's been helping me run some ads. It's been Uh yeah, push my thinking on what I can do with AI. I've never heard of this. This is

[49:31] >> No. Yeah, Manus, m a n u s. manus.im. So, they just got bought by Facebook for like a couple billion dollars. So, it's

[49:45] >> Okay. Yeah. So, and then like if I'm asking it integrate in with Facebook, if it's like web design or ads, I feel like that I haven't like experimented with this a bunch either both ways to see, but it

[50:01] seems like it should communicate a lot better if Meta actually owns it, but playing around with it, it's pretty incredible. So, like when when it's a question and it just spits it out. You'll ask it a question and you'll

[50:13] watch this one's computer screen actually going and doing the research. And you can watch along with it or if I want it to like, "Hey, do some stuff for my website." And I use GoHighLevel for that.

[50:27] need your help here." And it'll pull up its screen and then I'll help it and then it'll keep going again. It's like it has its own computer. It's like more like a person than you just put in the question and it answers with a

[50:41] response. Okay. I had never heard of this before. that's a cool one. Yeah. All right. How about your favorite book other than your own from the last 12

[50:54] other than your own from the last 12 months? 10x is easier than 2x by Dan Sullivan. Really pushed my thinking. What's something you doing as a result of that?

[51:10] bigger targets. Like even So, I've got a podcast going after thought I've been if I'm pitching other podcasts, going after them, setting targets that are

[51:24] bigger. An exercise that helped me out, which I think other business owners I would encourage them to do is writing out on a piece of paper just a rough profit and loss of your business with all the numbers 10x.

[51:38] Your revenue 10x, your expenses, your advertising 10x. And I feel like just what it would look like to 10x my advertisement. This is what it would look like to 10x how much I spend to vendors is also an opened up yep, if I

[51:51] want to get to that new top line number, here's the activities I'm going to have here's the activities I'm going to have to start doing. >> even just as you're describing this exercise, it's like

[52:04] significantly bigger business than it is today. clarify is all the stuff I have to say no to. It's kind of like, well, if I'm

[52:18] wouldn't be spending my time on all these little littler things. Like for me, really what that's clarified me to is the 10x, the clearest path to get to that number is really putting energy into my

[52:31] book and coaching program. Planner is kind of like part of that marketing funnel, but just selling like little one-off courses digital PDFs or downloads, it's just like nope,

[52:45] do something a little there. It's how do I make a simpler, a much simpler one path for my customers rather than lots of individual products. little bit to say what got me here is not going to get me there and to say I'm

[53:01] fundamentally different and more scalable if it's really going to be a 10x year. Or maybe it maybe it's going to take 5 years to get there, but it's there? Yeah.

[53:14] Yeah, I'll have to do less, get better at it, hire more people out. Probably that's been the most tangible, like the most recent thing is just I need to stop most recent thing is just I need to stop doing these things because 10x me would

[53:27] not be spending time on that. I need an AI agent like Manus to do it or hiring more vendors to work with. Running ads, web design, editing, making Yeah. Yeah, I like that. We had a

[53:42] guest on the show, I think Brian Gearan, said, you know, as the entrepreneur, as the CEO, your job is to live 1 year in the future and say, well, if I'm not from now, why am I doing it today? And kind of

[53:54] putting yourself in that in that place in that mindset. Well, the 10x version of me isn't going to be doing that. So, let's within reason, within the constraints of your reality. Like, okay, let's start to

[54:06] build some systems and guardrails and build the team around what it's going to take to get that. Yeah. Yeah, it's been like on that the title 10x is easier than 2x, people have been recommending

[54:18] feel like I would hear the title and think like, yep, I got it. I understand what the book's about. And really I had a friend finally buy it and mail it to me and it's like, Jason, you need to read this book. And I'm so glad I did

[54:31] because yes, that is the concept in the title, but he breaks it down into a way just really implementable. It pushed my thinking a lot more than I the title. Very good. Yeah.

[54:44] It's been a while since I've read that, so I will need to revisit it. We will link that up in the show notes for this episode as well as well as long as well different stories and resources that we've been talking about today. And

[54:57] Jason's book as well. It's Dream Driven, the step-by-step process to discover your perfect business idea and launch it this year. What's next for you? What's this year. What's next for you? What's got you excited these days?

[55:12] Probably the the next project that's on my horizon that I'm excited about is I've been selling these planners and I'm now having people reach out to become Goal Crazy Certified Coaches. Which again, it's like I had no idea all

[55:25] sell a planner business, but so now I have a beta group with six people becoming Goal Crazy Certified Coaches, which is really exciting. But of the things we were talking about earlier with those other products. It's

[55:40] like once you have your foot in the door and you're building an audience, more opportunities start opening up on the back end. So, product and if you have a product already, your mind needs to be thinking,

[55:52] selling them so you can help them in a deeper degree. scaling the coaching business is bringing on more coaches. And the And proactively about it. That's a great sign.

[56:10] It's been fun. Appreciate you joining me. goalcrazy.com If you are wondering what to listen to next, I encourage you to grab your own personalized Side Hustle Show playlist.

[56:22] answer a few short multiple choice questions. You do it right on your phone and it's going to spit back out 8 to 10 of our greatest hits episodes based on device, you can learn what works, and you can go make some more money this

[56:35] year. Again, hustle.show for that. Big thanks to Jason for sharing his insight. Thank you to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. is where to go to find all of the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.

[56:50] That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of The catch you in the next edition of The Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.