Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing)
Nick Loper, Master the Art of Side Hustles to Create Lasting Freedom | Entrepreneurship | YAPClassic
Fri, 27 Dec 2024
Eager to use his spare time productively, Nick Loper started his first side hustle, ShoeSniper.com. Throughout the decade he spent running the footwear comparison site, he consistently experimented with other income streams, including freelancing, affiliate marketing, and self-publishing. But when his business hit one of its lowest points, Nick found himself asking, “What do I truly want to be known for?” While having dinner with his boss one night, he managed to beat the nerves and summon the courage to quit his job. Then, he poured his energy into building Side Hustle Nation, a community helping millions of people find freedom through side hustles. In this episode, Nick shares practical advice on how you can start and grow a profitable side hustle of your own. In this episode, Hala and Nick will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:35) Side Hustles That Stick (03:16) Breaking Your Comfort Zone (04:59) Nick’s First Side Hustle (08:05) Side Hustle or Second Job? (09:17) Why Millennials Love Side Hustles (11:00) Digital Tools That Make Side Hustles Easy (12:25) The Three Laws of Side Hustles (16:49) Simple Ways to Test Your Business Idea (20:28) Side Hustles You Can Start Right Now (24:23) Turning Niche Skills Into Big Cash (26:52) When Should You Quit Your Job? Nick Loper is the founder of Side Hustle Nation and the host of The Side Hustle Show, one of the top podcasts for entrepreneurs. His journey started while juggling a corporate job and building a footwear comparison shopping site on the side, which eventually led him to full-time entrepreneurship. Nick is the author of bestselling books like Buy Buttons and $1,000 100 Ways, offering actionable insights into building sustainable income streams. His work has been featured in Forbes, CNBC, and Entrepreneur, and his Side Hustle Nation community is a hub for thousands of hustlers worldwide. Resources Mentioned: Nick’s Podcast, The Side Hustle Show: https://apple.co/4fhvMCg Sponsored By: Airbnb - Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host Found - Try Found for FREE at found.com/profiting Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new All Show Keywords: Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset. Career & Entrepreneurship Career, Success, Entrepreneurship, Productivity, Careers, Startup, Entrepreneurs, Business Ideas, Growth Hacks, Career Development, Money Management, Opportunities, Professionals, Workplace, Career podcast, Entrepreneurship podcast
Chapter 1: What is a side hustle and how can it benefit me?
Today's episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb, Open Phone, Shopify, Mercury, Built, Indeed, and Microsoft Teams. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com slash deals. Yep, gang, gang, gang. Earlier this week, we aired my latest interview with Mr. Side Hustle himself, Nick Loper.
In that episode, we talked about his very first appearance on the show. That was episode 10, when he was one of my first ever guests. I was a baby podcaster in this episode. Well, now's your chance to experience that conversation as well in this Yap Classic episode.
Now, this was recorded back in 2018, so it may sound a bit different than the podcast does today, but this is so much more than just an interesting archive exercise. And that's because Nick shares some solid gold nuggets of wisdom that are still useful today.
You're going to hear Nick talk about his very first side hustle, what he calls the three laws of side hustle physics, as well as which personality types do especially well when it comes to side hustles. So if you're considering a new side hustle or looking to expand an existing one, then why not prime yourself with a double dose of Nick Loper this week? You won't regret it.
Without further ado, I bring you Nick Loper. So I thought that we could get started with getting acquainted. So an icebreaker, if you will. I was on your website and I saw this list of 25 facts about yourself, one of which I found really interesting. You took a cold shower for 500 days in a row. Can you tell me about that? Why on earth did you do that?
I know, it sounds awful now. So this was kind of in the 2014 to 2015 timeframe. It started actually with a guest of mine on the Side Hustle show who was talking about taking cold showers, starting out as a fat-burning hack to boost your metabolism for the rest of the day because you're going to expend calories, like heating your body up long after the shower is over.
But then what he found was it was effective for that. But what he also found, it was effective for just like motivation. And he's like, if this is the hardest thing that I have to do today, and some days it's really hard because it sucks. You just, you feel like you're ready to tackle anything. And I kind of found the same thing.
And I said on air, I was like, you know what, that sounds awful, but let me give it a shot. And some good things started happening. It might've been totally placebo, but you know, at that time started to get more coaching classes. clients, like traffic started to pick up. I don't know, like for whatever reason, I was into it. And so I did it for over a year. I guess it was effective.
Maybe it was what I needed at that time.
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Chapter 2: What are the three laws of side hustles?
Chapter 3: Why do millennials love side hustles?
Chapter 4: How can I test my business idea effectively?
A lot of them. And so my days of experimenting with a lot of this stuff are kind of limited. So I used to do some freelancing, used to do some e-commerce experiments with like Amazon and eBay. And I still do a little bit of that, but that's kind of taken the back burner. The Side Hustle blog has... become the main focus.
But there still are a dozen income streams related to that and not related to that through self-publishing, through affiliate marketing on the site and on a couple other sites that I still run. Sadly, the shoe site no longer exists, but some other sites that were started during that time are still around, starting some experiments in the investing world.
And it all adds up versus trying to rely on one source of income, having a single point of failure.
Yeah, so to that point, why do you prefer or recommend having side hustles over a nine to five job?
Well, not necessarily a preference one over the other, but the ultimate freedom, right, is control over your calendar. How do you spend your time? How do you spend your days? And if you can piece together an income on your own terms rather than on somebody else's terms, you're more likely to have that freedom. So that's kind of where it came from for me.
And I would definitely advocate focus first, simplify first, and then diversify second. So, you know, try and get one thing, one business, one income stream off the ground before going crazy and trying six things, you know, with an unfocused effort, because I think that's harder to see results from.
Why don't you give some context to our listeners about Side Hustle Nation? So like, what is Side Hustle Nation?
Basically just a blog and podcast for people trying to make extra money outside of traditional employment. At the very low end of that, it could be like babysitting, walking dogs, delivering pizzas. I think all of those count as side hustles. There's a connotation that...
a side hustle has a little bit more of an entrepreneurial upside where maybe you're not directly trading hours for dollars or maybe there's this vision, this hope, this dream that it could become something bigger as it definitely did for me with the shoe business.
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Chapter 5: When should I quit my job for my side hustle?
Chapter 6: What digital tools can make side hustles easier?
That's funny. That sounds horrible. So how did you become the chief side hustler at Side Hustle Nation? Tell us about yourself, your journey, how you got started with it all.
My original side hustle was, when I was working corporate, was a footwear comparison shopping site. It was called Shoesniper.com. It would aggregate the product catalogs from Zappos and Amazon and all these other online footwear retailers and tell you where you could find the best price on your next pair of shoes. It earned money as an affiliate.
If somebody went and bought that pair of shoes through Amazon, the site would get a commission. While I was running that, the site had a almost a 10-year run, was always looking for stuff on the side. And it was kind of like during one of these lower points of that business, doing some soul searching, being like, well, what do you want to be known for when people Google you?
What do you get excited about talking about? And it was that prospect of lower risk entrepreneurship. How do I build a business on the side? How do I make extra money that really never gets old and still doesn't get old? Because there's a million and one creative ways that people are doing it. And that's kind of where the Side Hustle Show and the Side Hustle Nation blog kind of were born from.
So right now, are you a side hustler? Like, how many side hustles do you have?
A lot of them. And so my days of experimenting with a lot of this stuff are kind of limited. So I used to do some freelancing, used to do some e-commerce experiments with like Amazon and eBay. And I still do a little bit of that, but that's kind of taken the back burner. The Side Hustle blog has... become the main focus.
But there still are a dozen income streams related to that and not related to that through self-publishing, through affiliate marketing on the site and on a couple other sites that I still run. Sadly, the shoe site no longer exists, but some other sites that were started during that time are still around, starting some experiments in the investing world.
And it all adds up versus trying to rely on one source of income, having a single point of failure.
Yeah, so to that point, why do you prefer or recommend having side hustles over a nine to five job?
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Chapter 7: How do I start a profitable side hustle right now?
Well, not necessarily a preference one over the other, but the ultimate freedom, right, is control over your calendar. How do you spend your time? How do you spend your days? And if you can piece together an income on your own terms rather than on somebody else's terms, you're more likely to have that freedom. So that's kind of where it came from for me.
And I would definitely advocate focus first, simplify first, and then diversify second. So, you know, try and get one thing, one business, one income stream off the ground before going crazy and trying six things, you know, with an unfocused effort, because I think that's harder to see results from.
Why don't you give some context to our listeners about Side Hustle Nation? So like, what is Side Hustle Nation?
Basically just a blog and podcast for people trying to make extra money outside of traditional employment. At the very low end of that, it could be like babysitting, walking dogs, delivering pizzas. I think all of those count as side hustles. There's a connotation that...
a side hustle has a little bit more of an entrepreneurial upside where maybe you're not directly trading hours for dollars or maybe there's this vision, this hope, this dream that it could become something bigger as it definitely did for me with the shoe business.
I have a little trouble distinguishing a side hustle from a part-time job or a second job. How do you personally define what a side hustle is?
Probably the textbook definition would be that upside potential. It's something that you have ownership over. Maybe it's an asset that you own versus, okay, I drive for Uber. or I'm delivering pizzas, or I'm doing Instacart deliveries or something like that.
That absolutely counts as a side hustle in my mind, but at the same time, you're limited on how much you can do by your hours in the day versus with you starting The podcast, it's all of a sudden from a single mic and two people having a conversation, you could reach thousands and thousands of people and that is really powerful.
It becomes a little bit more leveraged and I think there's a lot more upside. Even just like starting a freelancing business, like I'm going to do freelance writing, I'm going to do freelance podcast editing, whatever it is.
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