Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Nick Loper: Side Hustle Secrets Every Aspiring Entrepreneur Needs to Know | Entrepreneurship | E325
Mon, 23 Dec 2024
From launching a comparison shopping site for shoes to creating a directory of virtual assistants, Nick Loper is the king of side hustles. Although he started out during the early days of the internet, when there were fewer resources and less user-friendly tools, he figured it out and kept experimenting. Nick tried many different side hustles, earning lessons from each one and refining his approach. Eventually, he created Side Hustle Nation, his hugely successful platform for empowering aspiring entrepreneurs to build profitable side hustles. In this episode, Nick and Hala discuss how to create and execute a successful side hustle, no matter your skill set. In this episode, Hala and Nick will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:04) The Rise of Side Hustles (04:20) Nick's First Side Hustle Experiments (06:32) Making Money from Podcasting (10:38) Why Everyone Needs a Side Hustle (13:49) Thriving in a Recession with Side Hustles (20:11) Is AI the Future of Side Hustles? (24:04) Launching a Service Business (27:57) Turning Ideas into Products (30:05) Does Dropshipping Still Work? (32:01) Real-Life Side Hustle Scenarios (43:06) No-Skill Hustles That Actually Work (49:02) How to Track Your Profitability 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://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-side-hustle-show/id655135292 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 are the benefits of having a side hustle?
Happy to be back. Thanks for having me.
Of course. So fun fact, I was looking back in the archives and I realized that you came on the podcast back in 2018, episode 10. You were one of the first podcasters and people in general that I've ever interviewed. And I think it's just so awesome because you were somebody that I looked up to.
And now everything is so full circle because I'm not only interviewing you again on the podcast, you're in my podcast network. We work together. And so I just feel like it's just a beautiful moment right now.
It was one of these things where I think you reached out, whatever that was, 2017, 2018. And it's like, this girl's a go-getter. You know, she's going places. You know, want to watch this journey. And it's been really inspiring to see what you built starting as a side project and into this media behemoth conglomerate that you've got going on now.
Thank you. I really appreciate that. I appreciate you taking a chance on me. And And we were talking about remote work and the future of remote work, not even realizing that two years later, everything would accelerate with COVID. And so my first question to you is, give us the evolution of side hustles. How did it start? When did it start to pick up steam? And where are we at now?
Yeah, I don't think it's a new concept by any means. I think previous generations would have called it moonlighting or having a second job. And it might have looked like bartending on the weekends or delivering pizzas or having a rental property.
But the realm of potential side hustles has absolutely expanded in the last 10 years with the rise of peer-to-peer gig economy type of apps, plug-and-play side hustles. Sign up for Uber and go drive around or do DoorDash and stuff like that. There's a peer-to-peer platform for just about anything.
If you have an underutilized asset in your life, whether it's your house or your car or, you know, watching other people's dogs, there's all sorts of different things that you can do. And Side Hustle Nation has been a beneficiary of that rising tide of interest. inside hustles over the last 10 or 12 years. And it's become much more mainstream.
And I think that's one part out of a necessity where like housing, healthcare, education, some big ticket expenses have not gotten any cheaper. Wages by and large have not kept pace with some of those big ticket increases in expenses. And so approaching it out of necessity on the one hand, and then approaching it out of this proactive desire to spend your free time more and
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Chapter 2: How have side hustles evolved over the years?
Side hustles have totally taken over. I feel like everybody I know has a side hustle. So you are famous for having a lot of side hustles. And I know in the past you used to like break down how much money you make on your side hustles. So talk to us about the side hustles that you did six years ago, 10 years ago versus the ones that you're doing today.
My very first side hustle, aside from painting houses in college, like, I don't know if that counts, but the first online side hustle was a comparison shopping site for shoes. Like in the early days of the internet, 10 different stores have this pair of shoes that you're looking at. We'll tell you where to find the best price.
It was an affiliate marketing type of business where those stores would pay a finder's fee. They would pay a commission for driving sales to their sites. That was a good one. I started a virtual assistant directory and review platform called Virtual Assistant Assistant. Started in 2011, sold in 2020. That...
I was really born out of my own experience and anxiety around working with virtual team members. Of all the different companies, which ones are legit? Are they going to steal my idea? How does it work with paying them and taxes? All of these rookie questions, but then putting the directory and kind of having a front row seat as that industry really grew and expanded over that time too.
That was the hypothesis in the early days of Side Hustle Nation, where I'm going to be the guinea pig. I'm going to be the tester. I'm going to try out all these different things and report back on the results. And in the early days, that was freelance writing, a little bit of freelance book editing for nonfiction authors. Started with like a gig on Fiverr. Hey, I'll proofread your book. And as
Most books are a lot more than 500 words, but it ended up to be some pretty sizable gigs. I did a lot of like Amazon FBA clearance arbitrage in those early years because somebody told me about it on the podcast. It's like, there's no way in the era of big data that this is actually a thing.
But sure enough, you go to Walmart, you scan the products, and you're like, oh, okay, it says there's profit here. Then you ship it in and it sells immediately. And you're like... okay, I guess this is a thing, you know, doing that kind of thing, selling digital products, creating online courses on Udemy, doing the self-publishing thing, trying my hand in a bunch of different areas.
And I think it was a ton of fun to play around and do those experiments.
Now today, one of your biggest side hustles is podcasting. So talk to us about how you monetize your podcast.
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Chapter 3: What are some successful side hustle ideas during tough times?
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Chapter 4: How does AI transform the side hustle landscape?
Maybe another example is the world of podcasting, especially during the pandemic. Well, everybody and their brother is starting a podcast. And so what shovels could you sell into that gold rush? Maybe it's editing services. Maybe it's the ad broker sales. Maybe it's the recording platform software.
If you have more technical development side of things, microphones, thinking of what are those trends and gold rushes that you could go and provide some type of service for.
AI might be a good one now.
Sure. Maybe you're an early adopter. How can you use AI tools to provide some sort of service to somebody who either doesn't know how to do it, doesn't want to learn, and they can improve some process flow in that way. We've seen people piggybacking on the popularity of other software tools, where if you are a
Notion expert or a pipe drive expert or HubSpot or HoneyBook was one that we had on the show recently. You can help other companies implement this. You've already got the proven templates. And the advantage is there's already some level of awareness and search demand. People are typing in questions into YouTube about these different software tools. Well, how do I do such and such in this thing?
You create that video content and, you know, hey, I'm an Asana consultant and today we're going to learn how to do blah, blah, blah in Asana or HubSpot or QuickBooks or whatever it is.
Also, Airbnb is a great example. When Airbnb got popular, then you have the Airbnb management, the Airbnb cleaners.
Totally, totally. Yeah, the furnishings, everything.
Okay, so what about the most profitable side hustles or maybe some of the hottest new side hustles that you can talk about?
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Chapter 5: What are the most profitable side hustles today?
Yeah, as you think about what's my value add layer, is it going to be customer support? Is it going to be some sort of consultation? Oh, on your golf simulator, are you an insider in that space? Like, do you know which ones are actually better and help customers drive their decision rather than just purely competing on price?
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Chapter 6: What are common disadvantages of service-based side hustles?
I totally agree with that. And something that I read of yours that I thought was really interesting is that you actually consider a side hustle being growing an audience, right? You call it an audience business. So talk to us about why having an audience in itself can be a side hustle with multiple avenues.
Yeah, this is probably tier three, tier one services, tier two products. Tier three is this really flexible hybrid content-based business, audience-based business where it could be a social following, it could be a blog following, a podcast following, a YouTube following. And once you have people paying attention, the entire playbook opens up.
Yeah, sure, you could sell services, you could sell products, you could sell attention in the form of advertising or affiliate partnerships, but it really is a powerful place to play. And that's really where I've spent the bulk of my side hustle and entrepreneurial time over the last decade.
10 years to try and figure out how to get more traffic, how to get more listeners, how to get more email subscribers and plan in that space. Because the scale is almost infinite, right? It takes, as you know, the same effort and energy and investment to create an episode, a podcast episode that 10 people listen to or 10,000 people listen to or 100,000 people.
And so it's a really unique platform in that way. And the same thing with social content or video content.
Okay, so scenario number three, and this is something I didn't realize you would have so much experience with, but apparently you do. So you want to be a virtual assistant, but you find there's too much competition. How would you stand out?
Yeah, you got to niche down. And so to say I'm a general virtual assistant, it's kind of a race to the bottom. But if you say I am your QuickBooks bookkeeping assistant, okay, now I've got a lane that I can play in. Or I am your funnel optimization assistant. I am your community manager. I am your... podcast editing provider, lots of different sub-niches.
You can even ask ChatGPT, what are a hundred different services I could offer as a virtual assistant? And there's going to be a few on that list where you're like, I know how to do that. And even if you're not completely, you know, the world's foremost expert on that, I guarantee you will be after you get a couple of clients to do the thing.
And then you can start to agency-fy that, you can start to productize that. And I You might have some fun doing it. Or you might find, I really didn't like doing that. I'm going to try option B. Go try something else.
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Chapter 7: How can you scale a service-based side hustle?
Oh, I like this one. This is actually my wife's side hustle. So she does wedding photography. She does family photos for holiday cards and stuff like that. What it was for them from hobbyist to professional was getting up the nerve. And this was 10 plus years ago. But add on Craigslist, we'll shoot your wedding. Her and her partner will shoot your wedding for 200 bucks.
I think it was like starting super, super low because in this business, portfolio sells. if I am a bride and you don't have any wedding pictures, you're going to have to cut me a real good deal for me to take a chance on our wedding day. But that's what they did. And they booked up and I was like, who is looking for wedding photography on Craigslist?
And maybe today it would be Facebook groups or Facebook marketplace, you know, different places to play. But in that era, you know, that site had some eyeballs and sure enough, they booked up 10 or 12 weddings, you know, they raised their prices with each one. And now they charge four or $5,000 for this wedding package.
But they had to have that portfolio to build up the experience of doing it live under the pressure, like a family photography, like, okay, it didn't work. We'll just do it again next weekend. We're not going to restage this whole weddings.
We got to get it right the first time to building up the confidence to do that and building up the confidence to charge more and more in land, higher paying clients, better venues. and all of that, and lots of cool stuff.
So they found a strategic partnership with one of the wedding venues in California, whereas like, and the conversation might be as simple as what does it take to get on your preferred vendor list? Who are the companies that you work with over and over again? And they're like, fill out this application or, you know, make sure you have this insurance and we'll add you.
Like it was not a difficult process. And now all of a sudden, kind of a steady stream of weddings come through there. It could be, One cool one, partnering with the local school PTA, like if they have a silent auction, okay, we'll auction off a photo session. So we get in front of all the parents at that school and you just kind of start the word of mouth.
It's like micro local influencer marketing almost. It only takes one person who knows a lot of other families to start to refer you out. Yeah.
Such good tips there. Okay, so a lot of the stuff that we were talking about so far has been about skills, scaling out our skills. Even some of the e-commerce stuff takes a bit of skills. What if somebody's like, listen, like, Nick, I don't have any skills. What are some no skill side hustles that I can tackle?
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