85: Side Hustles for Busy People (including Parents)

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0:42Because Marshalls believes everyone deserves access to the good stuff. Visit a Marshalls store near you or shop online at marshalls.com. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Rich Habits podcast, a top 10 business podcast on Spotify. My name is Austin Hankwitz, and I'm joined by my co-host, Robert Croak. Robert is a seasoned entrepreneur in his 50s with lifetime revenues of over 300 million, and I'm an entrepreneur in my late 20s with a background in finance and economics. Since quitting my full-time job in corporate finance a few years ago, I've built a seven-figure media business and actively advise some of the most well-known fintech companies around the world.

1:21Now, as the show name might suggest, every episode, we talk about rich habits as they relate to business, finance, and mindset. However, we try and bring you two unique perspectives, one from an industry veteran, which is Robert, and the other myself, someone who's still in the process of building wealth and figuring it all out. So Robert, what are we going to be talking about in today's episode? In today's episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, we're sharing our favorite side hustles for busy parents. As entrepreneurs, we know how hectic life can be, especially when you're balancing a full-time job and everything that comes along with it.

1:55But for some of you, you're also raising your children and trying to prepare them for the future. As we know, that can be a lot. And that's why this week's episode, we decided we're going to share some of our favorite side hustle ideas that might both fit into your schedule and offer meaningful income potential. We're going to talk through what to look for in a side hustle, why flexibility and scalability are key, and specific ideas that you can implement even if your time is limited. This episode is going to be a lot of fun, Robert. I know we've gotten a lot of questions inside the Rich Habits Network as of late, pretty much saying, hey guys, I've got two kids, but I need to make an extra$400,$600,$800 a month.

2:34What are some of your side hustle ideas? This episode is answering all those questions. Now, Robert, before we get started, why don't you share with the audience too as to why we think it's important to have a side hustle to begin with and then what that money could be used for? Yeah, I love this. and prefacing this episode is really important because so many people out there listening right now might be like, why would I want to side hustle? I already have a career. I already have a full-time job. But the bottom line is so many people that I deal with on a day-to-day basis might have that career, might already have a really nice job, but the problem is they're not quite making ends meet and living paycheck to paycheck, and they're not able to put away that 15 % a month or any meaningful amount of money to go towards retirement.

3:19And that's why I love the idea of a side hustle. If you can take that side hustle money and put it towards your investment accounts and your retirement and find a formula that works so you can get ahead and get out of the rat race of living paycheck to paycheck if you are. And not just living paycheck to paycheck. I mean, Robert, I wasn't living paycheck to paycheck when I had my side hustle. I think I was like 23, 24 years old. I was out of college. I was making 65, 75 ,000 a year at my job. And I was selling website templates to dog groomers. I was charging$1 ,000 for these websites and it was how I made extra income.

3:53And what did I do with that? I used that money to save up for a down payment on a house. I used that money to pay off credit card debt. I used that money to invest toward retirement, right? So this wasn't me just trying to kind of, you know, get out of the hamster wheel of living paycheck to paycheck because I know a lot of listeners aren't in that hamster wheel. But I do know a lot of listeners want to get ahead with their retirement. They want to maybe have a little extra every month that they could put to win that new down payment because they want to buy that next residence or they want to buy that next car or pay off that credit card debt or that medical debt just a little bit faster.

4:25And so if you are a busy parent listening right now, there's a ton of different side hustles that we're going to talk about in this episode. I think you just solved one of the great misnomers of the Internet. You don't even realize you just did it. One of the things that I think troubles people that are living, you know, paycheck to paycheck, or maybe they're doing okay, but they want to make extra money is that side hustle sounds beneath them. So I think right here today, we should rename the side hustle, make it more approachable and make it sound more profound. And we're going to change the name to supplemental hustle.

4:57I think that'll be great for people in the future. So they realize that it's not a side hustle that's beneath them, walking dogs or building these websites or any of this stuff. It's supplemental. That just sounds so much better to me that you're supplementing your income so you can have a greater future. So I really love that, calling it supplemental because I think that'll really change people's mindset towards adding additional income. Well, let's jump into the first idea here. And this idea came to me because it happened to me. Now, the first side hustle idea that Robert and I wanna share are the DoorDash, the Uber Eats, the Instacarts of the world, right?

5:34These are the apps on your phone. and you can go jump in the minivan, whatever car you have, and you can go make money while driving around and delivering things. Now, the reason why I wanted to include this, and it's the first one I thought of, was I was in Gatlinburg, Tennessee for a weekend last year, and I was at Dollywood, I was doing a whole thing, and my girlfriend and I decided to Uber eat some food back to the cabin we were renting. And this wonderful woman pulled up, and she delivered my food for me, and I looked in the back seat, and she had two children just sitting in the back seat with her.

6:02And so that's when it clicked, like, wait a second, She is a busy mother who's out here making some extra coin with her children, full supervision. They're on the iPad. They're playing the puzzle, whatever they're doing in the back seat. And she's not paying someone to watch the kids. The kids aren't alone somewhere unsafe. They're with her in the back of her car. And so this, you know, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Instacart is a little different. We'll talk about that one. But these are great places to start as someone who is busy and looking for a way to make an extra$200,$400,$600 a month of supplemental income.

6:34to put toward those retirement goals or the debt payoff, right? Now, Robert, we mentioned Instacart and here's why I think Instacart's a fun one. Now, I don't know about you, Robert, but I remember on the weekends and sometimes in the evenings during the week, I'd go with my mom to the grocery store. And so I'd have to follow her around. I'd be in the cart, I'm walking around, I'm holding her hand, I'm helping her find stuff, whatever. Imagine now shopping on someone's behalf via Instacart and bringing the kids with you to go do that, right? Again, you're not finding the babysitter. You don't have to go find someone to watch the kids.

7:00The kids aren't alone and unsafe. They're with you on the journey of getting some extra money. And if it's Instacart, congrats. You're now teaching your kid a wonderful life lesson of how to shop at a grocery store, find the discounts, do the right things, the checkout process, be nice to people. It's a whole thing. So the DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Instacart side hustle is my favorite for busy parents right now. So many people, you've witnessed it in our public lives. When I go live on TikTok, when we go live on Instagram, they talk about, oh, it's easy for you. You guys have money. Oh, it's easy for you.

7:30You guys have great careers. The problem is this is a victim mentality. And that's why I love services like Uber Eats, DoorDash and Instacart, because you can literally get started today. Literally. So there's no excuse to not making supplemental income or income at all because there's so many of these services available that you can literally start today. That's what I love about it. And one of my favorite stories about just being really intelligent about this supplemental hustle is I took an Uber last year at the Super Bowl. I got in this car. It was super clean. He had waters in the back. He had like all this stuff laid out.

8:05It was beautiful. And he was a very clean cut guy around 45 or 50. So I had to know the story. So I started talking to him. I'm like, so what do you do? How long have you been an Uber driver? He's like, oh, I'm a mechanical engineer. I make$150 ,000 a year. I have a wife and two kids. I'm like, well, why are you Uber driving? He goes, man, he goes, I love it. On Sundays, the kids and the wife go do the dance thing and they're doing all of that. He goes, I drive Uber every single Sunday for five or six hours and that money pays for all of our vacations every single year. And I was like, wow, this is so smart.

8:40And he's like, yeah, I've got it in a separate brokerage account, I invest it. And then when we wanna take our nice vacation, I don't have to take it out of my regular income that goes to the household. So I think this is a great story for everyone to realize. having supplemental income is not something to be frowned upon it's not something you should look down on it should be something you should look at as a way to accelerate yourself to financial freedom and get to retirement early because you could every sunday like this engineer gentleman you could sit around the house while the wife and kids are gone or you could be milling around in the house you know raking leaves or doing whatever but instead he chose every sunday to take four or five hours in Uber drive.

9:22And I love the story and the use of the funds. It's such a great story. So let's now move on to our second idea, which is staying on this idea of sort of using the apps that are out there. Very simple to download these different types of apps, but niching down a little bit. I would argue, Robert, that everyone in your neighborhood has a pet, right? We got dogs, we got cats, we got orangutans. I don't know what kind of pets y 'all got. Goats, baby goats, whatever maybe goats yeah hey i'll tell you what there's a goat down the street here for me in nashville using rover using some of these dog sitting apps i can't tell you how much thousands of dollars that i've spent over the last probably two and a half three years now where i'd go on a week-long vacation and i'd have to pay 746 dollars on rover one of these dog sitting apps to take my dog and have it sit at someone's house to be you know looked after i had a friend that was the executive assistant to a CEO of a$10 billion company.

10:15She was making a hundred some thousand dollars a year. I mean, this is a very legit job and she was making great money, but her favorite way to spend her weekends was dog sitting. And I remember asking her, how many dogs did you sit this weekend? And she's like, oh, I had four that came over for the weekend. I made about 350 ahead. So I was making a thousand dollars on the weekend, just sitting dogs. And I'm like, oh my gosh, right? So if you're a busy parent and you can't leave the house for whatever reason, you got to stay at home or you got to do these things. There's a ton of different people in the Facebook groups.

10:43This is on Rover. This is on whatever else. Hey guys, I've got some availability for dog sitting. I have a dog myself or I've got the bowls. I got the treats. I got whatever. I'm going to guarantee so many walks, whatever it is. There's a lot of opportunity out there to make money with pets. So if you can come up with some of that stuff, you're on the right track. Yeah. I look at it this way. I live in downtown St. Petersburg and it's all high rises. And when you look at the facts right now out there in the economy and in the world, especially in the United States, younger people are not having as many kids.

11:15They're really into animals, their pets and plants. And so I was talking to two women that live in my building and they walk dogs. And for the first year they were on Rover, then they pivoted off of Rover. Once they built a base of customers and they're doing it independently. And the one woman is very nice. And I'm like, I got to know the numbers. Explain to me the numbers. And she said she's on track to make six figures this year walking dogs in the neighborhood because there's so many affluent people in these four to six block radius of where I live. And all of them travel a lot or they're snowbirds and they just constantly need help with their animals.

11:53And so you think about it almost everyone loves dogs. I know I do and it's just such a great side hustle that pays Well, and it's so easy to get started because you don't have any upfront cost You don't have to invest anything with rover. You do a little training seminar I think it takes an hour and that's it and you are up and running So I love this one and an oddball part of this category is poop pickup We joke about it But there's so many companies out there that are absolutely printing money just cleaning up for affluent customers around these areas. So there's a lot of ways to make money in this category like Rover.

12:31And I really love this one. Right there with you. I remember when my girlfriend took past some time, she was really excited because she signed up for Rover. And every day she'd go and walk dogs, one, two, sometimes three dogs a day around the neighborhood, just in our neighborhood. And sure, we have about 100, maybe 200 houses in here, but this was her just having fun. And I went with her sometimes, right? So back to the parent idea of, oh, I got to take the kids with me. Whatever I do, the kids got to come. Maybe the kids go to the grocery store at the Instacart or they go to the car with you for the Uber Eats and delivery.

12:58Maybe they go to the high rise and they pick up the dog with you and you guys can walk around. They can pet the dog and enjoy themselves. I mean, these are all side hustle ideas that are kid friendly and really thinking about sort of having that flexibility and that scalability. You know, I remember let's go way back to some of my side hustles. One of my funniest side hustles ever is back when Faygo was really, really popular. And we used to buy Faygo locally and sell it on eBay to all the people that lived in California and other parts of the country where Faygo wasn't available. And they just love the flavors of Faygo.

13:33And we would arbitrage that and sell a ton of it online. So there's always a way to make money if you're willing to put yourself out there and figure it out. 100%. Now, moving on to our next side hustle idea. This one's a little bit more for the person who has to stay home. Maybe they're tech savvy. Maybe they're really good on the computer, sending scheduling emails, things like that. And that's potentially becoming a virtual assistant, right? More and more businesses are hiring virtual assistants to handle these administrative tasks like email management, scheduling, and sometimes even customer service.

14:07So for parents who are already juggling the family life, this can be a natural fit for you. You're essentially getting paid to do tasks you probably already have a knack for if you're someone who's good with technology. You can set your own hours, and as you build up your experience, you can begin to maybe specialize in specific services like social media management, or even, you know, leaning into different types of platforms like Monday.com or Asana for project coordination to increase your earning potential. So being a virtual assistant in 2024 and 2025 especially is a no-brainer for someone who understands using AI, understands how to use some of these different technologies, has a decent at-home setup, kind of like what Robert and I do here, and aren't afraid to put in the hours on the keyboard.

14:49Yeah, there's just so many ways. If you're doing this from home and doing it anything like a virtual assistant or a tutor, there's just hundreds and hundreds of options you can do. It could be teaching a language. It could be reading. It could be so many different things to make this extra money every single month. And that's why I love a podcast episode like this, because I think what it does, everyone hears about these things, but I don't think they take action as much as they should. And I think this episode, and I hope this episode really opens people up to that, to the idea that what if I made an extra$500 to$1 ,000 a month from home or in an exterior side hustle where you're out and about, and I did all of that and took all that money and just invested it.

15:35It would be life-changing for most people, and that's why I love this episode, talking about ways that are very easy and cost nothing to get started. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, just give yourself the goal, right? I think a lot of us, we might get intimidated by the, oh gosh, Austin's selling these websites for$1 ,000. I could never make$1 ,000 doing that, or oh man, I got to go sign up for Uber, that's a lot of work, or oh, I got to go do this or that. Just make yourself a goal of making your first$100 of supplemental income. I don't care how it gets done. But once you make that first$100 and it hits your Venmo or your cash app or your bank account or however you're making this money, then you really begin to realize, wait a second, I think I can make$200.

16:13I think I can make$500. I can go make$1 ,000. And so to Robert's point, by putting this money in a brokerage account or by using this money to pay off high interest debt, you just get to see very clearly the positive impact on your net worth and your long-term financial future of having this earned income here, the supplemental income. So it's just such a fun episode talking about this. Now, the last point I want to share, and we've talked about this one in the past, but recently, Robert, you've been leading in on it. It's been a lot of fun. And I've got a lot of friends that are doing this as well.

16:43I mean, it is such a great idea, especially if you're a creative person who likes to be in front of the camera. And that is a TikTok shop affiliate. Becoming an affiliate on TikTok, right? You're scrolling your For You page. You see these people that are talking about a charger. Or, for example, this is a power bank by Anchor. And I paid about$80 for it and I found it on my TikTok for you page. And I guarantee the person who made the video about that, that caught my eye and maybe want to buy it, made 10, 15, maybe$20 of commission just by me buying a product I know I needed. So TikTok shop affiliates are a lot of fun.

17:17There's a ton of different products out there. There's clothing, there's electronics, there's silly bands, there's puzzles. There's a lot of cool things that you guys can affiliate and make videos about. have them go viral and make commission as people buy the product that you're trying to talk about and have go viral. So Robert, I'll pause there. What's your perspective on TikTok shop and using it as a way as a side hustle? I think it is 100 % the gold rush of the internet right now. And I want to be very, very clear. So many people that think being an affiliate means you have to have 50 or 100 or 250 ,000 followers.

17:51Well, I'll tell you what I can tell you for firsthand, You don't. Right now we have a girl, very nice young lady that's working with us. She has under 10 ,000 followers on TikTok. She's creative and she is a Silly Bands affiliate. And for the month of September, she made over$15 ,000. That's right. $15 ,000 for herself because she went viral multiple times promoting the Silly Band's product. So if you think about that$15 ,000 off of her commissions from us in one month, that's life-changing money for most people. And it doesn't have to be crazy. You could have 3 ,000, 4 ,000, 5 ,000 followers, 6 ,000 followers, and still make maybe 500 to$2 ,000 even if you don't go really viral like she did.

18:41And I think it's the easiest money as long as you do a few things. Make sure you put out good content, actually work to make the content good. And then I would say number two important is pick products that align with your audience, even if you have a small audience. Because if your audience is mostly XYZ, you don't wanna pick a product that doesn't align with them. So you wanna make sure that the product selection aligns with your audience and what you believe they would wanna buy that they think is fun or cool or is needed. So I love TikTok shop affiliates and we're seeing it firsthand every single day with Silly Bands.

19:16of how crazy we are going. And right now it's for Halloween. We're doing these special buckets for Halloween for all the people out there that don't really want to give away candy because of the liabilities or they're fearful. And Silly Bands is such a great product to give away. So just keep that in mind. TikTok shop affiliates are crushing it and there's gotta be something out there you could sell and give it a try. And this could be, you know, someone who might be on the younger side, let's say in your 20s or 30s, this could be something that you and your partner do, right? Hey, I'm going to make a video of you using or wearing this t-shirt or this hat or, you know, explaining something like this or that that people might want.

19:55I mean, let me just log into my TikTok real quick, Robert, and show people some of the products that they can use. All right. So just on my TikTok shop landing page, products that I can affiliate if I wanted to. Some really cool sneakers from Reebok. Some of these Jerry fuel cans. A couple of t-shirts. I'm seeing some chargers. Of course, I see silly bands. Even books, right? Here's a book that I've read that I can make a video about. Tons of different things now that are just sunglasses. I mean, there's so many cool things on here that if I want to make a video wearing some sunglasses and telling people, hey, these are my favorite, whatever is how I wear them, this is what I like about them.

20:28If you want to buy them, here's the link. I would get commissioned for that. And now anyone can go do that themselves as a side hustle at home. Maybe, kind of coming back to the idea of parents and children, maybe it's a child's product. I saw something on here about a child using magnets to, you know, instead of the iPad, the kids using a pen with magnets and little balls to like play around. Maybe your child can help you sell this really cool, you know, product or whatever that you might be affiliating. So I guess what we're trying to say here is that there are so many different ways to make money as a busy parent.

20:58No matter if you've got the capital to start a new business, you have no capital. All you have is time. All you have is a cell phone with a camera on it and TikTok. I mean, there's tons of different ways, but just know that having the supplemental income is not something that you should be afraid of or ashamed of making. It's going to help you move closer to reaching your financial goals or in that guy's case, taking his family on a wonderful vacation once a year. Yeah. And one of the things for me that I would say is a key takeaway here is understanding. You always hear me talk about income in buckets.

21:32A side hustle, this supplemental hustle, does not need to be$5 ,000 or$10 ,000 a month. It could literally be, I want to make$800 a month so I can put it towards investing. I want to make$500 a month because we want to renovate our kitchen in two years. And that's going to pay for the kitchen. You should have a goal for it. And you should have an idea of how you can scale it. Because we want to make sure whatever this supplemental hustle is, that it fits with your skill set and your lifestyle. So you can implement it into your daily life seamlessly, and then reap the rewards from the financial benefits.

22:07And that's just it. We just really want to help everyone understand that yes, groceries are expensive right now. Insurance is expensive. Everything is rent is expensive. But guess what? There's always a workaround to set yourself up for financial freedom if you're willing to listen and you're willing to learn. What a awesome episode of the Rich Habits podcast this week, Robert. I hope that you all really enjoyed this. And before we move on to our Q &A section of the episode, I want to remind people, hit us with a follow, if that's a subscribe on YouTube, a follow on Spotify or Apple or wherever you listen.

22:39But also more importantly, if you know someone who's looking for some side hustle inspiration that might be a busy parent, maybe it's your cousin, maybe it's your niece, maybe it's your sister or your aunt. You have someone in your network, in your community that's looking for ways to make some extra money online and you think this episode could be helpful for them, send it to them. Share this episode with a friend. We love it when you all do that and it really means the world to us. Now let's take a moment to give a quick shout out to one of today's sponsors, Mobi. The Mobi app provides busy professionals with a filtered view on the most important financial news of the day and latest research on profitable trends in the stock market, all with notifications straight to your phone that only take three to five minutes to read.

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