AAR07 - Building a Successful, Sustainable Side Gig with Tyler Nash

24:14Those are things that's very important to me, especially scheduling, my time is very important to me and I will absolutely prioritize my time over a little bit of spare money, you know, if I have to choose one or the other and something like working a ton of the hours at the school, you know, maybe you're not going to be able to have the biggest impact because maybe you're going to be kind of boxed in a little bit more than you would otherwise. It's not really going to be scalable because you're only going to be able to work so many hours and work with so many kids during, you know, school hours or whatever.

24:42And you're not going to have the flexibility to schedule how you want. But just as an example, if she instead was able to do some tutoring on the side that could scale up to a whole business. You know, in the end could be hiring people, working with other people and, and be able to work her own hours, whatever works best for her. And I think that those are the, the beautiful end goals to, to have. And as a little bit of a background stuff I've done in the past personally is I've done some blog editing before I've done some blog writing and editing actually for, for primarily financial related stuff.

25:12I've done stuff for other websites and then a lot for IFB as well for the Investing for Reconers podcast. I also made some YouTube videos at some point in the past. Again, financial focus. Pretty much all my side hustles have actually been financial focus now that I think about it. I also did some web development, which even though I really enjoyed it, I would not say I'm the best at it. I mean, that's a whole massive space in and of itself, but coding and everything is something that I really love and enjoy. And to be transparent, this is also a side gig at this point. I'm not sure if I've actually, I think I've told the listeners at some point, But full-time, I'm actually a mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry.

25:49And my passion, like we've discussed, is helping people, educating them on their personal finances, just the basics of everything. Because I strongly, strongly believe that helping people just get a good foundation of things and start off on the right foot, like we've talked about, starting children off on the right foot, giving them visuals and a better understanding of things as early on in life as you can, And that is going to start the graph of their life off, if you want to think of it that way, on such a steeper slope than trying to just get at people later in life or get at people that are already in decent financial situations or whatever.

26:28And so this all feeds into a huge passion of mine that I have. And it's something that I'd like to eventually do full time. And it's going to be much more scalable, much more flexible and everything. And I'm really excited about the future of it. but it really feeds into everything we've discussed so far. Well, and I think you nailed it on the head when you talked about like you're passionate about it. And that's what I think is a huge part of it. When I kind of think about myself, people look at me and go, oh, I can't believe you're a driver's ed teacher. Like, that's just crazy. That can't fill any cup you're sitting in with.

26:59But I think to me, it's the same thing that I kind of corresponded with personal training. When you give people a platform to talk, you'd be amazed at what they'll disclose. And I think for me, I never thought my cup would be filled being a driver's ed teacher. But I think when you sit there and you're dealing with kids and you're watching these kids who can't get out of the car with their parents because they're deathly scared of being hurt in a car wreck or whatever that may look like. And you just look at them and you say, we've got this. I mean, I received an email today from a wonderful lady.

27:34I worked eight hours with her daughter and her daughter took the license test. She was 17. Didn't think she was ever going to do it. And I said, we're going to do this. I said, I'm telling you, if you, if you work with me, I'm going to get you a license. She got a 91 % on the test today. And it's just, especially this generation of kids are very scared of failure. And I think that's when you compile that with everything else, it's like, you're giving them an ability to look at this and say, you're going to face a fear. It's going to be part of life. And we're going to get through this. And she just, her mom just, again, raved up and down.

28:08And again, I think it's when we look at those things that you don't think are going to fill your cup. And this girl's talking about her father, who's unfortunately an alcoholic and is probably killing himself and slowly. And you're just having these conversations with these kids talking to you about, Hey, you know, what about your family? How's your, my parents are divorced. I went through a terrible divorce. I always thought I was the problem. I'm still dealing with this. And you're sitting in a car for eight hours. Again, by no means am I claiming I'm a therapist or anything. I have no credentials.

28:33But I think sometimes just that outlet of this guy's not going to judge me or this person's not going to judge me and you're willing to listen. And you're talking not just about driving, about conking or fear, but you're ultimately talking about their life and makes them feel important. Which, again, each one of these kids that I work with have made an impact on my life. I had a little girl that I worked with two or three years ago with and went to, she actually wrote a paper over me, how our six hours in the car totally changed the trajectory of her life. Because I said, you can't make excuses.

29:06She's gone on and she said, I gave a speech in front of several people and got a scholarship and a full ride. And she goes, I never would have done this three years ago. And you just kept telling me you're going to have to face things. It's going to be hard, but you're going to be able to overcome those things. And I think when you were just talking about like the passion and how much you care about financial things, and the key component to all this is helping people. I think if we, when we talk about finding purpose, when you're able to try to help somebody and truly make their life better, that fills your cup.

29:38I mean, that makes you truly feel like you, like I would ask you, Evan, do you feel like sometimes this does not work? And I think you would agree that it's not. and I think it's just when you look small like something like you love playing the guitar you always thought you're gonna be a rock star well guess what that dream isn't there it's now how do you take that that passion and how do you instill that love for one kid to just pick up the guitar and to try to face that and I think those are the important components yeah I could not possibly agree more with anything you said it it's very easy to focus inwardly like you were just talking about playing the guitar as an example.

30:15It's easier to look inwardly and just say, well, I enjoy playing the guitar. I enjoy playing this kind of music. I enjoy these kinds of guitars. I enjoy whatever. And you just focus on what you want to do. But I think that anybody who says any of those things would also, whether they want to admit it or not to themselves or think about it or not, they would 100 % guarantee love sharing that passion or instilling that passion in somebody else. And I think that that's the step that, that a lot of people need to take. If you're interested in something, starting something like a side gig or picking something up, finding something that you are passionate about.

30:53Don't give a crap whether you think that other people are interested or not, or whether you think you would love sharing it with other people or not. If you are passionate about it, there is somebody else, many people out there that are passionate about the same thing. And you would be passionate about and enjoy the process of bringing out that enjoyment and passion in other people. That's, I mean, we're humans. We love human interaction. We love making other people happy. We love them making us happy. We love just sharing experiences with each other. And it sounds kind of too good to be true almost to just say, oh, well, you love, you know, sharing experiences with other people.

31:30How are you going to make money doing that? People are going to pay for those experiences. You know, if I'm somebody like, I love music. I have a history of playing music as well. Sadly, I live in an apartment right now, so I'm not trying to be that jerk that's ruining my upstairs neighbor's life. But I love music, and if I didn't have that in my life right now, I would absolutely be more than interested and more than willing to pay somebody to show me that side of the world. It opens people up to points of view and sides of the world that they never even knew existed. And I know this all sounds very grand, but it's 100 % true.

32:05Even something like driver's ed that sounds very strict and inane and just something everybody kind of needs to do. But just the fact that there's human interaction in there is enough to make the whole experience powerful. And I think if you feel like – I mean if we polled 100 people and said, we want you to do something you enjoy and you're going to make a difference in one person's life and change one component, I think everybody would sign up. Yeah, could not agree more. And so, okay, so let's imagine that somebody is now convinced that a side gig is something that's possible and everything in their lives and they get it.

32:43What are some reasons of why it's actually important to somebody, important to their lives? So I think for me, the big thing is that you just gives you a little bit of control. It's just that little extra money that you have that we know things are going to go wrong. And when they do, it's one thing that I continually tell my wife, at least in this moment in time, I look at her and I say, we're blessed enough to make more money. There's always an opportunity to make more money. And I think like, especially if you're struggling, like we talked about the percentages of people that are unhappy in marriages and how finances can really rip that, those marriages apart.

33:20And I think just giving someone that kind of control in some capacity that says, you know what, we don't know where we're going to get the$150 on the credit card. Now we've got the$150. And not only are you doing that, you're doing something you're enjoying. You could put stuff away. Again, we talked about, I mean, best way to do it is invest. Again, buy an EFT, buy an individual stock, do the research, whatever, put it in a savings account. Just be able to control that money. And again, I know it sounds like 150 bucks is not a whole lot, but it goes a long way. It's like we talk about compounding all the time.

33:52That can compound. And then if you start to let that money grow, put it back for a new car, put it back when there's a problem for a new car or for your car or your old car. I mean, just that little bit of control and that little additional income that, you know what, it's not that set and I got some control really makes people feel like they've got a way to dig themselves out. Yeah. And like you said, it can sound very small. It can feel insignificant and everything. but I talk a lot on this show about building habits and building an identity around things and identity around investing or saving or whatever it might be, somebody who actually manages their finances, budgets, blah, blah, blah.

34:32And starting that habit of having that extra money and starting that habit of growing that extra money, especially the younger you're able to start it, but even if you're older, it's still going to be incredibly powerful. And that adds up over time. And I think even when people think about it that far and say, okay, I know it's going to compound. I know it's going to grow. I know it's going to turn into more money in the long run. But the actual effects of having that extra money are so much larger than most people imagine or maybe even want to admit. Something like being able to retire earlier, being able to retire when you couldn't retire otherwise, being able to afford a new car when your other one broke down instead of having to live off of Uber for that time.

35:11There's a million being able to fix up your house when you have maintenance that needs to get done instead of just letting it go and then the property value is going down because the house is degrading. These are life altering financial situations that something like a side gig, something like actually starting to invest, putting money in a high yield savings account, that these seemingly small changes initially can have massive tangible benefits in the end, aside from just cool, I have some extra money. What now? It's actual life changing situations. Yeah. And think about it. I mean, Andrew suggests that people give the$150 or whatever, every single, that could be your 150 bucks.

35:52Then you don't have to worry about it coming out of a paycheck. And then, like I said, I mean, you can start small. I mean, the way that I started with the driver's ed business, I literally just looked at it. I said, what's it going to cost to put a break in a side break? It's a little investment. My wife's car is already paid off. I'll use that. And it was like, I started with little or no investment to start out with and it blossomed into way more money. And I'm not, wasn't doing anything. I wasn't, it was all word of mouth. And then it starts from, okay, it's 150 bucks a month to now it's$150 a weekend.

36:22And now it's okay. Now I've got, now it's almost$2 ,000 a month. And how does, how does it continue that way? Um, and I've gone from one car and only me to now I've just bought my second car and I'm looking to expand. Um, and it just starts small and can continue to pile and compile. And that's, that's the neat thing about it. Yeah. It genuinely doesn't matter how small it starts. They all connect with, you know, we've discussed before about investing or getting used to saving or setting money aside or whatever. Even if all you can do initially or feel comfortable doing is five bucks. If you go buy a stock for five bucks or whatever, and now you can say, I'm an investor.

37:00I'm invested. I have invested in the stock market. I have opened a brokerage account. I have invested. And suddenly you're willing to do that five bucks every month. And then you figure, well, you know, I've got spare money and now I understand how this is working. It's really not so scary now that I'm doing it. Maybe I'll put 100 in there, and then maybe you're able to put more in the future. And it all just keeps piling up, and then 15 years from now, you're able to afford that second car or able to afford to retire early or whatever it might be, situations and opportunities that you wouldn't have had otherwise.

37:30And with side gigs, just getting started, even if, say you want to teach people something, teach people guitar, Even if you don't have any clients initially, all it really takes is that one client who not only can help you financially by paying you and not only help you by helping grow your business, maybe spreading word of mouth, maybe giving you a good review or whatever it might be, but also growing as a person and having that experience of sharing that enjoyment of something with somebody else and building your own enjoyment and learning about something that you're interested in from other people.

38:04because you can always learn from other people, even if they're just a beginner at something. There's a million ways, and you're learning new skills as you're building something like this up. You never know what you're going to start. Like I talked about web development. When I started learning about web development, I knew very, very little about coding. I had taken, I think, one coding class in college, and so I had maybe a very basic understanding of what was going on, but I just wanted to do it because it sounded interesting and cool, and I was interested in the idea of meeting new people through the opportunities I would have and learning about new businesses and everything that I could help with their web development for.

38:40And again, I'm no expert at this point, but I know a heck of a lot more than I would have known otherwise if I hadn't just started it, just taken a free coding class online and tried to learn something and then started contacting people asking if they want to help for something. And it can just start from anywhere, no matter how small it seems. Yeah. And I think you're right. I mean, working one hour a month for 12 months is an additional 600 bucks. That's, that's not too bad. I mean, working twice, you double that. Now you have 1200 additional dollars. Um, again, and I think, like you said, looking at it as you're kind of gaining a skill and you're doing something that again, you enjoy and you're trying to learn something is, is awesome.

39:19I mean, that alone is, is the goal. You're compounding knowledge and learning something that again, you can give back to people or you can better yourself with. And like we talked about before, this isn't something like a side gig, side hustle. It's, it's not meant to replace a secondary income that you might need if you need more income to survive and get by than something like a structured second job or finding a better primary job, whatever it might be. Those are going to be more than likely better opportunities. You know, at least I personally, I'm not going to advise somebody to go out and, and take on the risk of trying to use a side gig as dependable income upfront that that's, that's never going to be sustainable in the long run.

39:59But if you're in a situation where you're comfortable where you are now, maybe you could use more. I mean, we could all use more at some point. That's just human nature. If you could use more, you'd be interested in more. You're interested in learning something new, whatever. That's when a side gig really comes into its own. Yeah, 100%. And like you said, I would not look at it as it's a secondary income. I would look at it as it gives me a little bit of flexibility. It pays off, pays for a credit card for the month that I don't have to worry about it. And like you said, that primary income needs to make sure that that covers all that bills.

40:29This is just that a little additional, you know what, we really want to go to Disney world. I'm going to make an extra, like I said, working twice a week for 50 bucks. And that compiles. And after the end of the year, now I've got enough money that we can go to Disneyland with kids. 100%. Yeah, that's, that's ideal. And something that concerns me a lot when something like a side hustle comes up is how to actually make it sustainable and healthy. a big focus of this show is making sure that whatever habits we build, investing a side gig, setting money away, whatever it is budgeting, to make sure that it's actually sustainable and healthy.

41:04And it's something that you can keep up with for 30 years from now. What are some tips you have for somebody who maybe is interested in starting a side gig, maybe has some ideas of where they could go with it and pictures a life with it, but wants to make sure they set it up so they can actually continue doing it indefinitely, essentially? So I think the first thing you got to look at is start with a small investment. You don't want to take your income or your parents, give you$100 ,000 and invest it all in one stock or throw it all in the market if you don't know what you're doing. I would start with a very, very small investment.

41:40Again, I'm going to revert back to the guitar teacher because I think, again, kids are always looking for somebody to teach them. If you start with, you know what? I own guitars. I've got this. I've got all the equipment here. It's just going to cost for like Missouri. It's really easy. We just spend$50 and get an LLC and you apply for it or whatever. And that was kind of the investment of the part. And then, like I said, I put the brake in relatively cheap and then just the insurance on the car. So again, the risk versus the reward was very low. I said, if this doesn't turn out and I've got four clients, I pay for the whole thing.

42:11No big deal at all. So I would start smaller rather than bigger. Even if you've got aspirations to be big, I would also invest in the people that are with you instead of trying to take on too much. I think it's one of those things that you, you go, I, again, I love playing the guitar. I want as many clients as I can, cause that's going to give me the most amount of money. Well, then you don't quite know what you're doing, or there's, there's a lot of problems with that. And then you've got too many people and you can't balance. And it's just one of those things that I I think you're better off.

42:41I think word of mouth is one of the most important things you can get. A lot of my clients come from word of mouth. And invest in those people that you have. If you take on two clients and you could take on six, start with two. Really figure out how the process works and what you want to do. And then go from there. Again, I think of it as also like making sure you have a process. I think like a lot of us are like, oh, I really like the guitar, but I don't know how to teach it. You need to figure out how to teach something. You need to figure out if somebody comes in here like slash that you can push them.

43:14Or if somebody comes in and they have never picked up a guitar, you need to figure out how to inspire them and what you're going to teach them. Go back to square one. Like I said, the way that I thought about it was, again, if I've got somebody that's never driven before, what am I going to do? So, again, in my business right now, I'm looking at expanding and we're like, okay, how many cars? What's the investment? where if I decide location, that's a critical piece of it because I have to look at immediately. There's several places around where I live in Liberty where they've got locations available, but I'm like, if somebody's novice, I am not putting them out on that main road first one.

43:53So I'm like, that's not a good place to go. So I think thinking about those little critical pieces, again, don't start with the elaborate studio. If you're like, oh, I'm gonna have everybody sign up and then you don't and you can't afford it. So I think again, start very, very small, know your process really, really well and what you want to teach and really invest in those people, that small group of people and figure out what you can do with that. Yeah. I'll kind of relate that to some experience I've had when I was doing YouTube. I'm an avid YouTube consumer. I love the platform. I watch a lot of YouTube channels and everything from massive creators with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers.

44:31And when I was doing YouTube, all I wanted to do was be as good as them straight away. And that led me to just to, to take longer on videos than they needed to be, to put more stress on the videos than there needed to be, to try to, to write them absolutely perfectly, to, to film them perfectly, to edit them perfectly, blah, blah, blah. I have the idea to be perfect initially. And even though it's obviously great to want it to be as good as possible. And like you said, it's important if you're going to teach somebody to understand how to teach and make sure you know how to teach up front. But kind of on the flip side of that, if you go into it saying, I need to be the best teacher ever, and I need to have an answer to absolutely every question, I need to be able to handle every kind of client that could possibly come through and handle it perfectly and be the best teacher there possibly is, then either you're never going to start teaching, or when you do start teaching, you're going to have so much stress on yourself that it's going to burn you out.

45:27And that's kind of what happened with me with YouTube where even though I had the passion for educating people about their personal finances like I'm trying to do now, I was trying to do it with such a level of perfection and such a level of comparison to, in my case, to other people in the space that it did burn me out and lead me to be more disappointed in what I was doing than focusing on the actual good side of things. Because we talked about before with the feedback that you from other kids and, and the experiences that they've had afterwards because of the experiences they had with you, that even when I had people, you know, it was only a few people, but had a few people comment on my videos and, and tell them, tell me that it helped them or it educated them or it changed this about them or whatever.

46:12Even though that felt incredibly good, I wasn't letting myself focus on that. I was only letting myself focus on, well, the video still could have been better. Like cool. It helped the person, but like I could have edited that better. And it just, I was completely missing the point of what was important there. Yeah. And I think if you set the bar too high, you're setting yourself up for failure. And if you compare yourself to the greats, that's a problem. And I think an important piece, again, to always consider when you're thinking about a side hustle is what will people pay for a skill that I'm teaching them?

46:46I think that's oftentimes like, it's like, oh, what do I mean? Driver's ed. I mean, if cars all of a sudden drive theirself, I'm out of business. but at least in that moment in time, I feel like there's always going to be a new plethora of kids. There's always going to be parents looking to, and I think what I did was I just looked at it like parents don't know how to teach their kids. And that's the biggest thing. And how can I develop that skill? How can I help parents? How can I give them one or two things to work on? And I think when I, when I kind of stepped back to that idea of like, just working with parents and saying, Hey, they don't know anything.

47:20Like they've driven for six hours. You can't, well, they need to be prepared for the road. That's great. But right now they're scared to death. They're going to run into somebody and just stepping back to that piece of it and just starting real, real small. And I think, again, like you, like you said, the hope is that you look back on that and realized you did impact somebody and you learned. And now if you produced a YouTube video, you'd be better. Again, my first client compared to my clients now, I know a lot more. I know these routes. I know what kids struggle with. I know what parents need.

47:49I created a parent's guide to hand to parents that are 15 points to when working with a student. I have an exit form now that they fill out that gives me feedback that says, can I use your stuff on my website if I'd like to leave a comment or whatever? And again, can I take like even just little things like I'm going to snap a picture with a certificate next to that. So then I'm going to put kids up there. Like there's always those little things that you can change that you're willing to learn if you're willing to reflect on it. Is it going to be perfect the first time? Absolutely not. but again i think it's like anything else like if you look at the stock market and think your first stock is going to go to the moon maybe maybe you're dave and andrew and you bought microsoft so kudos to you but for most of us we don't do that and again i think even looking back at dave and andrew and going man if you knew what you knew back now or back then you you would have dumped a whole lot money more money in microsoft and again so now looking at it again hindsight's always at 2020 so i think are you learning things are you developing as a person are you fine-tuning your niche.

48:48You know what, that first kid that walks in here for you to teach the guitar or a soccer lesson, or again, how to catch a football running across a pattern. You can tell I was a soccer player, not a football player. Apologize to all my football people out there. But I think it's just, again, offering that thing that one, parents are willing to pay money for. You want compensated. I think, again, and I'm not saying I don't love what I do with the driver's education, but unfortunately, I do have to make a paycheck in some capacity. But I also think It's like, again, finding those things that people are willing to pay money for and will continue to pay money for.

49:21There's always going to be a demand for some kind of emphasis on sports. And I think looking at it, too, is you've got to look around you. That's a big thing with my driver's ed. Why I decided to expand out was there's really nothing around here that offers driver's ed for kids. And there's several big high schools that are around our area. And there's nothing there's no driver's education around here. And they are. They're very, very small. or an individual down or about 30 miles that way that has one car. And it's like, okay, the total addressable market in my area is still pretty good. Again, don't start a guitar lessons if there's 14 people around you that are all offering lessons.

50:13from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew, well, a community cycling group.

50:49The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook. So since hindsight is 2020, you know, it's fantastic that you've reached this point. It's incredibly interesting to hear about how you're managing at this point and what you've learned along the way. But with that hindsight, looking back on when you first started this, since you've had other side gigs that, you know, maybe didn't pan out or you just decided not to stay committed to and everything for one reason or another. With that hindsight, what do you think was different about driver's ed about how, how you started it, how you first set it up that has made it so that you've now reached a point where you're able to start a business and look at expanding?

51:33I think for me, it became when I was running kind of soccer or personal training and stuff, like I was never super passionate about the personal training. It wasn't that I didn't want to do it. It was just, it's hard to convince people we're in Missouri in the middle of July to come over and work out your garage when it's 97 degrees. And then you get concerned of, okay, what's the liability and what's that going to look like? And to me, I think it just became soccer. I was always under somebody else. This is kind of my gig. This is me being my own boss. And I think it just started with something as simple as, again, can I make money off this?

52:07What am I going to make per hour? And what is my investment for it? And what is this going to do in the long run with investing? Again, I've talked about my teacher retirement, which is fantastic. So this is all money that I'm putting away in some capacity for rainy day or for my son going to college or whatever, whatever we're going to need this for. It's kind of, I told my wife, don't touch it and it's going to continue to grow. Yeah. And having, and having all those long-term purposes behind what you're doing just adds to the power of it. Cause you know, it's a great, if you want to teach guitar and really enjoy teaching guitar, but I'm going to really doubt that somebody as rich as Zuckerberg is going to want to sit down and do that.

52:46Let's say he has the greatest passion for guitar in the world, he's still probably not going to sit down and teach lessons to kids for how to do it because he doesn't have that long-term purpose of, okay, well, why is this going to be important in the long run for me? It's not, I don't really need this. And that's not going to let him stick with it. But for us, you know, normies like us who aren't in that kind of situation, having that long-term purpose of, you know, this is going to allow me to get a house sooner than I could have otherwise, or it's going to set up my children better than they could have otherwise, or set up my partner better than they could have otherwise.

53:14Those are all beautiful, powerful, long-term goals to have for things, long-term purposes to have for things that's just going to add on and compound, pun intended, along with the purpose you have for wanting to just better people's lives with what you're doing up front. Yeah. And I think to me, like, again, when you, they talk about goal setting for human beings and how we don't do real well with those, if they're really attainable, because like the idea of I want to build a business to be the biggest it can, that's a huge goal. And that's one thing that I can continue to always push the limit for.

53:50So I'm never really reaching it. And then again, you align that with the idea that, okay, not only am I now doing something I enjoy, I'm now helping people. And it's for my benefit of my son later in life or my wife, if there was, I mean, if anything would ever happen. And I think those are kind of those, those driving forces behind why you do what you do. And we talk about that constantly in soccer. And I think that's important in anything you do in life. Like your why. What brings you to the table? Why do you get up early? Why do you get up at four o 'clock in the morning and work out? Why do you do these things?

54:23And I think if it's, oh, I want to stay fit. Again, even something as simple as when I used to teach CrossFit for many years, I always said the 5 a.m. class was always my favorite because those people had no other reason to get up other than that was the only time they had to. So they were usually kind of your very driven, motivated people. And I think finding your why, why are you doing what you're doing? Well, because I ultimately want to gain control of my finances is a powerful tool. Just, and again, I think like we said, start small, just give yourself a little breathing room. I mean, maybe you're sinking in the deep end of holding the brick and all of a sudden you can get one breath of air and you kick up and that makes you feel like you've got some kind of control over this.

55:03Okay. So to kind of sum this all up, why don't you give the listeners kind of a general bulleted list of steps they could take to find a side hustle, set it up and make sure it's something that they can enjoy and manage to do in the long run? So I think the first thing you got to do is find your total addressable market. What are you going to teach and what are people willing to pay money and what are they willing, what price are they willing to pay? So once you have that idea, start small, start very small, start with one client, one person, figure out the steps you're going to have to do in order to do that.

55:38And then find out how you can invest in that client and what brings you something you love to do and bring that to the forefront. Again, really develop that why and what kind of drives you to do this. Really like, again, sit down there and journal. Why are you doing this? What makes you want to do this? And I think these stories, and I listen to a lot of different podcasts and a lot of variations, but you have a lot of these guys that have been this Navy SEALs and the SEAL teams. And they talk about, you know what, I went from jumping out of airplanes and saving the world to now I'm selling insurance.

56:11And I have no reason. I started this business and I was sleeping on the floor and there was no mattress. And I looked over there and I saw my four kids going, I have no other choice but success. And when that's your driving force to do something, I think that's going to push you. Now, again, do I think that's all of our stories and that's what I want people to use a side hustle for? No. But I think look at it and say, what would that extra$100 a month do for me? And where would I put it? Again, hopefully it's not go to Amazon and just blow it on things that you don't need. Not to say that you don't want to spend things or spend money on things that we don't need.

56:45But I think it's like, what ultimately would that$100 do? How would that change the trajectory of your life? Just maybe even slightly. Would you put it towards a credit card? Well, okay, I've got a high interest credit card. How do I balance that? Like just knocking that extra hundred dollars off gain so much control over that stuff. I would put it towards a vacation. My kids and I haven't seen something for a while or haven't gone anywhere. If I could be able to put$150 back, we might be able to go for that trip. Even one night, even that little, you know what? We're going to get a hotel. We're going to watch the kids play.

57:18It's going to be my wife. Maybe it's at dinner with your significant other that you just desperately need for each other. and that allows you to have that once a month. And I think just looking at those little things about what that money is going to do for you and how it's going to give you some control. And again, finding that thing you love and finding that reason to help people and starting small, but thinking, you know what, long-term, this might turn into something that all of a sudden, again, I've got one client for 50 bucks. Within a year, I've got three clients now for$150 a week and how that could change the control you have over your life.

57:56Yeah, and something I want to real quick touch on because I haven't really mentioned it so far is that my big motivation or one of my big motivations for wanting to do this essentially in one way or another is aside from educating people and helping people, the other quote-unquote more selfish side of it is wanting to have that control over my time in life. You know, as an engineer, it seems like a very flashy job and everything, but realistically, it's sort of just another office job doing different office work for the most part. Obviously, it's going to vary depending on what exactly you do, but for me and for most of the industry that I'm in, it's just a different kind of office job.

58:35And so I'm pursuing a situation where I'm not so locked down, where I have more flexibility, whether it's location flexibility, time flexibility. It's something that's going to be more scalable financially. I'm not going to be locked into an income or something like that, but I can actually find other ways to scale it up or to scale it down. You know, if there's some point where I want to scale back my time and I don't need the money as much, something that I can scale back my time and effort on. And if the money scales back with it, then that's okay with me because I know that I have that control over it that I wouldn't have otherwise.

59:07And that constantly keeps me going because every time I'm frustrated with something worked, obviously no matter what you do, you're going to get frustrated. But when I get frustrated about having a lack of control over what I'm doing or feeling like what I'm doing isn't really directly helping people at all, frankly. Pursuing something like this motivates me to want to get to a situation where that is my full-time job. My full-time job is trying to help people and my full-time job is under my control and how I handle it and how I go about it. And I think to me, it's just, it boils down to, and I can't remember the book I read.

59:44I want to say Morgan Housel, Psychology Money or whatever, but they were talked about how time is the one thing that it doesn't matter how much money you have or whatever, you're limited. And I think they looked at that and said, would you trade places with a 96-year-old person for$100 million if you were 17 years old? Nobody's going to take that because time is the most important thing. And I think when we look at the definition of financial freedom, it is your ability to decide what you want to do with your time. Again, I'm very lucky. I just got done with summer school, I've now been able to sit and I'm just reading and I'm researching and I'm doing stuff.

1:00:20My wife just laughs at me, but it's, it's like, I've had that ability to now look at my time and say, you can do what you want to do with it. And you can now decide you just want to sit there and read a book for three hours and you can do that. Yeah, that is, that is incredibly powerful. Well, before we send you off for today, do you have any closing advice for anybody? I think the biggest thing that I would just say is take the leap. What's the worst thing? If you invest small in this thing and it doesn't go anywhere, you know what? At least you have the courage to try. There's so many Americans that I think sit in here and just struggle with financial stability and they have difficulties with just all kinds of different things in their life, especially relating to finances.

1:01:02Again, you're one of many and just try. Again, I think the courage to try something new is a hard thing to do because again, we're always adverse to not wanting to fail, but failure also times can teach us things. I always revert back to what Edison said, where he said, I didn't find 10 ,000 ways to, to, uh, I didn't fail 10 ,000 ways with the light bulb, creating the light bulb. I figured 10 ,000 ways not to do it. And I think just looking at those things and taking that, that, that leap, um, and trying things out and seeing how it impacts your life, I think could be pretty cool. Yeah. And if you, if you start small, like you said that the upside is literally infinitely larger than the downside is going to be.

1:01:45So that is a beautiful way to live. And Tyler, I really appreciate you coming on for me today. It was a fantastic chat. And I know that a lot of people can take away a lot of powerful ideas from this and powerful mindsets and hopefully enact it for themselves and absolutely change their lives. And I'm curious to hear people out there, listeners, you know, what side gigs have you maybe pursued? What side gigs have people around you pursued even? What side gigs would you ideally like to have in the future or pursue at some point, you're always feel free to email me at evan at einvestingforrevegglers.com.

1:02:16And remember, financial freedom is built one smart move at a time. Keep it simple, keep it steady. And at any rate, I'll see you next time. Peace.

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