572: 15 Sizzlin’ Summer Side Hustles

0:0015 sizzling summer side hustles. What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show. Now a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. It's the business podcast you can actually apply. And today I'm breaking down my top picks for summer side hustles, along with, at the end, an alternative framework to consider. But let's get right into it. Number one on my list is lifeguarding. I don't know if it's just our local area, but there's a lifeguard shortage. This is real. Blame it on the supply chain. Now, this is a flexible part-time job, maybe not a scalable side hustle in the true entrepreneurial sense of the term, but great to do on the weekends.

0:38Usually you're making 20 bucks an hour or more. You're hanging out outside. Now, because it is high consequence work, you got to know what you're doing. You got to take the certification classes to learn it and prove that you know it. But what's interesting, again, at least in our area, is that the lifeguards are on a 15 minute rotation, 30 minute rotation in some cases, meaning that your shift might last four or five hours, but you might really only be on high alert duty for a fraction of that time. So that was one that definitely made the list lifeguarding. Number two is pressure washing. And this is a simple low startup cost business that can command pretty strong hourly rates once you get going.

1:17This is Scott Anderson from episode 525. I'm Scott with Spoon River Pressure Washing, and you can make three or$4 ,000 in a month pretty easily. I went down the route of kind of having the leanest startup as possible. So I went and bought a used pressure washer for like$100, some hose and other little accessories. So I think I might've spent like a total of maybe$300 in order to get started and then made a real simple Facebook page, kind of shared it with my friends. And a few days later, started having a few people reach out and say, Hey, I have this house, people that I don't even know. And so the first house that we did.

1:54I think I charged$200 for it. And I had really no idea what I was doing. I've only maybe pressure washed my own house at that time and a few other things. You learn a lot of things that you don't know that you don't know as far as like, how do I price things out? Like, do I write it on a piece of paper? There's just so many things you don't know at first, but we did that house. It took us way longer than it should have, but it was, you know, we almost got all the money we originally put in the business back out because it was, we put maybe 300 into it and got 200 on the first job. So that definitely felt like a success.

2:24But at the same time, it was a challenge just to kind of get your foot in the door with the first one. Scott went on to describe how he was booking out weeks in advance on the back of a simple low budget Facebook campaign. What I've noticed, probably the two best things are doing the Facebook ads that pull up on like the screen when they're scrolling through Facebook, and targeting people that are above a certain age group, like usually above 40 years old that are also in the top 25 % income bracket, because those are the people with the most disposable income and they don't really ask any questions for whatever price you charge, as long as it's reasonable, of course.

3:02Okay, that's cool. What did you put in the ad itself? The ads were really simple because a lot of people don't have a whole lot of attention span when they're scrolling through and they see an ad. So it would be very basic, like we wash homes, it would have a picture of a before and after of siding that looks dirty and then looks clean. It would say Spoonover Pressure Washing. And then it would say, ask for a quote right here. They click the button and they're able to directly message me directly and ask whatever questions they have. Through Messenger? Yeah. Yeah. So there was a special thing that they allow you where it's like you get customers through Messenger.

3:36I found that to be helpful because a lot of people don't like talking on the phone so they can kind of feel you out on Messenger. That's actually really cool. Do you have a sense of the price per lead or a target price per lead that you like to pay there? Well, when we started last year, we would do an ad budget of$2 a day. And that would keep us like pretty much busy for we'd have jobs lined up every day. And by the time it got into around August, we were booked out for like two or three weeks with pressure washing jobs. There you go. Might not take a lot to start booking some work. You can learn more about Scott's business in episode 525.

4:11Summer side hustle number three is being a wedding officiant. Summer season is wedding season. And what you might not know is that professional wedding officiants can earn$100 to$800 per wedding in as little as half an hour worth of work. Maria Romano, someone I connected with last summer, she's officiated thousands of weddings over the last 10 years. She stopped by the Side Hustle Show to share some advice. So my first paying job was over at the Las Vegas Hilton. And actually, when I decided to become a wedding officiant. My neighbors across the street owned a hair and makeup company, a mobile hair and makeup company, and they did a lot of brides that were coming in and their bridal parties.

4:51So I got to meet several of the chapel owners and somebody was actually getting their hair and makeup done and they didn't have an officiant and they found out about me. So I actually went over to the Hilton. One of the chapels there was gracious to have me perform my first wedding ceremony. And believe it or not, I got paid$150 for that, which was great. You have different price variations depending upon where you live. Vegas is a little bit more of a saturated market, but outside of Vegas, you can command anywhere between four or five, six, seven,$800 a wedding, depending upon how detailed you get with the couple.

5:28So that was my first wedding was just the couple. But when I did my second wedding, which was larger, oh my gosh, Nick, I got down to the Green Valley Ranch. I had went out and I promoted myself. I went to the different chapels, went to the different hotels that had wedding services. And I was doing a pool wedding in the evening. And I was so excited. I had everyone stand and I forgot to tell everyone to sit. So there they were 15 minutes later, ceremony ends. They were still standing. So, you know, those are things what happens is we get so concerned in our head like, oh my God, how do I sound?

6:02When you're performing the wedding ceremony with ease and confidence. And that's the key. So trying to figure out where your target customers are already doing business with. In your case, all of these different venues and chapels, that makes a lot of sense. Have you found for your students outside of Nevada, outside of Vegas, a similar strategy working? Or tell me more about how you find people marketing this service today. First of all, you need to market yourself to other wedding professionals. So I tell my students that especially outside of Nevada is just search out what different groups that are available.

6:37Now, there's a lot of bridal groups and wedding vendor professionals in your area searching out Facebook, for example. So you can introduce yourself. You can do a short video, just letting them know. And then you can message them and see if you can possibly set up a meeting. I recommend attending events, different mixers with other wedding professionals so they can get to know you because they want to see you. They want to see how you interact with people. They want to know that you show up on time, how you look, how you interact. Those are things that are important. But in addition, social media is a great platform to just take pictures if you've performed a wedding ceremony.

7:15And if you didn't, this is what I tell my students, have a mock one. Have your friends come out, have them dress up in your backyard, wherever it is, and video it. And then put that out on Facebook, put it out on Instagram, put it on Twitter. LinkedIn is very important as well. Letting other wedding professionals know that you're professional. And that's the key thing. And that's what sets you apart. One thing we talk a lot about is looking for the lead fountains in your business. These are the steady streams of new leads. In Maria's case, it's the venues, it's the other vendors, it's the bridal groups.

7:48And really, it's a strategy you can apply in just about any side hustle. Who are the complementary service providers your target customers are already doing business with. That's a way to shortcut your marketing. And like I mentioned, that's what my wife and her partner have done in their photography business. A lot of their leads come through a relationship with one popular wedding venue. It doesn't take much. So that's number three, being a wedding officiant. Number four actually is photography because between weddings and barbecues and company picnics and family reunions, there are lots of occasions for photography work over the summer.

8:22Summer side hustle number five is mobile car detailing. Here's Josh Belk on how he and his brother got started? Most of the time, our customers, it is their first time having the detail done. We always luck out every now and then by having the customer that they do clean their car a lot. And a lot of the times they call us up for a full detail, expecting to pay the full price and their car is not bad at all. And those are usually the customers that say to us like, oh, my car is so bad. I'm so sorry. Those are the best case scenarios for us. You're like, believe me, believe me, we've seen worse.

8:53Exactly. That's what we like to tell people. So right now, a lot of the time we are doing customers that it's the first time they're ever having their vehicle detailed. They probably saw one of our advertisements on Facebook or they heard about us through a friend and they realized like, wow, my car needs to be detailed. I would love to have it just spotless. Some people even can search on Google if they search for like mobile car washing or mobile detailing in my area or even detailing in my area. We do show up in some of the Google results too. So definitely those first time customers are, I would say, our prime target market.

9:31We also have a dealership. It's a small dealership that calls us about three or four times a week for different cars. And that's the best case scenario because they are reoccurring and they're always bringing new cars in from auction, that is someone that we can rely on without having to spend any new marketing dollars towards every single week. So a couple notes on this one, when Josh mentioned that for most of their customers, it was their first time getting their car detailed. To me, that's a signal of a growing market. Like he's not having to go conquest market share from other service providers.

10:06It's that the pie as a whole keeps getting bigger. To me, that's a positive signal. And I think detailing is probably just one example of a broader spectrum of local services that more and more people are outsourcing what they used to do themselves, or they're treating themselves to a little lifestyle upgrade. I think in that episode, Josh went on to explain that one of their best performing promotions was a Mother's Day pre-order, maybe a gift card or something. Hey, don't know what to get, mom. How about the gift of a spotless car? Second thing was the B2B relationship he mentioned at the end of that clip, because sure, an individual car owner, they might only buy the service once, twice a year.

10:43I don't know, maybe they've got a lot of cars, but car dealers are the source of a steady stream of leads. That's the lead fountain in this case. So I thought that was pretty smart. So the question might be, if detailing isn't your thing, is there an opportunity to sell bigger volumes of your product or service by selling it to a slightly different customer? I remember we had a guest on years ago, he was selling a book summary service, but in addition to selling it to individual customers, he'd go and sell seats to it or bulk licenses to the service to companies who in turn could present it to their employees as an employee benefit.

11:17Hey, we value personal growth at this company, which is why for as long as you work here, you have access to this cool book summary service. But again, the mobile detailing business, that's episode 415 with Josh Belk. Feel free to go back into the archives to check that one out if that is relevant to you. Summerside hustle number six is window washing. Because early last year, I connected with Johnny Robinson at Squeegee God, actually interviewed him on his last day of college. Super cool story having built orange window cleaning, along with his partner Sergio to an almost$700 ,000 a year operation while they were full time college students.

11:53Here's how he described getting that business off the ground. So we just started googling ideas. And he was just laying on my bed. And he's like, car windows and he's like yeah car windows so you're telling me you want to go stand at the gas station and charge like five bucks to clean car windows we're not gonna make any money bro and he's like yeah you're probably right but i google window cleaning and i find out it's an actual industry where people get commercial buildings storefronts residential they all need their windows clean and started watching some different youtubers and we're like hey we could do this.

12:28We watched this one YouTuber and he was like, I sold 48 accounts in 24 hours. My back was against the wall, eviction notices. And now I got these 48 window cleaning accounts. It's that easy. We're like, why can't we do this too? And that's what sparked it. And I've been doing window cleaning ever since. So at the beginning, you were kind of idea agnostic, just scrolling through different lists of business ideas until you find one that sounds somewhat interesting, somewhat doable? Our whole criteria for a business to start was that we needed to make money quickly, like be profitable quickly. Okay.

13:03Was there any research into the state of the market, the competitive analysis in your local area of like other companies already doing this stuff? Not really. I kind of just sent Sergio 75 bucks and he put in 75 bucks and we bought a bucket, a squeegee and a polo off Amazon and just started going knocking on doors. I didn't even know Yelp or Google my business. I didn't know how to do any of that yet, funny enough. Okay, so this is the startup cost. $150 worth of materials and then hitting the streets, cold calling, just residential neighborhoods, commercial neighborhoods. Who are you targeting here?

13:36We started with storefronts. I'll tell you a funny story. The first store we pitched was this donut shop. It's still there. It's across the street from my house. And we walk in there and we're like, Hey, can we clean your windows? And they look at us and they're like, Yeah, if you do a good job, we'll pay you. We'll pay you if we like it. okay we're like sick let's do it we clean the windows and it's like two small little panes of glass and now if like we're still out in the field cleaning the windows it probably take us 10 minutes took us probably an hour okay we're still learning and then they decide once we're done yeah good job like it looks really good but how about we pay you in donuts and then they stack a box a dozen a dozen size box full of donuts and like the cheesy croissants and stuff and they give us the donuts.

14:21And it was like a midday, so they were all cold and dried out. But I mean, we were stoked about it. And that was kind of our first job we landed. Now, obviously, they've come a long way from getting paid in donuts. But the secret sauce for Johnny and Sergio was when they figured out the online side of their business. Going door-to-door worked, but going online, they were able to reach way more customers. The real turning point didn't come until we started to understand reputation and digital marketing. So one of those cleaning companies actually told us, Hey, you need to make a Yelp account. I need to get reviews on Yelp.

14:55And so we're like, okay, we just took her advice. We made the Yelp account and we started asking all our customers, Hey, can you leave us a Yelp review? Can you leave us a Yelp review? And slowly, but surely the Yelp reviews just started flowing in and we ranked on Yelp on the first page. And then we started to see so many more jobs come in just organically without spending any money on Yelp. We're like, wow, we should do this with Google my business too. And so we started learning more about different softwares that we could add on to help us get more reviews quicker. We started to look at competition now at their websites, saw that their websites were bad, like 99%.

15:28You can't get a quote online. Okay. How do we do online quoting? How do we make a nice website? And we started just figuring all this stuff out and spending a bunch of money. All the money we're making, we started spending on different softwares and different systems. Some things work, Some things didn't. And we just, the stuff that didn't work, we got rid of it. And the stuff that stuck, we just continue to double down on it. And that's the bigger point I want to illustrate is what a reasonably savvy digital marketer is going to be able to accomplish in these traditionally offline low-tech businesses.

16:02For Johnny and Sergio, that meant graduating from washing the windows themselves to hiring help and working with qualified subcontractors. but local home services plus a better online experience for customers. And I still think there's a ton of opportunity for you in that space. Be sure to check out that full episode if you missed it, number 480 in your podcast app and follow along. Johnny is at squeegeegod on Twitter. He's a great follow and now he's helping people start up their own hands-off cleaning services. As a business owner, you worked hard to make that phone ring, but missing a business call?

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18:32There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. Side Hustle Show listeners get a$75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show. Just go to Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show. Terms and conditions apply. hiring indeed is all you need. Summerside hustle number seven is to create and host a local experience. Summertime means summer travel season, which means people are looking for things to do when they're in new places.

19:09Michelle Maddox tapped into some of that tourist traffic with a unique local meditation experience. It was really just going on to Airbnb's experience page and pitching the idea. What's the title of your experience? How long is it going to last? Give us a little summary. What category of experience does it fall under? Mine is wellness. They want you to post some pictures. They don't want stock photos. They prefer to have pictures of you doing your thing, which can be a little tricky when you haven't done it yet outdoors. Right, right. It's the total chicken versus the egg thing. Yeah. So you got to be a little tricky about that.

19:48So what did you end up doing for that? Did you use pictures from like your previous classes or what did you do? I got together some people that I have meditated with and we just did a little photo shoot outside that would look exactly like my experiences look. Okay, that's true. You got to consider that like people show up there and be like, hey, that doesn't look like what we saw in the picture. Right. Yeah. And people do get upset about that. So you wanted to describe your experience and show it exactly like it's going to be. That's like every Airbnb I've ever been in. It's like, oh, you were very generous with the fisheye lens and making this place look bigger than it was.

20:23Exactly. All right. So they approve you. So now all of a sudden they're exposing you to this audience of visitors who are coming to Sedona and say, hey, while you're in town, you might want to check out Michelle's meditation experience. Was it right away you started seeing bookings? It was. It was right away. It kind of surprised me because it was about a year ago that they opened these up in Sedona. They started in August. And August in Arizona, that's like Siberia in the winter. Who wants to go there then? So I didn't really think anybody would want to sit outside and meditate, but I had bookings right away.

21:02As soon as I started scheduling some experiences, I had bookings like that weekend. And my first experience had five people. And then from there, it was just kind of like as often as I would schedule them. At that time, I was just doing them two or three times a week. I would have people. So it took off right away. Wow, that's awesome. I was going to ask about that schedule slash availability. So you don't have it as like, hey, every day at 1.30, I'm going out to do this. Come and join me, rain or shine. It's like, no, this is only available on the days that I pick, the times that I pick, just for your own sanity.

21:38Have you ever had the case of like, I had this on the calendar, but only one person signed up or two? Is there a minimum that you say to make this happen? Unfortunately, there's not. And I say unfortunately because it does happen that there's only one person. And Airbnb does not look favorably on you canceling for any reason other than weather. That's the only valid reason. It depends on the tour season here. We have a high season and a low season. It kind of goes up and down throughout the year. During the high season, I'm doing mostly capacity experiences. And for me, that's eight or 10. I have three different experiences.

22:20I'm experimenting with seeing what the maximum is like. And the minimum, I often have, I do one. This time of the year, I've done a lot of onesies and twosies. Okay, yeah, middle of summer. So you guys are going out sweating on the rocks. Exactly. So if you had to average out an hourly rate from it, what would your estimate be? I would say as an average, my average number of people that I work with would probably be four. And I do these anywhere from one to nine times a week. So I can't do the math in my head quickly enough to give you an hourly, but it definitely makes it worth my while. But during the high season, this is like a daily thing.

23:09Yes, it's a daily thing. Okay, that's awesome. And I'm just looking at the primary experience, the original experience that you have posted up here, 120 something reviews, five stars or 4.9 stars, priced at$49. So you can start to do some math. This has added up to pretty serious income stream here. So here's an example of tapping into a pre-existing audience of buyers, which we call the buy buttons strategy. In this case, Michelle shortcuts her own marketing by putting the experience up for sale through Airbnb. And then Airbnb promotes these experiences because it's an easy way for them to make another 20 % on a service that they don't have to provide.

23:49It's pure margin. So the questions to ask are, is there a unique local experience that you could create? A friend of mine does these quote unquote So unplugged gratitude hikes in the Smoky Mountains and similarly started getting bookings right away. And then the second question, even if you have no interest in creating and hosting an experience, what are the buy buttons marketplaces where your customers are already shopping for what you have to sell? Is there a way to shrink the internet? So instead of competing with all of Google, you're competing with a smaller subset of product or service providers.