715: The 10 Best Side Hustles of the Year

25:56But the interesting thing is while Chris enjoyed smoking meat as much as the next guy and definitely enjoyed eating it, He wasn't a professional chef. He didn't even invent this seasoning as his own personal recipe. Instead, he found a product that he knew already tasted great, already knew people liked it, and then just applied his own marketing to it. I just saw an opportunity, right? I, like most entrepreneurs, I probably suffer from chasing too many things. But I saw here was an opportunity for something that I'm passionate about, which is smoking food, barbecue, and then I'm also passionate about marketing.

26:30And so I chose to go sell the seasoning itself as opposed to open a restaurant because the overhead was going to be lower and I could work more digitally than having to commit a bunch of money to buying a space and getting staff and having rent and all the overhead that would come with having a barbecue joint. Okay. So step one, delicious chicken, maybe step zero. Step two is, I assume, going to your brother and say, well, where did you get this stuff? How can I build a distribution channel here? What's going on there? So this is what I love. I tell people I sell this barbecue seasoning and they're like, oh man, did you come up with your own special blend?

27:08And how long did it take? And did you have a lab? And none of that, man. I just found out who made it. And then I called them up and I'm like, hey, I like your seasoning. Do you white label it? Meaning do they give you the rub and allow you to put your own brand on it? Yeah. And the white labeling happens all the time. If you go to like Costco has Kirkland's, which is a white label of something else. Walmart has great value, a white label of something else. And so Amazon does it. Everybody does it. Yeah. And so I called them up and said, hey, can I just white little your season? They're like, yeah, we have a program for that.

27:37And I was like, great. So then I had to go and create my own brand, my own coloring, my own all that stuff, which was easy to do. I was lucky because my business partner, we have a business partner in several businesses. He's a graphic design guy. And we were going over all these different names on, you know, what we wanted the seasoning to be. I had a list of 20 different names. One was bald buck. We chose bald buck because it was funny. Plus I'm bald. My nickname with my friends is buck. They would call me bald buck. So I found, I thought this would be a way of like getting back at them. Like, Hey, you made fun of me.

28:10Now I have a brand. And so we did that. We came up, he drew the, he made the logo. We came up with the name. We gave it to the company. They label it, they can it, and they just ship it to us. So all I got to do now is push it, which is kind of scary, Nick, because when you get sold or when you get shipped 5 ,000 units of seasoning, you better figure out how to move it or you better cook a lot of chicken. Okay. So the seasoning company had this system already in place and they say, hey, you can totally do that. Just send us your graphics, send us your seasoning, send us your branding package and we'll put it on the bottles for you.

28:44You don't even have to do that yourself. Yeah. They can it. They put it on. If I want to save money, I got to do that myself eventually, but they do it all. And a lot of places do this, Nick and a lot of different things. It could be microphones. It could be art. It could be shirts. Like a lot of people do most of the work for you. All you have to do is go push it. And that's something I wish I would have understood a long time ago. I don't have to create everything. A lot of the work can be done. I just need to find something that works and then find a way to sell it. So in this case, we had this seasoning worked.

29:15My family loved it. Friends loved it. It was already popular in a different state. I just had to take it, bring it and wrap a different story around it. And that's what I did. I think that's a really great line. I don't have to create everything from scratch. A lot of the work can already be done. If you can find something that's already working, find a different way to position it, different way to sell it. Really powerful episode. And then to get his initial sales, Chris turned to influencer marketing, targeting big barbecue channels on YouTube, barbecue influencers, and then offering to send them the seasoning and even to run some giveaways for their audience.

29:48So that drove quite a bit of business. And then Chris turned to kind of a unique storytelling and content marketing and retargeting strategy on social media to sell. The other interesting thing, you know, to sell what might be considered a commodity product, right? You can go get barbecue seasoning for probably a tenth of the price at the grocery store, but then to sell Bald Buck at a premium price online. So that is episode 678, number five on our list. We'll call it white labeling e-commerce. Number six is one that definitely had me looking for acreage nearby, and that was Garrett Brown's glamping business from episode 686.

30:25So here's what struck me. He did such a good job of building up the experience surrounding staying at his property an hour outside of Houston, kind of middle of nowhere, that he was able to command four-star hotel prices, like 400 bucks a night, without the four-star amenities, or even without the expectation of four-star amenities. It's a tiny house in the woods or it's a geodome out in the middle of nowhere. But people came for that Instagram worthy shot to get away from the city to have that kind of unique, memorable experience. And it costs a whole lot less to set up than trying to run a Four Seasons hotel or something like that.

31:01So his return on investment math was really strong. Now, here was his advice on what to look for in starting a potential glamping site or potential short term rental business near you. I'm in Houston, Texas, and I was looking for something within the vicinity of Houston, Texas that was a little more rural. I have something I like to call a 60-30-10 rule. Now, I've coined it that, but at the time, I knew that I needed to be 60 minutes from a major city, and so I found some land. I didn't want to go three or four hours out from a major city because I figured people wouldn't want to drive that far.

31:38Yeah, I thought of the 30 portion was 30 minutes from some type of national, regional or state attraction. The land I ended up finding was about 10 or 15 minutes from a lake. It's called Lake Livingston, which is the second biggest lake in Texas. But it was also near a state park. It was also near a national forest. And so there was a few like attractions. And then the 10 of the 60 30 10 rule is you want to be 10 minutes from some type of civilization, you know, a dollar general. gas station, Walmart, anything like that, because I knew that if I was, you know, in a beautiful place, but 30 or 40 minutes away from civilization, I was like, how am I going to get people to come out there and clean for me?

32:20How am I going to get people to come out and, you know, operate the facilities for me when I'm not there? There's such thing as too remote. Yeah, exactly. And I was, and I see people, they'll see really cheap land, you know, like a really, you know, remote area. And I'm like, well, there's a reason that land is extremely cheap because you're, you know, you're going to have a hard time turning that into anything for, you know, a million different reasons. So I ended up, you know, researching a lot of places. I found a house that was on a little over 10 acres. And so I knew that having that house on the property, it's very hard to get a loan for land.

32:54Just raw land. Yeah. A lot of people have to buy it with cash. You can probably get a loan for like 50 % down, which, you know, a lot of people 50 % down, even if you're buying a piece of land, it's still going to be, you know, maybe$100 ,000 or something that's really expensive. And then you have to spend the money to actually develop the site. So I found this house on about 10 acres in an unrestricted area. It wasn't in, you know, it wasn't in a neighborhood or an HOA or anything. And so I sold my townhouse that was in Houston, took a little bit of the money I made off that and put this into this new house, which I only had to put 5 % down on, which it was a$500 ,000 house,$550 ,000 house to be exact.

33:38Okay, on 10 acres. On 10 acres. It came in appraised at$600 ,000. So I already had some instant equity when I went into it. But the cool thing, I had the 5 % down, but I also was able to negotiate a 3 % seller concession into my offer. And so what that did is I almost went into the property for about 2 % down because I had a 5 % down payment that I needed to put down. But within my offer and my negotiations, that seller agreed to pay back 3 % of the price. There's even opportunities out there that you could get a, it was called an FHA loan, which could be 3.5 % down. You could even possibly get a USDA loan, which is a government loan and getting into it that wants to develop rural areas.

34:26So with all the money that I was able to save up front, I only ended up having to put about, I think it was about$12 ,000 down. That money, the money I saved, I ended up building my first tiny cabin on the property. So looking for five plus acres following Garrett's 60-30-10 rule that already has a house on it that's going to make your life a little bit easier in financing and making improvements to the property. Now, the other interesting thing about Garrett's project, the first thing that really surprised me was that the majority of his bookings came direct, as in not through Airbnb, not through VRBO.

35:01I would have assumed the opposite, but that was a testament to the strength of his social media presence. And he did a really good job documenting the journey of building out the property, got enough people following along that people wanted specifically to stay there. And in some cases, they were willing to pay a premium to do it. So he wasn't just competing against every other Airbnb that might pop up in that area. The second interesting thing was that he was able to negotiate kind of a unique financing deal on this mirror house, cool looking tiny home on the property, where if I remember, he essentially got it for free and just paid it off with the proceeds from renting it out, which I guess is similar to Anthony's vending machine financing.

35:44Oh, I'm going to pay for it with the sales that it generates. In any case, super inspiring episode, kind of at the intersection of real estate investing, hospitality, and online marketing. Episode 686 in your archives for that one. Number seven is one of those plug and play side hustles that continues to get outsized feedback and support from listeners, and that's ShareTown. This is the return reselling side hustle. If you're not familiar, ShareTown is the quote-unquote reverse logistics arm for a lot of online retailers in the, you know, direct-to-consumer furniture, mattress, exercise equipment space.

36:20It's basically big bulky stuff that's difficult to return. ShareTown in turn then partners with local reps, often side hustlers like you and me, to facilitate these pickup requests when a customer says, no, on second thought, I want to return this item. But the companies can't really take the items back, and they would prefer that it stay out of the landfill, and they want to try and recoup some of their costs. So this is where ShareTown comes in. The reps pick them up and list them for sale on Facebook Marketplace, and then once they sell, send a portion of the proceeds back to the company, back to ShareTown.

36:53And the reason it makes the list is just for its simplicity. Yes, it's labor. Yes, you need a way to transport and store the items, but you got super low overhead. It's one of these side hustles where you don't need to build an audience. You don't need to create a product. You don't even need to do any sort of exercise on what are you an expert in? What are you passionate about? You just need to do the work. And that sentiment was echoed by Matt and Hannah in episode 687. And look, it's not that we're particularly passionate about this business, but if we're targeting$200 per flip, it's been a meaningful chapter in our lives.

37:28It's been a meaningful extra income stream at a time we really needed it. The biggest surprise was, and I think that that can be true for a lot of side hustles, is just that you don't ever know what it could evolve to. We thought that it was a side hustle and it was something that, I mean, Matt worked nine to five and even traveled for work. And then in the evenings drove into San Francisco. And I just feel like we were willing to do something different because we had some goals. And it's not that I'm like crazy passionate about selling mattresses. I have learned like... Ever since you were a little girl, you wanted to sell mattresses.

38:02No, it's not that I'm crazy passionate about selling mattresses. I have learned to really enjoy the interactions and those sales and get a lot of satisfaction out of helping people that way. And it makes it hard to ever consider working for somebody again, because we work together and we have flexibility. and I think that that can be the beauty of a side hustle is it helps you to achieve your goals and it gives you the flexibility to kind of live life on your own terms, you know, the way an extra source of income does. Yeah, it's really powerful. That line of we were willing to do something different to get out of this situation.

38:37People that are willing to do something different and work at it even when it's hard or even when it's not yielding results. Unfortunately, ShareTown, I feel like, is a pretty results driven gig. It's hard to fail at, I feel like, but I feel like it's that willing to work hard. And willing to fail, you know, willing to try, willing for things to not work out and then willing to pick yourself back up and keep trying until it does. And that's what we found with your, you know, business too is just trial, a lot of trial and error and not giving up. So number seven was the return reselling side hustle highlighted by Matt and Hannah.

39:11As you heard in episode 687, sidehustlenation.com slash share town is my direct referral link if you want to learn more and maybe give it a try yourself but stick around we're rounding out our top 10 side hustles of the year coming up right after this we're heading back online for side hustle number eight a business model that i've got some level of experience in and one that's proven to be a bit more ai resistant than some other online businesses and that's informational directories so in episode 692 we met Frey Chu, who specializes in what we called near-me directories, helping people solve problems and find information about businesses near them, kind of a local directory model.

39:51We gave the example of thrift stores, RV parks, splash pads, stuff like that, and then layering on some value added information that maybe Google Maps doesn't have or couldn't find for the breadth of different services that they offer, like something, you know, answering a specific question that would be relevant to that specific thing, but they're not going to include it as a data field for every little thing. But you can become the go-to expert in that space. And I think you can get rewarded in the search results when you build it out. And so what makes a good topic to create a directory about?

40:25So here's Frey on his initial niche research process. when i choose a good niche for a directory i typically try my best to have that be 70 percent data-based so the keyword research is good there's high search volume low competition there's clear bounty like a website directory that's already successful that probably isn't the most optimized or kind of old and clunky and then 30 percent of it will be more passion-based interest-based kind of like what you mentioned i've tried directories where it's 100 kind of interest-based hobby or passion-based and for me personally it didn't work out so I think the way I landed on the thrifting idea was I just audited my life and where I like to go and where people like to go and I combined that with a framework where I'm like okay what saves people time earns people money or saves people money and those are kind of like the three umbrella frameworks that I tried to combine when And I was socially observing where people were going in the world.

41:27And that's when I landed on this very specific thrift store that I built my entire directory around. And people love it because it's so cheap. It's like a warehouse style thrifting experience where everything's by the pound. So you don't get markups from regular thrift stores. Interesting. Okay. I've never heard of that. Yeah. Okay. So I like this. So 70%, we're going to let the data kind of steer where we want to go. and bonus points, 30 % of this decision is gonna be based on, well, if I'm gonna work on this, I at least got to care something about it. Otherwise, you know, what's gonna separate me from everybody else trying to do the same thing.

42:02You mentioned having a clear bounty, this is somebody else who has paved the way for you. This is a site that is maybe a little outdated, maybe a little clunky looking, maybe the data isn't as cleanly presented as it could be. But they're doing okay, you can tell that they're ranking, they're getting traffic, they say, I can do better than that. And that's how we're going to try and stair-step above that site. They've already proven out the concept. And now instead of reinventing the wheel, we're going to go after what they did, just do it better. 100%. I think it tells you so much, especially with a lot of concern around SERPs changing, right?

42:38There's so many more forums and social media websites. And it just really depends. Whatever you type into Google, you can get a completely different looking search engine results page. So if you see a bounty, someone that's successful, and yeah, I mean, it's basically proof that you can take the structure of their website and just improve it. Clearly, Google has chosen that and has left that there on page one, rank one for some time because it finds it trustworthy and matches user intent and search intent to some extent. Yeah, it's like one of the most important factors that I actually look for when I'm building a new directory is a successful one that's come before me.

43:15And what's interesting is you seem to prefer location-based queries or location-based directories. And not to put words in your mouth, but we did an episode with John Rush late last year. And it was almost like online service providers. It was best, like all GPTs, or I think was the one that he mentioned, was like a directory of software tools. It was like kind of the opposite approach. I just personally think that local queries, local SEO is way more protected. kind of going just talking about certain keywords and informational blogs that were destroyed local seo is a totally different beast and if you go on chat gpt or any llm and you look up a local query or local keyword like barbers near me it's arguably worse than google maps right now so yeah and the serps looks the same which is great so that's really all an seo can ask for anyone building one of these directories relying on seo as distribution is i don't want any surprises i I think this challenge is still not entirely solved, even if LLMs can catch up because there are certain niches like daycare or anything legal or finance where the consequence of choosing the wrong vendor or local business service is too high.

44:27Like with the daycare, you're handing your child to some random people. I'm not just going to one prompt chat GBT and ask, hey, where are the nearest daycares? And be like, OK, cool. That's awesome. There's also price sensitivity. There's so many reasons why someone would go beyond just a simple one-shot chat GWT prompt and look elsewhere on the internet for more information around things that they need, things where trust is inherent. Again, that's episode 692 with Frey Chu. Really cool episode. One of the businesses I would be most interested in starting if I had to start over. We talked monetization in that episode, which in his case was primarily display ads, but it could be affiliate partnerships.

45:08It could be selling featured listings in the directory, or it could be selling your own products. Actually, I think Frey was selling a digital product related to the thrifting niche to some of the visitors on his site there. So that's number eight, the directory business or online directory side hustle. Number nine is a brand new income stream for me, one that I've been spending admittedly a lot of time and attention on trying to get off the ground. And that's the Facebook content monetization program. like YouTube, Facebook is paying creators who can post engaging content, get people to stay on the platform longer.

45:42The downside is they don't really have any clear guidelines like YouTube does on what it takes to get invited into the monetization program. And as of press time, it is invite only, unfortunately, not something that you can apply for. However, if you've had your page for a while, even a somewhat dormant and neglected page like mine was, you might find that you have an invite waiting for you, where it was just a toggle or, you know, check the box and turn on monetization. But after months of seeing Jeff Rose's good financial sense at the top of my feed every time I logged in, I finally had to call him up to learn more about, well, how does this all work?

46:19There's no way he's posting this much stuff and not getting paid for it. And sure enough, he was making like$1 ,000 a day, posting memes, posting screenshots of tweets, stock charts, all loosely related to his niche of personal finance. And one of the strategies for sourcing content, he explained, was to look at what's performing well on other social platforms and then try and repurpose it to Facebook. So here's how Jeff explained it in episode 706. It's been fun to test, you know, like, obviously, I'm looking at other pages, I'm looking at even going like to X or threads and seeing what is going viral over there.

46:57It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to translate over to Facebook, but there definitely have been times where it has. And I've tested, you know, what's really worked. Actually, I was just looking at this. They now share with you, like in the analytics, when you post something, how many new followers did you gain from that post? Which is a very interesting metric. And what I discovered actually this past week was anytime that I took like a screenshot of gold or Bitcoin or the S &P 500 or a certain stock and had some caption to go along with that. It definitely seems like my audience resonated with that.

47:32But the weird thing too is like, I've done like parenting stuff. You know, I've done marriage stuff. Like I've done marriage humor. And that's also done well. Not always, right? Like not everything hits. I've had stuff where I thought, man, this is going to take off and it just completely flop. Some that are really disappointing too, because like I really spent some time, you know, crafting the message, obviously using ChatGPT to kind of help write the story. You should know that this is very much a volume game. very much a game of throwing a lot of digital spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

48:00I'm currently posting like eight to 10 times a day and trying to increase that volume, but do it in a sustainable way because the more you post, the more chances you have to have a winner on your hands, to have something take off. I think it takes time. I think the most common question I get is like, how many times should you post? And I don't think that there's a set number, but you definitely have to be consistent. And I did not get any serious traction until I started committing, I think it was like I was doing eight posts per day. So when I started scheduling eight per day, like that's when I noticed one, the income and also the views and everything just started trending upwards.

48:37From there, I just started increasing it, you know, from eight a day to 12 a day, 12 a day to 16 a day, 16 to 20 a day, 20 to 24 a day. I did get up to 31 a day and I was, it was too many. It was too much. So I'm not, I was kind of scaled back a little bit, but basically like that 20 a day is kind of been at least a sweet spot for me. Do you have to do 20 a day? Heck no, absolutely not. Especially if I get a brand new page, but I would definitely commit to doing like five to eight a day. And this combination could be just text posts. It could be images. It could be a reel, you know, whatever you enjoy doing a little variety to, to do that.

49:08But I've had text posts, which is just funny to me, right? Like just a text post. It's just text, no images. You know, you could add the color background behind it that have done really well. So it's just a matter of just testing out. That's number nine, the Facebook content monetization program, one that I'm actively testing myself and trying to build some sustainable systems around and getting some help from my team on. Can I get it to$100 a day? Could I get it to five or 10 grand a month? We'll see what happens in the coming year and potentially some ancillary benefits in my case. And maybe this is wishful thinking, but the Side Hustle Nation Facebook page does highlight the Side Hustle Nation Facebook group as like a connected entity, which may or may not help lead people back to the podcast, back to the email list.

49:51So there's a case to be made, an argument to be made, if the impressions are big enough that Facebook becomes a point of discovery for the broader brand ecosystem, if I can attract people who are interested in earning more money and have a proactive spirit about it. So that remains to be seen, but be sure to check out the full interview with Jeff to learn more, number 706 in your feed. Number 10 is arguably the most creative side hustle that we featured this year, and this was Cheyenne Bullock's public domain radio repurposing business. I don't even know how to describe it. So the raw material is these old, free, available-to-everyone radio shows from the 1950s.

50:31She gave the example of Dragnet, if you remember that one. Zero cost of goods sold, great. Then what she does, and the branding is amazing if you check out Domestic Daydreams on social is her handle, is she sprinkles in her homemaking advice and these cleaning routines into the audio and then charges$25 a month or$45 a quarter for a subscription that gets you six new episodes a week. It turns keeping your house clean into this pleasant, entertaining routine with some familiarity to it. Now, it's such a unique business model to address the problem of a dirty house. It's an example I've given about the different ways to solve that same problem.

51:08You could solve it with a product, right? You could sell cleaning products, new Swiffer mops, stuff like that. You could sell a cleaning service. We've done episodes on starting cleaning services, domestic or commercial or otherwise. And then the third category is creating content to solve that problem. And I think Cheyenne's business falls under this content category. When we recorded, she had over 500 paying members. And those members all had the same pain point, right? I've got a dirty, disorganized house. It really bothers me. Now, my guess is they probably didn't know that old school radio programs could help them solve it until they discovered Cheyenne on social media.

51:45So here's how she described her Instagram to a lead magnet to offer strategy in episode 708. Every single post on Instagram needs to go to the lead magnet, which captures their email. And that has grown my email list to around 30 ,000 subscribers in two years. and like in the last month, 8 ,000 of those. And I've cleaned out my email list. So it's been more than that. But I make sure that every single Instagram post, it says, you know, comment, homemaker, and I will send you some free episodes of the cleaning routine to try so that you can get started tackling that mess. You know, I make a pain point oriented Instagram caption that calls out their pain, tells how these episodes are the solution.

52:29You can try some free episodes. It takes them to the opt-in. they put in their email address and information and it redirects them to a page with the free episodes on top and then tell them hey if you want new episodes six days a week then join the membership and has like a sales pitch below that okay so it's really really tightly aligned with the core offer it's like in fact in fact it's like it's a free sample of the core offer like i'm going to send you some sample episodes if you like this hey there's more where that came from come on in so that makes a lot of sense i think that's really smart and this is a mini chat automation to reply to the homemaker comments.

53:06Yes, exactly. And ManyChat was such an incredible game changer because when I was doing my first business, I started doing the comment if you want the link thing before there was anything like ManyChat out there. And I would sit there and I would have reels go viral and I would manually be sending these and I'd get blocked by Instagram, have to wait a little while. You've sent a hundred messages. Yeah, you're blocked. Yes, exactly. And so ManyChat has been amazing to be able to use that over the last couple of years. And luckily, that was in place by the time that I started this business. So it just directs them through ManyChat.

53:42I know people build out their ManyChat with like follow ups and stuff. I haven't done that. And I've still seen great results just keeping it simple. Okay. So they get the sample episodes and then there's a follow-up sequence that goes out a week later. It says, if you like that, there's more once you join the membership. Talk to me about the sales cycle or the sales funnel, so to speak, after that. I follow up via email because I want to train them to really connect with my brand on the email side. Going through Instagram or any social media platform, you're building your business on rented land.

54:17So I learned the hard way through my first business that you need to make sure that you have them somewhere you kind of control, like an email list. But also that you make sure that you train them and teach them that there's value there so that they will actually look for you in their inbox. So I have an automatic email flow that will send them an email like every four days or so. Originally, I followed a book that said, okay, this is what your welcome sequence should have in your email flow. And then over time, as I was sending out consistent weekly newsletters to my audience as well that were outside of that welcome email flow, I was able to get data on which ones converted highest for sales.

54:57And I turned those into my welcome sequence. Okay. So it basically just it's heavy on the email side following up with people. I give them some more free episodes via a one week challenge. Usually by then people are pretty warmed up. But now I do run ads as well, retargeting ads. And that's been what the huge game changer is. Retargeting people on the email list or people who have clicked. I mean, I guess it's all through the meta ecosystem. You can target followers on Instagram or people who've seen your post probably and saying, hey, remember me? Do you still have this problem of the dirty house?

55:32And I'm still here to help you. Yes, exactly. And so when I first got into ads, because I did pay a coach to teach me, they always recommend you do what they call top of funnel ads. And those are the ones that go out to strangers. And then you do retargeting ads. And those are ones that go out to basically the people that found you through those top ads. But what was different with my business that actually kind of blew their minds a little bit and we had to adjust that strategy is I get so much at the top, so much attention, so many new people knowing about my brand through my Instagram, through my Facebook.

56:07I get millions of views every single month through my blog. I basically do organic content marketing at the top and that's what gets new people in and I only do retargeting ads and I retarget anyone who has interacted with my website at all, my blog at all, my Facebook at all, and my Instagram at all. And it retargets them with the membership offer. Just a really well done, really creative online membership business, episode 708 with Cheyenne. And that rounds out our top 10 side hustles of the year. Did your favorites make the list? Did I make a glaring omission? You got to let me know. Hit reply, reply to my email, let me know.

56:47And of course, I owe a big thank you to all of our amazing guests this year. without them, the show wouldn't exist. A couple honorable mentions that I think are worth mentioning. One is Eric Dingler, who we did this episode about local SEO, and he gave this line, and I'm probably going to butcher the quote, but he said, the fastest path to$20 ,000 a month is with a local marketing service. And then he laid out kind of step-by-step how he would go about getting there. And that was episode 684, 684 with Eric Dingler. You know, hey, can I charge$500 a month for the service. Okay, stack up this client, this client, this client, and ultimately, you know, hire some other people to deliver the work.

57:26And you got yourself this kind of location-independent agency. Pretty cool business. The other honorable mention that is worth throwing out there was Harrison Knott, who holds the title as the youngest side hustle show guest ever. 15-year-old e-commerce mogul, you know, mastering short-form video to sell these cooling towels. I think it was cooltowel.co.uk or something. We'll link up his website. But really cool episode on influencer marketing, perhaps more inspiring. Harrison at 15 told me, well, this is like my eighth business. It's not my first time. It's not my first rodeo. I was like, dang, you're a serial entrepreneur as a teenager, but doing a lot of TikTok shop and really transparent about some of the expensive mistakes that can befall a new entrepreneur.

58:09So I'm going to link those up as well, as honorable mentions, really cool, inspiring stories. So to recap, we had vending machines. through the lens of Anthony and really scaling up that business and financing the machines with the proceeds from what they're moving and finding the right locations. We did an episode on printables, selling digital products, create something once, sell it over and over again, target these really low competition keywords, stack up an army of evergreen digital assets going out into the world and doing your bidding. And you have this little passive income army working for you.

58:39Number three was UGC, a really interesting business where you can get paid to create content, even if you're not an influencer. We had a local foam party rental business, which I just thought sounded like a lot of fun going out and doing kids parties and kind of a low risk way to validate that business that Tim shared. Number five was Chris Gray's white label e-commerce business. Look, I don't have to create the thing. I can just find something that's already popular, that's already working and put my own marketing and branding to it. Kind of an interesting angle. Number six was Garrett's glamping business.

59:12Four-star hotel prices without the four-star hotel and without the four-star hotel startup costs. Really interesting business and one that definitely had me looking for nearby acreage. Although, I don't know, it's still a hospitality game that you're going to have to play there. Number seven was return reselling through our partner, ShareTown. SideHustleNation.com slash ShareTown is my direct referral link for that. Of course, link up some of the interviews that we've done with various ShareTown reps over the years. Number eight was Freychu's directory-style websites. Information and kind of value-added layer can you create for these near-me-style directories and compete in an SEO world there.

59:50Number nine was Facebook's content monetization program, my newest income stream for the year, one that I'm looking to scale going into the new year. And number 10 was Cheyenne's, we'll call it repurposing public domain content. We've talked through the lens of doing it with audio content, but there's a lot of different public domain content out there. And could you use that as a building block or as some primary ingredients to building a business around? I thought she had a really creative way of doing that. But if you want to learn more about any of these individual businesses, I of course encourage you to check out those specific episodes.

1:00:24For the sake of convenience, I put them all into a Spotify playlist for you, which is linked up in the show notes. Just follow the link in the episode description. It'll get you right over there or sidehustlenation.com slash best of 25 will also work and appreciate you. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Happy New Year. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share with a friend. So fire off that text message, let them know you're thinking about them and sending some positive financial vibes their way. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen.

1:00:56And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show, where we're talking about how to have your best year yet. I'll see you then. Hustle on.