727: $250/hr by Productizing Your Expertise

16:18Jim Lashbaugh:Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing sign up for your$1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash side hustle. Go to shopify.com slash side hustle. That's shopify.com slash side hustle. But this being a service-based business, I'm anticipating relatively low startup costs. And, you know, with this first$500 client, it's kind of like, okay, I'm off to the races here.

16:49Nick Loper:Absolutely. What do I need? First of all, back in the day to process a building permit or a land division permit, You had to go down to City Hall, wait in line to meet with each different reviewer, the life safety and fire, zoning, all the different reasons. You spend all day to just work on one permit. Now, due to COVID, everything is electronic. I work from where I'm standing right now behind my desk. I don't have to go anywhere. I don't meet clients in person. Once in a while, I get a husband and wife that want to do something. They want to meet in person. But for most of my clients, I might do a Zoom meeting, but it's all right here.

17:22Nick Loper:I already have a computer. I already have a cell phone. Really, the only startup cost for me once I got going was when I decided to get a professional email. I had a Gmail email, so now I spend$7 a month, I think it is, and I have a synergypermits.com. You know, Jim at synergypermits.com. I didn't even have a website until a couple months ago. One of the things that I did invest in was an invoicing app called Joist. It's like$15 a month. I used to just write out invoices and email them in like Excel spreadsheets. And it was really unprofessional looking. Now it's very professional. It tracks if they've opened it and then I can upload who's paid or partially paid.

18:01Nick Loper:It's really one of the best things I've done for my business is just getting that system in place for billing. Another thing that's been fantastic for me, which I don't even know what it costs, maybe$6 or$7 a month, is called Trello. Have you heard of Trello? It's basically a note-taking app. I'm a big Post-it note guy. My desk and screens used to be covered in Post-it notes. And finally, I heard on a podcast, maybe it was even yours, about this Trello app. So I looked into it, and now I have it open all the time on my screen. And now instead of Post-it notes, I make notes on Trello, and I can separate them by job or by personal.

18:37Jim Lashbaugh:Yeah, it kind of tracks the stages of each job you're working on. Yeah, yeah.

18:41Nick Loper:I can say, oh, I just got a call from the reviewer that I need something. I put it in Trello to remind me that that needs to get done. and I can do it from my cell phone if I'm on the move. If a thought just pops in my head, which lots of thoughts pop in my head all day long, instead of sending myself emails with notes, now I just click Trello and keep the notes. I'd recommend anybody to check it out. It's great for organization and just not to lose track. The worst thing I could do as a permitting is to forget to call a reviewer, forget to turn in a document. And so it's been a lifesaver to just keep me honest and keep me making sure I'm not missing anything.

19:15Jim Lashbaugh:Yeah, if you've got one project going on, is different. But if you've got several different projects, you know, making sure they're all kind of in various stages of approval of development.

19:24Nick Loper:So that makes sense.

19:26Jim Lashbaugh:On the pricing side, do you have a rule of thumb for when am I raising my rates? It sounded like, okay, I'm going to start out targeting a hundred bucks an hour, you know, proof of concept, and let's see if people will pay it. And let's see if I enjoy doing it at that rate. And then we can kind of level up. But curious if you had a rule like, okay, every six months upping it or what?

19:46Nick Loper:When I started, I thought everything was hourly. That's all I knew. And today I do not charge hourly. I've had a couple of clients question how much time I put into it because they're focused on the hour. Now that I bid by job, never had someone question this is the cost for the job. It doesn't matter if it takes an hour or 20 hours. This is just what the price is for the job. But initially I didn't know what to price. And so I started off with that$500 job. The next job I did, I did it for$1 ,000 because I knew that based on my experience, that that was getting closer to what people would pay from other companies.

20:19Nick Loper:But I still didn't consider myself an expert, although people were calling me to do something, which that is my definition of an expert now is if someone is calling you to do something for them, then you are their expert. So finding what other people charge was a little difficult. People don't really give out that information very easily and it's very job specific. I wanted to be different. So I set flat fees for my jobs. I started at$1 ,250 for a building permit. Somebody wanted to build a house or an ADU, an accessory dwelling unit or a garage. The process is the same for all of those things.

20:52Nick Loper:And so I charged$1 ,250. And then I quickly jumped to$1 ,500. And now I'm at$1 ,750 as my starting price. If someone wants a duplex, then I add on a little bit or fourplex, or they're going to do a cottage cluster. So there's all these things that are available out there for people to build. but I quickly jumped from one price to the next to the next. I'm up at$17.50 and I see myself probably going even higher than that now. And people don't question it. My clients know the value of it and the pain that I'm taking away for them. And it's been very successful. Yeah.

21:25Jim Lashbaugh:So the pain you're taking away would be the hours of trying to figure it out themselves and the potential cost of screwing it up, the potential cost of the delay in screwing it up or the delay and letting things fall through the cracks. And now you've got months of extra carrying costs on your flip or your build. And like before you can sell and get your exit and get paid. And so it's like, okay, to pay the gym,$17.50, to save potentially three months of interest is huge.

21:52Nick Loper:You hit it on the head. Now, this doesn't necessarily apply to everyone's business, but time applies to everyone's business. If you have a client, you're doing website, whatever it is, if they're used to something taking six months and you can do it for them in three to four months, they're going to pay you all day long. And they're going to pay you more than they probably normally would pay because you're saving them so much time. And with my clients, the average permit time it takes, let's say in the city of Portland, because that's where I'm at, which is notorious as the stringiest and hardest to work with jurisdiction in Oregon.

22:22Nick Loper:But you want to build a house, the average permitting time is, it's like nine months. Now, my average, unless something really major comes up, is between four to five months. And now the main reason for this, if I'm a contractor and I'm working, I'm out there building a house and I have to deal with this permit and I get an email from a reviewer saying, hey, we need this other information. He doesn't have time to, he may not even open that email for weeks, right? And so there's a week's long delay. Then he opens it and it says, we need these plans updated. We need a survey changed. We need, you know, we did an Arborist report.

22:58Nick Loper:And then he goes back to work on the house and he says, I'll get to it later. And it gets delayed. and he could get delayed by months. And then he's got to get a hold of the survey. So that's everything I take off of their plate. I contact the surveyor. I contact the arborist. I contact the reviewer and get everything done. Boom, boom, boom. Usually within 24 hours of getting a notice from a reviewer that they need something, I've got that sent out to whoever needs to get that information. If it's not something I can get myself and then get back to them as quickly as possible. The real value I'm saving people is stress and time.

23:28Nick Loper:And with contractors, time is everything.

23:31Jim Lashbaugh:Yeah, stress and time. It's a shift from hourly pricing to value-based pricing. Plus, and the more you do, the more efficient you get at it. So the hourly rate improves. But do you have a sense for how much time it might take to do this$1 ,700,$1 ,750 job these days?

23:46Nick Loper:Yeah, yeah. You probably noticed I just got a big smile on my face when you asked that question. Let's say just a simple house permit. If everything comes to me and it's ready to go and I submit, I'm getting at least$250 to$300 an hour in my time for running a standard permit. Now, sometimes it can be less if there's problems and it takes time over the months, it takes a few more hours here and there to work on it. But sometimes it even takes less. And so it melds into that middle ground of, I'm guessing, around$250 to$300 an hour for my time.

24:16Jim Lashbaugh:Which is outstanding. We should pause there and just celebrate that for a second because that's really cool.

24:22Nick Loper:And here's the other thing for me. I don't want a full-time job. This is literally a side hustle for me. I get up in the morning, I have a glass of water, take some vitamins, come up, respond to emails, go take my dog for a walk, come back, call a reviewer, call a surveyor, work on a permit, go out to lunch with a buddy or my wife. We have a wakeboard boat. We live right off the Willow River. We'll go in the middle of the day and go out wakeboarding, wake surfing and wakeboarding. One of the things I would recommend to anybody out there is whatever you're doing, whatever your business is, you know, just give extra value than the person expects.

24:57Nick Loper:I made the commitment, I'm going to answer a phone call no matter what I'm doing most of the time. I don't do things on Sundays. And if I'm sitting at dinner with the family, I'm not going to take a phone call. But I'll usually answer the phone because that can save weeks of time. If it's a reviewer that would normally send me a check sheet and I, then it goes back in the system and takes weeks to get to, but just wants to know something real quick if they're taking that step. I want to get that to them right then and see if I can save weeks of time for my clients. So this is really a side hustle.

25:25Nick Loper:This is really a side gig that came from nothing and it's getting busier. Last January, I did two permits. I had two clients. I did two permits. Right now I have over 25 active permits going. And so it's really grown and I've had to really set my time to keep it a side hustle, to keep it to where I'm not spending eight hours a day on it.

25:46Jim Lashbaugh:Yeah. Now, all of a sudden, I built myself a full-time business in retirement.

25:51Nick Loper:Right. And that's not kind of what my plan was, but it's kind of going that way. And now I'm kind of dealing with, do I want to keep taking on more and more, which I do. I want it to build. And that's where I'm talking about maybe bringing someone on to help. But it's a very niche thing that someone really has to know what they're doing. I have to train them up. I actually have kind of my hooks into someone that's actually a reviewer for the city, one of the jurisdictions that is going to be planning on retiring soon and might want a little side gig of his own doing some extra projects. So that's like the perfect person for me.

26:21Jim Lashbaugh:Yeah, I'm glad that you brought that up because number one, I think this is probably the big unlock is, okay, what's the specialized skill that I can charge fixed prices for and earn 10 times on an hourly basis for what another gig app side hustle might pay? So I think that's really powerful. And then kind of the second thing is like, well, what happens if it gets too popular? Like, ah, this is what I wasn't supposed to be doing this 40 hours a week. It's supposed to be a little side project. And so I guess I could raise rates more. Like that would be one way to kind of weed out the clients who don't want to pay.

26:54Jim Lashbaugh:Or I could kind of start to build this agency business where, you know, people are still coming to Synergy for this work. But now I have an expert underneath me who can, you know, fulfill that and take a percentage and meanwhile, still be guarded about your time and still have time for wakeboarding and all of that. Is that the path that you kind of foresee going down? Exactly.

27:14Nick Loper:I think so. I think that the idea that you have when you start your business probably isn't going to be the exact idea that it turns out to be a year, two years, three years later. So I started out just thinking people would hand me their documents and I would submit them for building permits. But what it's really evolved more into, which is I'm changing my pricing structure to meet, is land use planning, which is a fancy term for what am I allowed to do on this property? So I help them plan out what based on the zoning code and building code what they can do on this piece of property Can I build a house?

27:45Nick Loper:Can I build a duplex? Can I build a cottage cluster? Or no, I can't build on this lot because there's a little sliver of it that's in a flood zone And they bought this piece of property. They didn't realize it And so a lot of my clients are trying to train them now To come to me before they buy properties so that I can do some research for them And so this is a whole different side of the business now where I I can charge for research and land use planning before permits are ever even come into the picture.

28:11Jim Lashbaugh:Oh, okay. What do you charge for that? Just a consulting basis? 500 bucks for an hour call or something?

28:17Nick Loper:Right. So right now, I did say just a little while ago that I don't charge by the hour, but now I'm kind of getting back into charging by the hour. The flat fee rate is something that set me apart from other people that do permits, which is great. But for this land use planning, it really has to be kind of a by the hour thing. And right now I'm charging$95 an hour for that. And it only take me a couple hours to really dive into a property for someone. And then that leads to a land division permit, a demolition permit, a building permit. So it leads to much more work after that. So I charge a little bit less for that.

28:50Nick Loper:But it's still obviously$95 an hour isn't anything to sneeze at, but I know that it's probably going to lead to other work. And even if I, my decision, if I go back to those people and say, no, don't buy this property, you're not going to get your money's worth out of it. Now I built trust in them as well. And they're going to come back to me and they've told their partners. I have one builder. Again, it's ripples, man. You do something really good for someone at a really good value. It was a builder that I did some research for. I didn't charge him anything actually. And now it's led to four other clients for me from that one person.

29:19Yeah.

29:20Jim Lashbaugh:Tapping into these kind of strategic partners or these potential long-term partners. We think of it in terms of lead fountains. And in this industry, yeah, the builders, the surveyors, the designers, it's not just the one-off homeowner that wants to add an ADU. Like, okay, my lifetime value of that client is, you know, one or the$1 ,750. But if it's a builder, like, it could connect you with multiple parcels, multiple jobs. You're going to keep coming back to the well. So that makes a lot of sense.

29:46Nick Loper:That's exactly right. Just like any business, right? You want to get the people that know more people in the industry. So I'm trying to go to, and I'm learning that for me, that's surveyors and designers for the most part. But for someone else, it could be someone that heads up their kids' baseball league. Maybe not their coach, but who's the guy that runs the league that, you know, you want to start doing parties or you want to start selling baseball bats, whatever it is. Those are the contacts you need to make and have your coach put you in contact with that person. And then guess what? There's 10 more baseball leagues within a 15 or 20-minute drive of you, guaranteed.

30:23Nick Loper:So there's a big market for whatever you're trying to do.

30:25Jim Lashbaugh:Yeah, I think just for any industry that you're in, thinking of who those connection hubs might be, and you might not be but one or two degrees of separation removed from those, and thinking, well, how can I be of service to these people in some way?

30:39Nick Loper:Just getting on their radar, letting them know what it is that you do.

30:43Jim Lashbaugh:More with Jim in just a moment, including his effective close that turns 90 % of prospects into paying customers, and some business idea donations coming up right after this. Look, payday is awesome, but when you're the one running the payroll, like calculating the taxes and the deductions, trying to stay compliant, it's not always as simple as it was when you're just on the receiving end. Unless, of course, you have our sponsor, Gusto. Gusto is the online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses like yours. It's all-in-one, it's remote-friendly, and it's incredibly easy to use.

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31:56Jim Lashbaugh:One more time, it's gusto.com slash side hustle. When you're running a business, you know that every missed call is a missed opportunity. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the smarter way to run your business communications. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2 with over 3 ,000 reviews, and it's built for how modern teams work. That's why more than 90 ,000 businesses, from solo operators to growing teams, all rely on Quo to stay connected. Quo works right from an app on your phone or computer. That means no more juggling multiple phones or taking work calls on your personal line.

32:34Jim Lashbaugh:Your entire team can handle calls and texts from one shared number, kind of like a shared inbox, so everyone is up to speed while Quo's built-in AI automatically logs calls, generates summaries, and highlights next steps so nothing gets lost. It can even answer the phone for you and qualify leads when you're not around. Make this the year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo for free, plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to quo.com slash side hustle. That's quo, Q-U-O dot com slash side hustle. Quo, no missed calls, no missed customers. Now, when you're talking with prospects and even customers who've already signed on with you, you had kind of your three tiered rule to close more business.

33:20Jim Lashbaugh:Number one was be kind, be helpful, be proactive, answer the phone, what they call. Number two was to give more value than people are used to. If they're used to having this thing take six months, if I can get it done in three or four, all of a sudden it's like, why would I ever do this myself again? Right. And then the third thing was a question that you posed in a pre-call chat and curious what that was and how you use that in your conversations to close deals.

33:43Nick Loper:So usually when I get a call from someone, I will just listen to them at first and see what they have to say, what they have to vent about whatever problem or whatever issue they have. And what is their one thing that's big to me? My one thing is not drafting. It's not designing. My one thing is just processing these permits for people. And I just turn that around on people and say, this, this is not your one thing. You're a builder. You're, you don't want to be focused on this one thing. You have better things to do. As soon as I say that to them, their eyes get big and it's, it's an aha moment for them and they're sold.

34:15Nick Loper:They're ready to write a check at that point really, because they want this off their plate and they know someone. So, well, here's how I convince people. And it's a soft sell for me. Someone calls me, they say, Hey, I have a permit I need. It's like, okay, well, where is it? Okay. Hey, do you have a couple of minutes? I'll just pull it up right now. And sure. So I get on the computer while I'm on the phone, I pull up their property and then I throw out a bunch of code mumbo jumbo to them for about two or three minutes. And then I go, so, you know, I can totally handle this for you. Here's my fee.

34:42Nick Loper:I can get started on it next Tuesday if you want. What do you think? And as soon as I have that conversation, they realize I know what I'm doing and I know more than they know about this and it's going to be hard for them. And I want to say nine out of 10, but it's almost 10 out of 10 people say yes at that moment.

35:00Jim Lashbaugh:It's such an effective close. This, well, what's, you know, what's your one thing? What do you really want to be spending your time on? Because people have used it against me. And you know what? You're right. I remember a specific call with like a bookkeeping company years ago. I was still doing all my bookkeeping in Excel. I was the weird person who liked doing it. Like, oh, the little dopamine rush of like a PayPal notification. Oh, I better go log my revenue. And they're like, is this really what you want to be spending your time on? It's like, you know what? You're right. probably shouldn't be doing that at this stage, but it was, you know, it was really effective close.

35:28Jim Lashbaugh:So I like that. You know, what's a day in the life? You got 25 different permits in the, in the pipeline right now. And so kind of guiding, I mean, a lot of it is like kind of hurry up and wait, like waiting for a reaction from city hall to kind of move it to the next step. But what's, where's your time going these days?

35:43Nick Loper:Yeah. So every day I've got permits in different stages of work. And so I'll be entering new permits into the system, or I'll be responding to reviewers, check sheets, or I'll be replying to clients' emails asking for updates, or I'll be sending them forms that need to be signed. The great thing about what I do is the owner or the client, the builder, he doesn't have to work with the surveyor or the designer anymore. I'm handling that, which is kind of different. A lot of the people that do what I do require the owner to be the middleman for all these things. Instead, I've chosen to take that off their shelf, off their to-do list, and I'll work directly with these people, which has been great for me because now I have these great relationships with all these surveyors and designers that are bringing me business now.

36:28Nick Loper:So at first it was like, I'm going to do this as an add-on for my client so that they don't have to deal with them. And so it's extra work for me, but it's turned out to be the best thing that's happened to my business.

36:38Jim Lashbaugh:Yeah. I mean, you're seeing great results just a little over a year into this. What's surprised you the most along the way?

36:44Nick Loper:Not a single client has ever asked me what my credentials are. All right. Let's let that sink in for a second. it. So what makes me an expert is that people pay me to do this thing. And most people, they don't care what your credentials are. Oh, someone else has paid you to do this before? Oh, okay. You know, I mean, I have a kid, you know, they're in sports or whatever. You sign them up with a coach. Sometimes you ask what their credentials are, what their history is, but really it's like, oh, Billy's paying them for extra lessons. Okay. Well, I need to get in on that too. For entrepreneurs that are out there, for side hustle people that are out there really holding back because they don't think they're an expert because no one would pay them.

37:21Nick Loper:It's just not true. People don't look at it like that. You just need to get that first job, get that first bag of laundry that somebody is going to pay you to do. And you're off to the races. Now, suddenly you have that one person. Now you can go to the next person says, people pay me to do laundry. Do you want me to pay me too, to do your laundry? Right? So getting that first one, whether it's your mother or your sister or whatever, get that done and then get the second one. And now it's just going to be a snowball effect. If you do it right, you do it good. You add value, more value than they're expecting.

37:51Nick Loper:My biggest advice to people would be, again, is to do beyond what people want you to do. If you're a auto detailing company that comes to your house to do auto details, when you're done, wash off the driveway, put a little mint on the steering wheel. If you are a flower delivery person, leave an extra note, leave an extra flower in there that they didn't expect. And they're going to pay someone to do this. What they are going to remember is the person that did a little extra that they are not used to. And that's what's going to bring business back to you.

38:21Jim Lashbaugh:I like that. Well, what's next for you? You mentioned potentially bringing on some help to kind of grow the business from here. But where do you want to take this thing?

38:28Nick Loper:My wife and I and my stepson and my mother-in-law are going to head to Europe for about for a few weeks this summer. And so that for me is going to be a test. Can I really do this job anywhere in the world? And it's just the time difference, but we'll deal with that. but it is very much remote. Bringing someone else on, as I mentioned, is something that I'm looking towards maybe later mid to end of this year of doing to see if that can work and scale the business. But really what I'm looking forward to is finding a side hustle for my stepson and his buddies. We actually, this last year, we got a couple of his buddies and we did a jump calling weekend for him.

39:05Nick Loper:And this was fantastic. They're like 16 years old. They made flyers. They went around to the whole neighborhood. and put them on their doors. And then when we started basically saying email or call this number, if you have any junk you want hauled away, we're going to be here just one day. And then we got so many calls that we had to say, okay, we're going to be here two days. We got so many more people that, okay, I guess we're going to do this for Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And then we actually ordered a huge, the biggest dumpster you could and had it parked in front of our house. And then we went around with the trailer for two and a half days, picking up everybody's junk and dropping it.

39:40Nick Loper:And luckily, our neighbors are all really nice and they didn't care that this was going on. But they all had a great time. It was horrible weather. They all got soaked. But they all walked away with a little stack of cash in their pockets. So I'd like to see if we can find something else for them to do on that line.

39:55Jim Lashbaugh:Wow. That's a really creative kind of one-off, low-risk business. I mean, you're not renting the dumpster. You're not doing any of it until you have the clients kind of pre-sold or pre-signed up.

40:06Nick Loper:Right. It was great. And actually, we didn't even have to pay for the dumpster until after the fact. So you order it, but you don't pay for it. People are listening in for a business idea. There's a lot of junk haulers out there, right? There's a lot of junk haulers out there. But is there anyone that just canvases a particular neighborhood?

40:22Jim Lashbaugh:Plus, I like the scarcity of it. Like, look, this is a one-day event. Because we have similar community-wide hazardous way, like bring your old cans of paint or your old fluorescent bulbs or whatever. Bring your batteries to this thing. But it's one day only. And you're like, oh crap, I better go.

40:35Nick Loper:Exactly. And I do have a couple of other little side hustle ideas I I wouldn't mind sharing with you. I have a lot of ideas running through my head if you're interested in doing that little segment. Yeah, let's do it. Every city has a flower wholesaling. In Portland, there's one called the Portland Flower Market. You can go there and you can just pick out all your flowers. And if someone just went in Canvas neighborhood a week in advance, put up flyers everywhere, put it on Facebook and said, I'm going to be driving by in my van or my car or this is Portland. There's a lot of bicycles and a lot of people hauling trailers behind their bicycles.

41:02Nick Loper:So maybe a bicycle trailer full of flowers. and I'm going to be coming through your neighborhood on this day, on this Saturday, from this time to this time. If you want me to stop at your house to buy a bouquet of flowers or to put together your own bouquet, just send me an email and then just go from house to house to house with your cart full of flowers where people get to come out to the sidewalk, pick the flowers in your bouquet and then walk in their house. And then you go four doors down to the next customer. And with a business like this, my brain is always going, it's like, as soon as you get someone to email you and say, yeah, please stop at my house.

41:31Nick Loper:I'd love to get a bouquet. You reply back to that That person says, that's fantastic. I'm really putting my heart into this business. Do you mind taking a moment and sharing with two of your neighbors that I'm going to be coming through on that day too and see if they'd like to come out and look at the flowers with you and then use their circle to build your business. I think this could really grow. Then after the event's over, you can follow up and say, hey, by the way, I started my own Jenny's Flowers business. Let me know of all your flower needs in the future. I'd love to meet those needs in the future as well.

42:01Jim Lashbaugh:Yeah, really kind of a creative, low overhead, low risk way to get started. And, you know, hopefully build a sense of community too.

42:07Nick Loper:Right. And just like with the dumpster thing is for something like this, you don't have to go buy a bunch of flowers in advance. You get the order, you get not necessarily orders, but you get that these people want you to stop. And then you can go, you get 10 people or 20 people or three people say that they want you to stop. Then you know how many flowers to go pick up. The second idea I have is about 20 % of the people in my neighborhood have the ring cameras, which we have as well. but a ring installation person would be a great business for someone where you just same thing you could canvas neighborhood or put it on facebook you don't push them in advance someone says yes i want you to come install a ring camera for me and you charge 95 to install this ring camera and then of course if you want to you want one on your back door too i'm since i'm already here i'll just charge you 80 to install that one and then you can purchase these if you especially if you purchase one a credit card and someone ends up not buying them you can return them and you never really got charged for them.

42:57Nick Loper:And you can come install the Ring cameras. And then you say, oh, by an extra$25, I'll do the setup on your phone. Because every one of these needs the phone setup. It's kind of confusing. It's a little add on. You can handle or I'll do the setup on your phone. And then, of course, there's other things that Ring has now. There's different security cameras and whatnot. Again, the same thing is that you just ask that person, hey, please tell you I'm going to be in your neighborhood. Please tell two more people. But for someone that wants to do this, because I think there's an angle here too, to like, if you can get these cameras at wholesale or at or Costco packs or something like that, where you're getting them a little bit cheaper than people can buy them themselves.

43:34Nick Loper:But then you can still charge the full retail price. There's a little bit of money to be made there as well.

43:39Jim Lashbaugh:Yeah, definitely. We came across a guy who was doing probably 30 ,000 bucks a month worth of TV mounting. It was just, again, kind of a one-off customer, not likely to turn into a lot of repeat business, but a skill just about anybody could learn. And boom, boom, boom. You know, I don't know. I think he was going primarily through Thumbtack, but, you know, different, different marketplaces to go and get customers for something like that.

44:02Nick Loper:I think after you did a couple of them, you could install a ring camera and program someone's phone in well less than an hour. Right. So you could be making$150 to$200 an hour doing this, I think, very, very easily if you got really good at it and built a reputation.

44:15Jim Lashbaugh:Totally. Well, Jim, these have been awesome. Synergypermits.com. You can find Jim over there. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation.

44:22Nick Loper:Yeah, I think it comes back to, again, just adding more value. You know, if you clean houses, take a minute to organize the dog toys. You know, if you're updating websites, when you're done, have a couple of people that you know, leave them a five-star review. Just something that those people aren't expecting you to do that's going to make them remember you because they're going to pay somebody. They'd rather pay somebody that they like and that did something extra for them.

44:44Jim Lashbaugh:Totally. Yeah, that was one of my takeaways here was like building that relationship, going the extra mile. And you gave lots of cool examples of, oh, if you're detailing cars, leave a little mint on the thing. Like, you know, super easy to do. It doesn't cost you hardly anything and something memorable. At the very top of the show, we talked about, you know, the profits really come from solving problems and taking away pain. So much easier to sell pain pills than it is to sell vitamins in this case. In the permitting case, they know that it's going to be a pain and they don't want to deal with it.

45:11Jim Lashbaugh:It's like, if there was an easy button solution, like, yeah, just call Jim. He'll take care of it. If you could be the Jim for whatever your niche is, there you go. There's your ticket to 200, 250, 300 bucks an hour. And then this closing question of what's your one thing? You know, if you're offering any kind of niche service to somebody who maybe could do it themselves, but probably shouldn't be doing it themselves. Look, is this your one thing? No, probably not. Let me take care of it for you. Before you go, I want to make sure you grab your free listener bonus. That is my AI-assisted side hustle brainstorming worksheet.

45:43Jim Lashbaugh:You can answer a few short questions, including some that Jim tossed out here as potential thought exercises. And then you're going to get a custom prompt that you can paste into the AI of your choice and start the conversation around some personalized business ideas that are really tailored to you, your skills, your interests, your goals. So just hit the show notes and you'll find the link in the episode description. I'll get you over there and you'll be able to download that for free, play around with it, see what kind of cool ideas that I could come up with. But big thanks to Jim for sharing his insight.

46:12Jim Lashbaugh:Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. SideHustleNation.com slash deals is where to go to find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That's it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share with a friend, fire off that text message, let them know, hey, you ought to check this out. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and i'll catch you in the next edition of the side hustle show hustle on