The Side Hustle Show

Latest Episodes:

237: How to Quickly Brainstorm and Validate Business Ideas, with Noah Kagan Jul 06, 2017

Show notes

Noah Kagan is Chief Sumo and founder of Sumo.com and AppSumo.com. He blogs about his personal and business experiences at OkDork.com, and his new podcast is called Noah Kagan Presents.

Noah has built up a number of successful businesses and is always toying with new ideas or looking for the next big business opportunity, so he was the perfect person to brainstorm with.

If you’re stuck at the idea generation phase or pulling the trigger on your ideas, this episode is going to give you food for thought. Noah is a master at this stuff and doesn't sugarcoat anything.

And if you already have an idea you’re sitting on, he explains exactly how he validates his own ideas before moving forward and what steps you need to take.

Don’t be afraid of failure either. “I’ve never actually met someone who has made money or grown successful businesses that hasn’t had things that didn’t work out,” Noah said.

Tune in to hear how Noah comes up with interesting and unique business ideas, how he validates them, and how he splits his time between content creation and marketing.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Quickly Brainstorm and Validate Business Ideas, with Noah Kagan

236: What I've Learned and Applied from 49 Awesome Entrepreneurs - Part 4 Jun 29, 2017

Show notes

The best advice from my last 49 guests.

At the end of nearly every episode of The Side Hustle Show, I ask my guests for their #1 tip for Side Hustle Nation. There’s always a great variety of responses, and I wanted to take some time today to go through some of my favorites from the past 50-ish interviews.

I first did this for episode 50, which was my first-ever solo podcast recording, and then again in episode 124 and episode 177. If you like this short-and-sweet meta-style show, be sure to check out those ones from the archives as well.

And even though my primary motivation is to extract helpful tactics for you, the listener, I can't help but learn from my guests as well. You never know when inspiration will strike or where you'll hear the one insight that has a huge impact.

These episodes are a lot of fun to put together, and give me an excuse to revisit some of my favorite moments and wise words from the show.

From the last 49 guests, the 3 most common #1 tips I heard were:

Get started.
Take action.
Build your audience.

While those might sound overly generic, don't be quick to dismiss them. If all these really smart and successful people keep saying these episode after episode as their “#1 tip,” I think they’re worth paying attention to.

What action can you take today to apply those tips?

My #1 Tip? Find your WHY.

Why side hustle? What are you trying to build? What will that afford you?

At the end of this episode, I share a new #1-ish tip: if success is owning your calendar and being free to spend your time how you like, start doing it today in some small but meaningful way.

Full Show Notes: What I've Learned and Applied from 49 Awesome Entrepreneurs - Part 4

235: Selling Digital Products to Business or Government Clients: An Online Business Success Story with a Twist Jun 22, 2017

Show notes

As one of several side hustles, Ryan Dowd runs HomelessLibrary.com, a training program that teaches librarians how to confidently and compassionately deal with their homeless patrons.

It’s something a little different from the business-to-consumer model we usually see with online course sales and comes with some advantages over the B2C market — namely potentially higher prices and the ability to perform direct outreach.

By day Ryan is the executive director for a homeless shelter in Illinois, but on the side he’s also an adjunct professor, a practicing attorney, and he’s writing a book — in addition to the 3-15 hours a week he spends on HomelessLibrary.com.

(And he’s married with a couple kids, so it’s fair to say he’s a busy guy.)

Ryan was working at the homeless shelter when a friend asked if he would speak at a local conference about homelessness to a group of librarian executive directors.

His talk went so well he started receiving offers to deliver training in person at libraries. Not having the time to travel to different locations, Ryan recorded a 30-minute video, posted it on YouTube, and sent people the link.

Now with over 13,000 views, his video has become a staple training tool for librarians across the country and there was a demand for more.

Ryan capitalized on this by recording a longer, more in-depth training. He broke it up into modules and began selling it to libraries across the US.

Tune in to hear how that first conference speaking gig Ryan did for a friend turned into a successful side hustle selling B2B online courses and started what he calls, “A crazy wild ride with a completely accidental start.”

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Selling Digital Products to Business or Government Clients: An Online Business Success Story with a Twist

234: Side Hustle Sales Coaching: What Do I Do and Who Do I Do it For? Jun 15, 2017

Show notes

Listen in on a real-life side hustle coaching call with customer acquisition and retention strategist David Hutcherson (he's the client), and sales pro Brendan Alan Barrett (he and I share the coaching duties).

On the heels of last week's sales-themed episode, I invited Brendan on because of his sales background both with companies large and small.

We're joined by our "client" David, who's seeking to grow his freelance/consulting side hustle and build on his decade of experience in customer service.

We dive into where David is at in his business today, how he got his first few clients, and where he'd like to go from here.

The good news is he's not starting from scratch. He's had a handful of clients for community management and customer market research gigs, including the world famous improv theater Second City, but nothing recurring and not much in the pipeline at the moment.

We do our best to point him in the right direction and get him to try and figure out what exactly is the service he offers and who he offers it to. And we just might have a breakthrough on that front about 20 minutes in.

Tune in to hear the types of questions you'll have to ask yourself in a service-based side hustle. Put yourself in David's shoes as you listen and think about what you'd do in his position -- and your own.

Full Show Notes: Side Hustle Sales Coaching: What Do I Do and Who Do I Do it For?

233: How to 10x Your Service Business in Under Two Years Jun 08, 2017

Show notes

“People don’t buy intellectually, they buy emotionally,” Jim Brown told me. By taking a unique approach, understanding your demographic, and identifying the pain points you can solve, you can attract clients and increase sales.

Jim is a former professional wrestler, a Marine Corps vet, a sales coach, and is the founder and host of the SalesTuners podcast at SalesTuners.com.

In this year’s survey results, a lot of Side Hustle Nation readers said they needed help growing their business and attracting new customers. This is exactly what Jim does with his clients, and he shares his tactics and processes in this episode.

As entrepreneurs and side hustlers, we are all the VP of sales for our own businesses. The only person driving a company forward in the early stages is the founder, and nothing happens until someone sells something to someone else.

Tune in to hear how you can 10x your service business by setting a revenue goal, breaking down the numbers and planning out a step-by-step approach, and making outreach calls the way Jim does with his clients.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to 10x Your Service Business in Under Two Years

232: Going Big on Medium: How a New Blogger Got His First 6000 Email Subscribers (and Made $10k) in 6 Months Jun 01, 2017

Show notes

Ben Foley started writing about how to use mindfulness to reduce stress and anxiety at FullyRichLife.com a little over 6 months ago.

Since then, his little side project has generated over 6000 email subscribers and $10,000 in revenue.

His secret sauce?

Tapping into the big audience of readers on Medium.com.

Having overcome stress and anxiety issues himself, he knew this was a niche he could enter and help others. And, with a different approach to using mindfulness in the modern world to help reduce stress working for him, he knew he had a unique angle to blog about.

Before starting his site in December last year Ben had never even written a blog post. However, after finding a passion for writing and encouraged by positive feedback, he “tripled down” on content and started getting huge exposure almost right away -- something new sites often struggle with.

Tune in to hear how you can use Medium to growth hack your new or existing site, and how Ben is turning those readers into subscribers and revenue.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Going Big on Medium: How a New Blogger Got His First 6000 Email Subscribers (and Made $10k) in 6 Months

231: Affiliate Marketing the Authority Hacker Way: Build a Profitable Website from Scratch May 25, 2017

Show notes

Perrin Carrell is a senior contributing editor at AuthorityHacker and well-known within the internet marketing community for building niche/authority sites.

He has built several successful sites from scratch, including one recent project that went from a valuation of $0 to $200,000 in just under 20 months.

Perrin started learning about internet marketing and SEO while working a day job at a global communications consulting firm. Desperate to escape the day job and turn his side hustle into a full-time business he started building sites and learning from his failures along the way.

He now has the blueprint nailed for building profitable sites with several different income streams.

From planning the site structure, ordering content, carrying out keyword research, to link-building, Perrin shares exactly how he builds his sites in this episode.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Affiliate Marketing the Authority Hacker Way: Build a Profitable Website from Scratch

230: How 25 Side Hustlers Made Their First Entrepreneurial Income May 18, 2017

Show notes

What's the story of your first job-free income?

To celebrate the 4-year anniversary of The Side Hustle Show, the Side Hustle Nation community joined me in creating a really fun episode.

I asked people to tell me how they first started making money on the side, and got 25 different voicemails!

In this episode, you'll hear first-hand the steps your fellow listeners took to put themselves back in the driver seat of their own financial well-being. And no matter how you shake it, that first sale is a powerful one.

Full Show Notes: How 25 Side Hustlers Made Their First Entrepreneurial Income

229: How a Part-Time Podcast Turned into Multiple Streams of Income May 11, 2017

Show notes

Steve P. Young is a side hustler turned full-time entrepreneur. He has hosted more than 500 episodes of the AppMasters podcast, a podcast dedicated to helping app makers get more downloads and sales of their apps.

Steve was working full-time when he decided to start his podcast interviewing app developers and putting out content for the app community.

Using lunch breaks, early morning, and late nights, Steve found the time to put out two episodes a week and start building up authority and an audience in the app space.

Within four months he had his first consulting client, and within seven months he was handing in his notice at his day job as AppMasters became his full-time business.

Tune in to find out how Steve built up several income streams around his podcast:

The apps (how it all started)
Consulting
Podcast sponsorship
Digital products and courses
A private mastermind group
A live in-person event

You'll hear the hacks he used to grow his audience in a short time period, and how interviewing influential people in the app space helped double sales on his own apps.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How a Part-Time Podcast Turned into Multiple Streams of Income

227: How a Professional Card Counter Beat the Odds in Online Business Apr 27, 2017

Show notes

Don't you just love a good outsmarting the casino story? Bring me an Ocean’s Eleven, bring me a Bringing Down the House -- I’m all about it.

Colin Jones is a professional card counter whose blackjack teams won almost $4 million, and he earned over $500k himself.

Now a father of 6, Colin's playing days are mostly over, but he's turned his unique skill into a profitable online business at BlackjackApprenticeship.com.

Did you catch the Holy Rollers documentary about the Christian card counters? Yeah, it was about Colin and his team.

When we met at a Side Hustle Nation meetup in Seattle over the holidays, Colin explained that card counting -- though glamorized by Hollywood -- is "a hard way to make easy money." He also pointed out that the math involved is elementary-school level, and done right, it really can be seen as an investment and not a gamble.

Today, his Blackjack Apprenticeship site has more than 500 members and in this episode, you'll hear how he's grown this business, how he's priced his different offerings, and how he keeps customers sticking around for more.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How a Professional Card Counter Beat the Odds in Online Business

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