The Side Hustle Show

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215: How to Quickly Build an Online Business When You Don't Have an Audience Feb 02, 2017

Show notes

Mark Wills is a professional notary public loan signing agent. It's something he started doing as a side hustle that eventually turned into a full-time business.

While his friend Roman Rosario was between startups, Mark showed him how to do loan signings to make extra money.

Loan signing agents are the people who walk you through the final paperwork when you are buying or refinancing a home. The signing agent is required to make sure you understand all the paperwork, answer any questions you have, and sign off the documents.

These appointments take around 1-2 hours and the signing agent can earn anywhere between $75 and $200.

Mark's system worked and Roman had his first signing -- and his first payday -- right away.

And that sparked an entirely new business idea. If Mark could teach him how to do this in just a few hours, he could probably teach others online as well.

Although Mark had no online or social media presence or audience to speak of, he and Roman set out to validate, create, and sell an online course teaching other people to do what he does. That became LoanSigningSystem.com.

Fast forward a year and the guys are making $4k a month selling their course. In this episode they talk you through the steps they took to validate their idea, how they built their course using content from free webinars, their marketing techniques, email responder series, and more.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Quickly Build an Online Business When You Don't Have an Audience

214: Become a Master of Productivity, Discipline, and Focus Jan 26, 2017

Show notes

John Lee Dumas is the undisputed king of productivity, discipline, and focus--the guy is a machine!

John is the host of EOFire, where he interviews today’s most successful entrepreneurs 7-days a week.

(I was a guest on episode 932!)

JLD has grown EOFire into a multi-million dollar a year business with over 1,500 interviews and 1.5 million monthly listens. His latest project is The Mastery Journal: Master productivity, discipline, and focus in 100 days. You can learn more at TheMasteryJournal.com.

Longtime listeners may remember hearing John way back on episode 15 of The Side Hustle Show. Three and a half years and 199 episodes later, I’m excited and honored to have him back on the show.

In this episode, John takes you through some of his top productivity, discipline, and focus tips that anyone can incorporate into their day, business, and lifestyle. He explains why planning your day helps you avoid OPA (Other People’s Agenda) and keeps you on a productive and focused path.

These are the things I struggle with at times--especially focus--and things I constantly hear as challenges from Side Hustle Nation. In fact, I’ve asked thousands of subscribers “what’s holding you back?”, and the lack of time and focus are among the most popular responses.

John has developed The Mastery Journal based on his own success building his 7-figure business, and in this episode he shares some of his top tips and gives an insight into the habits and routines that got him where he is today.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Become a Master of Productivity, Discipline, and Focus

213: How to Avoid Conflict of Interest Between Your Side Hustle and Your Day Job Jan 20, 2017

Show notes

Possessing creative powers beyond those of mere mortals, Don "The Idea Guy" is back to help talk through a common but tricky situation side hustlers run into.

You might remember Don from episode 170 of the show, where he gave us his 7 rules for business idea brainstorming and took a few live listener calls as well.

This week I invited Don back to help wrestle with the dreaded "conflict of interest" that might arise between your day job and your side hustle.

Inspired by an email from someone in the Side Hustle Nation Community, Don offers some suggestions on how to deal with this at your place of work. He covers how you can test ideas in your day job within a lower risk environment, and perhaps even leverage a raise from your boss based on the results.

Tune in to hear what options you have if your side hustle overlaps a little too closely with your day job.

It's a little bit of a different style of episode, so I'm curious to hear what you think? Would you like to hear more of this "talk show" style show? Or should I stick with the regular interview format?

Full Show Notes: How to Avoid Conflict of Interest Between Your Side Hustle and Your Day Job

212: Micro Habits: The Too-Small-to-Fail Plan for Big Results Jan 19, 2017

Show notes

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

That line from Aristotle may be one of the most overused quotes in history.

But it's overused for good reason; it's a good quote. At least the first part. Aristotle was onto something for sure: we are what we repeatedly do.

I agree with that 100%.

The issue I have is with the second part: Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

There’s no such habit called excellence; you can’t wake up tomorrow and start your morning routine with a quick session of excellence before you go grab breakfast.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about setting new year’s resolutions or goals for the year, which I think is only natural when the calendar flips, but I’m had a hard time coming up with a SMART goal or set of SMART goals for the year I was really excited about.

It’s easy to pick a number out of the sky, like I want to make $1 million, or I want to reach 100,000 subscribers, or I want to become a #1 New York Times Bestseller, and those kinds of goals are great -- if they motivate you and you can reverse engineer a path to get there.

But on the flipside of Big Hairy Audacious Goals like these, to borrow a phrase from Jim Collins, is the micro habit. And that brings us back to Aristotle: we are what we repeatedly do.

I’ve seen the power of consistent execution first-hand; this podcast is probably my best most recent example of that. It started out as an experiment, it cost less than $100, and over the last 3.5 years, I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s been life-changing.

So if you’ve found yourself in kind of the same boat, with everyone around you sharing their resolutions and their ambitious goals for the year and not quite knowing what you should be aiming for yourself, I invite you to consider the micro habit as an alternative.

Full Show Notes: Micro Habits: The Too-Small-to-Fail Plan for Big Results

211: Double Your Energy in 7 Days Jan 12, 2017

Show notes

Perhaps what we need isn't more hours in the day, but more energy in our hours. That's ultimately what this episode is about: feeling better and more alive so we can get more results from our businesses.

Yuri Elkaim is a former professional soccer player, a Registered Holistic Nutritionist, the author of The All-Day Energy Diet, several other books, and you can find out more about Yuri and his health adventures at YuriElkaim.com.

Yuri promotes "energy through tranquility rather than stimulation," which is an ideal that resonated with me.

In this episode, Yuri runs through 7 energy commandments to be aware of going into 2017 if you want to be your most energized self to-date.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Double Your Energy in 7 Days

210: Steal This Process: A Step-by-Step System to Consistent $10k Months Jan 05, 2017

Show notes

Nagina Abdullah turned her weight loss blog, MasalaBody.com, into a 6-figure side business. By day, she works for a large consulting company, and with a busy work schedule, a young family, and limited time to work on her side hustle, Nagina has been very smart about her marketing and pricing.

After struggling with her weight for all of her adult life, she finally hit on something that worked and dropped 40 pounds! With friends, colleagues, and neighbors asking how she did it, she started her blog to share recipes and tips.

But she soon discovered that people didn't want recipes; they wanted to lose weight! Quickly, Nagina adapted and used her own success story as a catalyst to begin helping other women make some serious lifestyle changes.

Her sales funnel process is applicable across a broad range of industries and business models, and I think you'll find a way to put some of her tactics and strategies into practice for your own hustle.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Steal This Process: A Step-by-Step System to Consistent $10k Months

209: Amazon FBA Private Label Strategies for 2017 – Featuring Two 7-Figure Sellers Dec 29, 2016

Show notes

As a private label seller on Amazon, Andy has seen his revenue grow from $400k in year one, to $900k in year two, and he is closing in on $1.8 million for year three!

I last spoke with Andy "Slamazon" Slamans on episode 84 of The Side Hustle Show. Back in 2014, Andy was wrapping up his first year as a full-time Amazon seller and on the podcast he shared all his best tips for product research and getting started as an FBA private label seller.

I was excited to have Andy back on the show along with his Amazon FBA business partner Liran Hirschkorn. Both Andy and Liran are now running 7-figure Amazon private label businesses!

In this episode, they share how the FBA landscape has changed over the last couple of years, and how they have moved with the changes to build successful businesses.

Tune in to hear Andy and Liran explain the process they are currently using to perform product research so they know they are sourcing products that will sell. You'll also learn how they create “bundles” and unique products that separate them from their competitors, and how they launch their products and gain initial traction within the Amazon search engine.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Amazon FBA Private Label Strategies for 2017 – Featuring Two 7-Figure Sellers

This episode is packed with everything you need to know to start your own FBA private labeling business or start taking your business to the heights that these guys are at.

You can find out more about how they run their businesses at AmazingFreedom.com/hustle.

208: Pay Less Taxes - Your Side Hustle Tax Questions Answered Dec 23, 2016

Show notes

Josh Bauerle is the CPA on fire at cpaonfire.com. Josh specializes in tax preparation, tax planning, booking keeping, and general consulting services to take the accounting side of your business to the next level.

Just 30 minutes with Josh about a month ago saved me thousands of dollars, so you owe it to yourself to listen to this episode and see if you can put some money back in your pocket too.

In this episode, Josh goes into detail about the tax implications with each type of business entity you can form, as well as how you can potentially save thousands of dollars by registering as an S-Corp.

Josh also covers which expenses are deductible to your business, how to include health insurance as a tax-deductible, and how you can reduce your tax bill by investing more into retirement accounts. He also spends some time explaining the often confusing issue of how much sales tax FBA sellers should be paying and under which state tax laws, as well as recommending a service to automate the process.

Tune in as Josh answers several questions from the Side Hustle Nation community and shares some of his best tax saving tips and advice. This isn’t another one of those dry conversations around tax, it’s packed with actionable tips and advice to help you put more money back into your pocket.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Pay Less Taxes - Your Side Hustle Tax Questions Answered

207: How to Use Video and YouTube to Grow Your Business Dec 22, 2016

Show notes

Thomas Frank is the College Info Geek and you can find him at collegeinfogeek.com.

Thomas also has a podcast, and a YouTube channel with an impressive following of over 400,000 subscribers and over 14 million views.

Thomas’ blogging journey started back in 2010 when he applied to join a team of writers working on a blog in the college/student niche - but he was unsuccessful. He decided to publish his post on his own site, started introducing different forms of multimedia over the years, and stumbled across a love for producing entertaining YouTube videos.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of really compelling content for how to study, how to take tests, how to read text books, all the kinds of questions students were asking me about as a blogger.” Thomas told me. This was an open door for him to produce high-quality informational videos in his niche and provide the kind of content his audience wanted.

Thomas is now a “YouTuber”, and although he has many income streams his YouTube channel ad revenue makes up a large portion of his monthly income.

Tune in to hear how Thomas grew his YouTube channel to 400k subscribers in 2.5 years. He shares his marketing hacks, tips he used to write more compelling titles that perform well in YouTube’s search algorithm and attracts more clicks, and how he developed a lead magnet that not only attracts email subscribers but earns decent revenue too.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Use Video and YouTube to Grow Your Business

206: Go Where the Cash is Already Flowing Dec 15, 2016

Show notes

I’d like to introduce some of the characters in my latest book Buy Buttons, and also give you a sample of the audiobook version I recorded.

I knew I wanted to create an audiobook for this title, because Audible is yet another “Buy Button” marketplace for me to test out, and because I’ve heard audiobooks can actually perform really well for authors.

Note: If you’re new to Audible, you can get Buy Buttons and another title of your choosing free!

But even for someone who’s been editing audio for the last 3.5 years on this podcast, it was quite a challenge to get the book recorded and approved for sale. In fact, it was rejected by Audible 4 or 5 different times for various reasons.

Just reading my own words without messing up and with intonations that made sense was hard enough!

That put a little damper on my timeline, as I’d hoped to get it out much closer to the launch date of the Kindle and paperback editions. Still, now that the audiobook is approved, it’s already been selling well with very little promotion.

In this episode I share the full introduction to Buy Buttons plus you’ll meet a few of the side hustlers I connected with during the writing process.

As you know, most business books follow a familiar format: big picture thesis, supported by case studies and examples. Feeling no need to reinvent the wheel, Buy Buttons follows this formula as well. The big picture thesis is that the fastest way to earn extra money is to go where money is already being spent: the hundreds of peer-to-peer marketplaces.

I was able to source several stories from The Side Hustle Show archives and the blog archives to back that thesis up, but still had a bunch of gaps to fill in.

For those, I turned to HARO, the Side Hustle Nation Facebook group and email list, and even reaching out to the marketplaces directly to see if they had any successful sellers I could potentially feature.

Full Show Notes: Go Where the Cash is Already Flowing

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