in this interview I talked to my friend
Nick loper who is the chief side hustler
side hustle nation Nick is the host of
one of my favorite podcasts the side
hustle show I've been listening to it
for years and it really helped me get
started online with affiliate marketing
and just learning about the world this
out there with side hustles and this
interview Nick tells us about how he got
started with his side hustle in fact it
was a shoe affiliate site and it grew to
the point where he was able to quit his
full-time job that was a few years ago
even before he even started the side
hustle brand side hustle nation the blog
and so on it's super interesting to hear
about how qualified Nick is as a site
hustler and helping others grow and
start their businesses Nick tells us
about a few side hustle ideas that he
has that he doesn't have time to pursue
and some of those are ideas from guests
that he had so really cool and these are
some ideas that you can start probably
this week if you put your mind to it
this interview with Nick is part of a
series of side hustlers that I've talked
to you I got to hear about how they got
started and how they were able to grow
their businesses and sometimes make that
side hustle their full-time gig dude let
me know in the comments if you want to
see more side hustlers and you could
even leave recommendations for people
that you would like for me to interview
so without further ado let's go to the
interview with Nick welcome I'm talking
with my friend Nick Loper from side
hustle nation the host of side hustle
chef welcome Nick how are you doing
today doing and great thanks for having
me for the people that don't know you
can you just give us a quick intro on
who you are and a little bit about the
show maybe sure so for the last five
years I've hosted a weekly podcast
part-time business ideas different ways
to make money outside your day job and I
started it because that was my
entrepreneurial background my original
side hustle was a Footwear comparison
shopping site that earned affiliate
commissions from Zappos and Amazon and a
bunch of these other online Footwear
retailers and that was the vehicle that
let me quit my job so while I was
running that as a side hustle started
several different projects including the
very meta side
show very cool and how long after you
quit did you start the podcast years
like five years six years I was like
five years before I felt like
comfortable being like the side hustle
guy I guess trying to do a little bit of
a personal branding project very cool I
had no idea so that means you started
like affiliate marketing and stuff like
about 10 11 years ago something like
that yeah back in the day probably 2004
and scaled it to you know pretty decent
business by 2008 2009 2010 and you know
I sold a lot of shoes mostly focused in
in Footwear of all things but have kind
of kept the lessons and the learnings
from that business to dictate some of
the projects today very cool yeah I had
no idea you got started that early so
it's actually amazing because like me I
started my you know niche site project
pretty quick after I got started but you
really were in the trenches for a long
time
very interesting so with that business
I'm just curious like with that business
did you get a lot of traffic from like
SEO or was it coming from ads or
somewhere it was primarily driven
through Adwords
and Bing and which used to be even like
yahoo and overture like back in the day
as a was heavily reliant on paid traffic
where one of the probably one of failure
points was that I've failed to reinvest
that profit from from the pay-per-click
stuff into SEO and so never really got a
lot of organic love and maybe that would
give him the business a little more
staying power how long was it around
then um from 2004 and it's very earliest
stages to 2014 so when the kind of shut
it shut it down and and focused on the
side hustle nation stuff as a as the
primary focus right very cool so I guess
when you first started did you have any
like specific goals or did you just get
obsessed with like marketing and that
sort of thing
and so I started I don't even know if
this is still a thing I started with
direct link ads on Google like text ads
for specific models of shoes like if you
were searching for
New Balance model you know number XYZ
like that was a great long tail search
term because it was like super specific
and just linking that with my affiliate
link the problem was it was really
tedious to maintain because the shoes
would go out of stock or the price would
change and like whoever I was promoting
wasn't necessarily the best deal anymore
and so my reasoning and at that point
the goal was to like pay my rent in
college which you know was less than 400
bucks a month so I was like that was a
victory so I was like total like beer
money side hustle right after graduation
and and kind of getting my first
corporate job still had this stuff
running on the side and my reasoning was
like okay this could scale if if I could
build a website and you know the prices
would update automatically the catalogs
would update automatically and that was
the theory anyways that's kind of the
the rudimentary vision that I have for
the website and you know posted a job on
guru.com and met a developer and we
hashed out this deal and it was you know
a slow slow development process and a
super ugly website you probably go to
like Wayback Machine and look it up it
was called shoes R Us net back in in its
early iterations and but it but it was
functional and it got the job done
Wow now when you were transitioning from
like the side hustle to like full-time I
guess how did that go how did you make
that decision well I made the decision
based on a track record of Revenue
history which is something I would
recommend everybody do instead of you've
probably heard the definition of an
entrepreneur is like you know somebody
who jumps off the cliff and like figures
out how to build their parachute on the
way down absolutely not
not for me anyways much more risk-averse
so you know I had a track record of
earnings history probably going back so
it's three years before I quit my job so
at least for the last two years like
there was pretty solid earnings history
I don't know if it was fully to the
point of replacing my day job salary was
making around fifty grand a year at that
time but what it was doing for sure was
you know covering my monthly expenses
and I could see with an extra 40 50
hours a week like okay I can I can
easily get it there and beyond and so
that's kind of what what happened after
I quit was you know having more time to
focus on it to scale it up I agree with
that approach 100% to
very I don't know it seems like a sexy
idea to like walk in and quit or walk
out of a meeting and quit and then
you're kind of stuck with like who knows
what to do with your side hustle but
yeah I'm thinking a lot of sort of
risk-averse ideas as well so I think
yeah it's just a much better approach to
like take your time there's not a huge
rush so it's gonna be there tomorrow
that's what I had to tell myself too
because it was like you know working at
the end they're almost two full time
jobs and just be like okay deep breath
like it's just shoes it's not going
anywhere you know it'll be there
tomorrow and it's the same thing with
the stuff today like you feel pressure
to put out a blog post or put it on an
episode and you know so I stopped
sending my newsletter for two weeks and
out of like 60,000 people like two
people took the time to respond to me
like dude where are you you know
everything okay all right and so like
some people didn't miss it but you know
most people just what about their day
they should follow you on Instagram in
like you know make sure you're alright
so you're having a good time you talked
to lots of side hustlers I think at this
point you've talked to you know well
over 200 close to 300 I know you're
coming up on the the big 300 episode
milestones so do you have any like side
hustles that maybe you've heard of in
the last few months that are really
interesting to you that people should
maybe take a look at there have been a
handful that are either super creative
or super like I was just you know
inspired hearing the story so a recent
one was actually a cleaning business a
residential cleaning business started by
this guy who was still in college and I
was like were you some like you know
clean freak who always had to be you
know dusting your apartment stuff he's
like no what I did was just I saw this
opportunity in the Yelp reviews for
these cleaning businesses that had been
around for decades in some cases where
they were technically very proficient at
the act of cleaning but they sucked at
the business stuff they didn't answer
their phones they were unresponsive like
all that stuff so he reasoned look I can
find people to clean like that's not
rocket science and I'm just gonna do the
business side really well he explained
he got his first customers through a
platform called thumb
attack and his other advantage was in
running it as a side hustle he's like I
got all the business between 5:00 p.m.
when those other businesses closed and
weren't responding or via text or email
or message or you know phone I got all
the business between 5:00 p.m. and 9:00
a.m. just because you know I was a
scrappy young hustler who was you know
out there being responsive and so I
thought that was a really cool one never
clean an apartment never clean a house
himself is doing I think 60 grand a
month when we talk and running the whole
thing remotely he was like so the
cleaning business is in Washington DC he
was off in London when we called he's
spending time in Japan like he's all
over the place I thought that one was
really cool one that was also inspiring
was this dude who wanted to get into
real estate investing but I didn't have
you know the capital necessary so he and
he was at his kid's friend's birthday
party and had this like inflatable
bounce house thing there he's like
that's like rental real estate in a way
somebody is renting this bounce house
right now he goes home finds one of
these things used on Craigslist for 800
bucks and starts renting it for 130 140
bucks a day he's like that pencils out a
lot better math wise in like the 1% rule
for traditional rental real estate so I
like that one another one on the bounce
house front was actually a guy drop
shipping these giant commercial bounce
houses like several thousand dollars
holding no inventory having his
suppliers ship this stuff out on his
behalf
it sold 300 grand worth of him in the
first year driving traffic with Google
ads and then reinvesting that into SEO
it was just holy crap you know put up a
Shopify store and and develop some
supplier relationships it kind of off to
the races those really kind of three
recent ones I mean there's hundreds that
we can yeah I listened to the one with
the cleaning business and if I remember
right the guy was in college when he was
launching it right he was like studying
for finals like as the business was
getting going right yeah so this thing
went you know from zero you know side
hustle college student to 60 grand a
month over the course of two years and
he said like while he was you know in
that final semester he's like trying to
respond to stuff in class and like
answering call like you ever gonna step
out his professors are like dude what
are you doing you know
and it's like I'm trying to run a
business here yeah this is the best this
is the best entrepreneurial educator
that's amazing yeah cuz I mean the point
being
he wasn't like you know an MBA or
anything like that
it was just like a guy going going to
class and whatnot so interesting yeah
definitely if only a smart dude and a
go-getter for sure and I mean all these
all these people are so let's rewind a
little bit what was your like corporate
job back in the day so as a sales rep
for Ford on their service and part side
of their business so it interface with
their dealers and try and get them to
sell more Ford parts simple in a little
known fact I don't know if you remember
this Nick but you worked like in in
Atlanta back in the day right in the
Dunwoody area mm-hmm so like I used to
live like right in that sort of pocket
that neighborhood and the perimeter so
yeah like I know I like Google Earth
it'd be like oh crap you we were like a
mile away really close yeah so maybe we
ate at the same restaurant at the same
time but didn't know it
we both had like much more hair back
than about I was gonna say we look
different now so as you were growing the
business even now like how do you deal
with like motivation and I know as I was
getting started and when I talk to other
people like there's always points where
things get hard it takes longer than you
thought things didn't come through and
you thought they would so how do you
deal with motivation yeah well I mean
first of all it's fun so that's kind of
inherently motivating like if you find
the work interesting and challenging
that's I think always going to be a
factor for me there are a few other
factors like you know getting feedback
from listeners and readers is huge like
hey this helped me do X Y & Z hey I read
your thing on getting traffic from
Pinterest and I tripled my website but
like stuff like that it was really
powerful at least for me other stuff is
like getting to the money milestones
fast if it's like you know just getting
a freelance client or you know something
where it's like very low overhead you
know very quick to to make a pitch and
make a deal like versus you know as you
know like building a niche side and
building links and building content like
it could be months before you ever start
to see you
rankings and like it can be tough to
keep you know keep it going so in cases
like those trying to set kind of like
micro milestones to check off the list
you know that you can continue to chip
away at every day and and make it feel
like okay I'm doing the right things
moving forward I'm making progress even
if I'm not seeing any direct results per
se gotcha
and it take it that that sort of shapes
your productivity as well so you'll have
like mini milestones along the way so
you can sort of track your longer-term
goals is that accurate I'm really bad at
long-term goals I wouldn't have an
immunity throw for a long time but it's
you kind of step into this stuff and
think at least in terms of the podcast
starting with the the hook or the story
or the you know the the broad idea first
and then trying to figure out okay who's
gonna be the best person to illustrate
that to tell that story and even when
you get pitches coming in you're like
okay you're an awesome entrepreneur but
like maybe you're too far along for my
audience or maybe like it's not super
applicable like I talked to a woman the
other day had a cool business you know
was selling digital products in her own
kind of invention her own course on
Amazon but she dumped a hundred grand
into you know the initial production of
that course I was like oh you know I was
like you know it was my bad like I
hadn't done the homework in advance I
was like oh you know what gave you the
confidence to to do that where did that
money come from like was that a
bootstrap thing so trying to you know
kind of put the audience first I guess
like make sure that you know and if she
had been like well I followed this
specific formula on Kickstarter and it
went viral like that's one thing but
it's like yeah I just had a hunt of
grand sitting around like whatever yeah
it's kind of hard to like relay that to
people who were trying to do a side
hustle so interesting all right
I'm a Productivity geek so I sort of get
into it try like several things and I'm
always testing something like how do you
manage your productivity say on a weekly
basis just day-to-day let's do it I mean
I'm gonna I'm probably asked
some questions on the productivity front
right the biggest shift for me in the
last couple years has been theme days
which something I picked up from Mike
Vardy at productivity is calm and in
inside of those theme days so Monday is
kind of like a content creation day
Tuesday is meeting day Wednesday is you
know working on other side hustle stuff
and some admin and then Thursday is
theoretically blocked off for like side
hustle growth projects you know for a
while that was like an email list
migration I was a website redesign maybe
it takes the form of like a like a
course or something like that but and
then Fridays are off because you know
it's kind of time with me with my son
inside those theme days the biggest
shift was stacking all the meetings up
on the Tuesday it's just because I would
have previously I'd have you know some
project I was working on and have a you
know a 15 minute call in half an hour or
you know and then 15 minutes after that
have another look to a deep work rhythm
or is now it's just like okay Tuesday so
I wash you know usually 9:00 to 5:00
stacked up pretty pretty deep with with
recordings and other meetings so it's
like that's probably been the biggest
shift it opened up the biggest time
blocks on other days to get some
meaningful stuff done very cool
so I've done a similar thing as well
Nick so I I don't do it every single
week but most of the time I try and like
do as much of one thing on one day as I
can kind of like you said especially for
like content creation like it may take
me 45 minutes to get in the mood to
write which is kind of a long time but
if I could write for three hours after
that that's pretty solid I can get a few
thousand words headed on some other day
and hopefully you know I don't have any
meetings to interrupt at or a live
stream yeah anything like that now on
those days you know this is a Tuesday
does your voice hold up pretty good I
mean I guess over the years you've been
able to manage your your voice but
talking all day it's a little rough
right I can definitely feel it at the
end of the day more like you that's the
beauty of hosting an interview show
mostly so if I'm if I'm behind the mic
you know asking the questions let
somebody else do the talking most the
time so that helps so it's definitely a
mix of the two
cool so I'm asking a lot of the folks in
this side hustle series
about like side hustle ideas that you
have thought of yourself not necessarily
from guests in your case but maybe it's
something that scratches your own itch
you're busy you have too many things to
do and you can't pursue it so do you
have any ideas like that oh my gosh so
like the donate a business idea segment
I used to keep a file of these I should
pull that up the the one is that I've
actually been kind of curious to test is
the the loan signing system so
apparently for people closing on
mortgages in almost every state some
states require an attorney but most
states don't they have a note come and
walk you through like the signing
paperwork and you know they tell you
what you're signing your life away to
and and and all this stuff to close on
the mortgage for those appointments like
those signing agents are earning 75
bucks to 150 bucks or sometimes even
more depending on how long it takes how
big the stack of papers is and all you
need to get started is a notary license
so I had the guy on the show a year ago
year and a half ago now who you know
taught an online course about how to
become a loan signing agent and the the
whole episode was about like you know
how we scaled this course with no
audience to start with and at the end of
the episode all the feedback was like
okay that was great but like we want to
learn more about like this loan siding
thing so had him back on this year with
one of his students who was making you
know I can't remember what he was like
yeah I think he was between 1500 and 2
grand a month on the side from his day
job like when we recorded and in the
following month it was like at 3500 and
I was like holy holy crap like and he's
like just for watching people sign
papers and is it just like so that's one
I kind of I almost want to like mystery
shop the guy's course and like go test
this out on my own because that seems
super I don't to say easy but like not
hard seems a pretty flexible like you
could kind of just if you want to do ten
of them a week or whatever or ten a
month and that's what he said like you
get you get the notifications on on text
message hey are you available at 6:30
tonight and he can reply yes or no and
it's just okay that's pretty cool
any others so there was that one I've
been kind of wanting to do like an email
marketing well actually to say like I
for a long time we've been wanting to
build like the email marketing you know
authority site you know that compares
all the different service providers and
like here's the pros and cons of
convertkit here's the pros and cons of
active campaign here's what you you know
the different features and stuff never
have carved out the time to build that
but the other thing I've been you know
wanting to do on the email friends to
build an email based business that's
just like a daily newsletter curated
topics on some like your the best
articles on photography on you know the
best food blog you know whatever it is
because like the one I really like is
Rockstar Finance like the best personal
finance articles of the day they send
just one email a day I think they have
ads or they have sponsors like it's just
a super low overhead business you think
about like the Hustle is another one
that I get where you know it's just it's
just you know good writing and good
email like they tell a story and then
there's some sponsors spots that they
sell on that and they could say hey look
you know we got 100,000 people we got a
50 percent open right here's here's our
rates I think that one would be a cool
side side hustle to to play around with
very good if I may point out like your
idea about the email service provider
list like you've done a similar thing
with credit cards right here pretty
recently yeah a little bit
you know I think I said a different kind
of a different vision poor but like the
credit card thing sure was just you know
we got back from a month long trip
because day care let us take the month
off is essentially free we spent twelve
hundred bucks on flights but didn't pay
for a single hotel didn't pay for Airbnb
we had some air B&B credit we stayed
with some friends and family for part of
that but used used to miles use some
hotel points and people were asking like
wait a minute you know you seem to go on
these pretty decent trips and you're not
you know you're not slumming it while
you're there so you don't put together a
free guide on like okay how it really
works is you know we take advantage of
these different credit card signup
bonuses
you know trying to be smart with our
spending because like the default is
like you know one percent cash back 2
percent cash back which is okay it's
better than nothing like I'll take it
but you know through strategically
signing up for 4 new cards if you have
the spending to you know to justify
order to reach that you know minimum
spend required for the bonus and you're
gonna be a responsible borrower you're
gonna pick it off and all that jazz you
can actually do significantly better
than 1 to 2% I mean you could do 30 40
50 percent like on certain cards for
mileage rewards and stuff like that
that's at free credit card course calm
you can find it on on YouTube as well
but just a kind of a fun little
walkthrough guide you know here's here's
what we've been able to do with I don't
even I don't even want to say like
travel hacking or anything like that but
it's just like you know spending smarter
it's like free money so I was like why
not take it rip and now I recently took
a trip in basically I know one asked me
about what my travel was like but we
basically pay it all with points as well
so stayed in a really nice hotel we were
able to bring our doggie and it was one
of those boutique hotels that allows
dogs and they have like organic dog
treats and all that kinda stuff but yeah
like we had a VRBO on the beach and it
was awesome and yeah all not Hotel
points but all like reward points in
some fashion and you know some of them
like in my case I think I had the well I
don't want to say this specific one but
I had one it's a business card and if
you like spend enough in six months then
you get like 80,000 points which is no I
was gonna spend that much on tools or
whatever I needed so it's a no-brainer
sometimes if you just play in like a
little bit ahead yeah just prepaying for
software or prepaying for conferences
for you know whatever expenses you have
in your business like paying contractors
in certain cases although usually tech
on a little bit in those cases like you
know i don't want to make them pay the
fee so it's like i'll add a little bit
to it right so let's get into like some
of your your team maybe actually I don't
know if you have like a big team or
anything but I imagine
you're a busy guy you've been doing the
podcast for a while like do you have any
outsource
freelancers out there yeah kind of how
have a convoluted system of specialists
right now
and maybe maybe the team will grow in
the next few months like to kind of have
a good project manager or kind of like a
more executive assistant role but how
the the stack looks like today on the
podcast side there's a podcast editing
service I use podcast fast track comm
they kind of take the you know they run
through the raw audio I can mark up the
transcription and be like cut this cut
this you know they just make it sound
make it sound good there is a freelance
writer in the UK has actually been been
with me for years now he summarizes the
show so he kind of creates the episode
specific lead magnets that you see for a
lot of the episodes he writes the show
notes and he does some content writing
for another one of my sites as well I
have a dedicated Pinterest manager who
actually just was she was just seeing in
the States like she's from India and she
sends me this email like I mean I'm in
the States where do you live and I'm
like it's a big country you know I live
in Livermore
ya ever heard of it and she was like
holy crap that's only 40 40 miles from
me you know so we got to hang out and
have lunch with her and her husband I'm
super cool Wow
first time I met like one of my virtual
team members in 13 you know from from
the very first guy on guru comp I think
that was the last one that I met so she
does the Pinterest stuff I have a
service called okay relax which is the
closest thing to like a dedicated
general VA she does you know article
research she does some you know lead
magnet installations she does some blog
post formatting kind of general admin
stuff and then some longer term yeah I
don't know just like if you have some
tedious data entry thing like she might
have a post on like the best udemy
courses and so she took a lot of the
screenshots and stuff for that too and
did some formatting there what else
I have fancy hands this is like a New
York based of non-dedicated virtual
assistant service we could send over
they they do stuff like they respond to
certain emails on my behalf like
they follow this template based on the
responses they do some proofreading like
I just had to improve read a couple of
blog posts always good to have a second
set of eyes on that stuff they you know
check in for flight they do some
research too but you know the I don't
know a lot of referral credits for them
and they would they don't pay me in cash
so I just burned them through using the
service and then it's somebody else that
runs the Amazon ads like AMS ads for
books that might be it that might be in
right now
cool so it sounds pretty lean it sounds
like maybe one or two or three are
pretty critical and then everyone else
like it sort of has needed yeah the
overhead has crept up a little bit over
the years but it's you know it's
justified as the business has has grown
and that's where it's like okay it's
probably just about to the point of
looking for that executive assistant
project manager role email triage I
don't know just like a higher level
higher I know what's your team look like
I'm curious to hear where you're at yeah
it's very lean also so I have an
assistant that helps with like email
support for like my niche site course
and then I have another assistant that
helps a lot on the YouTube side so she
was a youtuber we just happen to have
like a couple common friends and she
needed like some some more contract work
basically and yeah so she helps me a lot
on the YouTube side and she has more of
a an I she was a vlogger so she has more
like pure skills in that area where I
was just doing like talking heads kind
of videos tutorials so I have that and
then I usually just spawn up teams for
whatever I need so if I have a bunch of
content that needs to be written all
spend a week and hire three or four
writers maybe you get a Content Manager
have them train them a bit have them run
through the project in four to six weeks
and then move on to the next thing that
way I can grow the team really fast and
get rid of them the scary thing for me
to bring someone on on a more regular
basis is I would have to make sure that
they had enough work to do so that they
wouldn't start looking for other
work which I guess that's where the you
know the companies that have like an
as-needed or whenever you put something
in the queue like someone does it sounds
like fancy hands is maybe kind of like
that right
yeah there how it works is you know they
have a distributed team kind of behind
the scenes that's tackling these tasks
and so you know your request goes into a
queue with all their other customers and
then you know people can pick them off
based on you know whether it's something
they can do or they want to do like go
sit on the phone with Comcast or you'll
call my insurance company whatever it is
nice and I guess the rates vary
depending on the skill that you need
them to have for fancy hands if for
their service it's like a flat monthly
fee for I think for 15 requests a month
it's 50 bucks and then okay relax is
he's an overseas service but dedicated I
think it's 25 requests up to a half an
hour for 100 bucks a month yeah that's
pretty good
I may have to look into that I existed
cool yeah they've been they've been
pretty cool although I think my my
assistant is pregnant like about to give
birth and so like oh shoot you know
we're gonna be on maternity leave for a
minute here so yeah that's kind of my
team I I usually keep it pretty lean and
then I like to just work on a project
and it like ended just made the team
everybody knows that that's how it's
gonna work so that works well lot of
flexibility that way and I could change
my mind like you know often once I
finished the project Sam right as you
were getting started or even now were
you part of mastermind groups I was kind
of a late comer to mastermind groups so
I didn't have a mastermind until 2014
yeah and I remember like my my friend
was like you gotta have a mastermind
group it so I'm like literally googling
like what is this I think it's like a
name-brand
thing she was like come on Think and
Grow Rich mastermind groups was like I
got I got nothing here since then super
super helpful like I was a lone wolf
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