If you've ever been frustrated with the products in your life, and thought "there's gotta be a better way!," this conversation is sure to hit home. Jeremy Michael Cohen and Fred Perrotta created Tortuga Backpacks after an awesome trip to Europe -- and a less-than-awesome experience with their luggage. They resolved to create a better travel backpack, and did it, starting as a side hustle of course. Full Show Notes: Building a Multi-Million Dollar Ecommerce Brand on the Side
Nov 12, 2015•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rosemarie Groner is a former state trooper turned blogger and stay at home mom. In the last 12 months, her site The Busy Budgeter has grown from zero to 400,000 page views per month. More importantly, Rosemarie earned $5000 from the site last month while working on it part-time. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: $5k per Month Blogging Case Study Want to start a blog of your own? My free video course shows you how. (For the sake of comparison, SHN was around 73,000 pageviews for the last 30...
Nov 05, 2015•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's a special Friday-before-Halloween edition of The Side Hustle Show! Today we're diving into some of the scary moments in my business and some frightening tales from Side Hustle Show listeners. Even though we're told to "punch fear in the face," I think it's something that will be a constant in our lives. There's always something to be afraid of.
Oct 30, 2015•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast The self-publishing world has changed quite a bit in the last couple years. Amazon is constantly changing the rules and rewards for authors, and more and more writers are entering the fold. In today's show, I'm joined by Jyotsna Ramachandran, a "stay at home mom entrepreneur" and best-selling author. She shares candidly how she built her Kindle empire to more than 50 titles in less than 2 years, primarily with ghost-written content. As the game has changed, she's shifted her focus to produce mor...
Oct 29, 2015•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast I'm excited to introduce you to John Rouda, an IT manager near Charlotte, North Carolina. He's built a variety of non-job income streams on the side, while still working full time. In fact, we recorded this session from his office at work! John calls his side businesses for-profit hobbies, which I think is a great attitude to take. He has a handful of books on Amazon, dozens of apps in the app store, is a part-time professor, and runs a local IT/computer maintenance service business.
Oct 22, 2015•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast I first met Ryan Gray at New Media Expo in 2014. He introduced himself and when I asked what he did, he said he was a doctor. Turns out that Dr. Gray, along with his wife (also a doctor), was building MedicalSchoolHQ.net, a resource for med school and premed students. It's another perfect example of building an authority site around a particular area of expertise.
Oct 15, 2015•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Brian Clark has been content marketing since before the term even existed. In fact, he left a miserable corporate job and built several successful businesses using these effective new marketing techniques. Then he started this little side project called Copyblogger to share some his findings, tactics, and ideas with the rest of the world. Fast forward 10 years and Copyblogger is now Rainmaker Digital on track to do more than $10 million in sales this year.
Oct 01, 2015•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast I've had an idea for a new affiliate site kicking around in my head for a while now, so I thought I'd do a live walk-through of my thought-process and analysis of whether this is an opportunity I should pursue or not. The idea? A comparison and review site for meal delivery services like Blue Apron, Plated, Hello Fresh, Gobble, and others.
Sep 25, 2015•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tyler Zey turned his web development side hustle into a full-time business, but not without a few twists and turns along the way. Tyler's actually a classically trained musician (clarinet), but now runs EasyAgentPro, one of the leading marketing services for real estate agents -- despite having no background in real estate. What he lacked in real estate knowledge he made up for with hustle.
Sep 24, 2015•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jon Schumacher is a side hustler turned full-time entrepreneur. In fact, when we met at Podcast Movement this summer, he'd punched the clock for the last time just a few weeks before. He mentioned he'd been side hustling for years, and finally had hit on a business and marketing plan that worked. His target was $5k in monthly income before he quit, which he achieved this year and made the leap.
Sep 17, 2015•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast A viable startup business in 7 days ... sound to good to be true? Dan Norris is the co-founder of WP Curve, a service that offers unlimited 24/7 WordPress support for small jobs for $79 per month. He went from idea to paying customers in less than 7 days. Based on his experience, Dan penned the bestselling book The 7 Day Startup, and stopped by The Side Hustle Show to share some of his insights.
Sep 10, 2015•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Navid had been blogging and podcasting about lifestyle business topics, but wrote one epic "round-up" post that went viral on the subject of personal branding. Sensing he was on to something, and noticing the success of virtual summits in other industries (like health and fitness), he decided to put together The Branding Summit. At the time, Navid had a modest list of 1000 email subscribers. The summit quadrupled that number and generated $20,000 in revenue the month it went live.
Aug 27, 2015•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Should you quit your side hustle? My guest this week says you should, and argues that what you should do instead is find an apprenticeship. Taylor Pearson is the author of the bestselling The End of Jobs, and one of those super-smart individuals we should all pay attention to. The book is largely a historical perspective on where our economy is today and where we're going; and it's at once terrifying yet optimistic.
Aug 20, 2015•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast I met Steve Chou at New Media Expo this spring, and was fascinated by his story. He's built three different six-figure businesses, all while still working a day job in Silicon Valley. In fact, I was really surprised to find out he's still working TODAY, despite all this side hustle success. Those businesses are an ecommerce store at BumblebeeLinens.com, his blog and podcast at MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, and his online course teaching others how to get started in ecommerce.
Aug 13, 2015•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast John Logar is the king of pre-selling software. As one of The Foundation's top students, he's broken all their records and even broken the mold on some of the methods they teach. In fact, he sold $120k worth of software within his first 6 months of joining the program. Since he was already a consultant, doing idea extraction and finding pain points for businesses was second nature. He just knew nothing about software before so just added a new weapon to his arsenal. (Without learning how to prog...
Aug 06, 2015•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast I was really excited to sit down with Travis Scott from StuffParentsLike.com to share his success with the Amazon FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) clearance arbitrage business, and also to get his insight since I just started playing around with this side hustle myself. Travis has seen impressive results with Amazon, netting $25,000 so far this year through July, in addition to his full-time job and duties as a dad. You may remember Travis from a guest post he contributed on his FBA adventures last yea...
Jul 30, 2015•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 interviews. (I first did this for episode 50, which was my first-ever solo podcast recording.) 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...
Jul 23, 2015•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you're looking for ways to squeeze more out of your limited side hustle hours, this is the episode for you. I'm excited to introduce Julie Sheranosher, host of the Time Hackers podcast. Julie and I met at World Domination Summit in 2013 -- she flew in all the way from Israel -- and she is one of my favorite people and true time management pro. I feel like my productivity has improved over the years, but I'm always learning about new systems and "hacks" to test out. One of those hacks was simp...
Jul 16, 2015•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, I'm joined by fellow online entrepreneur and freedom-seeker, Natalie Sisson. Natalie is a masterful marketer, blogger, podcaster, and speaker, and on this call she breaks down how a blog post idea became a major turning point in her business, and was eventually re-purposed and repackaged more than a half-dozen ways -- all ringing the cash register in some unique fashion. The breakthrough moment was going from $0 to $15,000 in one month, with what I thought was a pretty savvy strategy.
Jul 09, 2015•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tim Johnson is a man of many hustles. In fact, when he applied for my Inner Circle Mastermind last year, I had a hard time keeping them all straight. Between his day job as a product engineer, his awesome self-publishing business, his Amazon FBA activities, and an upcoming brick-and-mortar project -- and twin 2 year old boys -- there's no doubt he's keeping busy! On this call, we focus on his book business, which has earned a consistent $1000-1500 a month in author royalties.
Jul 02, 2015•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast One podcast I've been following for a really long time is the Empire Flippers show with Justin Cooke and Joe Magnotti. It's been fun to watch their evolution from building tiny Adsense sites, running an outsourcing company in the Philippines, selling WordPress themes, and now really focusing in on their website brokerage business. Consider this: it's MUCH easier to buy an existing cash flow than to create one entirely from scratch. In this episode we get into the business model of investing in s...
Jun 18, 2015•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Travis Marziani is the co-founder of BDancewear.com, an ecommerce store specializing in dance-clothing handmade in the US. On this week's show, Travis joins me to talk about why ecommerce is such an awesome business model, especially for side hustlers, and the story behind the dance site -- since he is clearly not the target demographic. He's got some innovative content marketing ideas for online stores as well as how people can get started in ecommerce without massive overhead or investment.
Jun 11, 2015•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ankur Nagpal is the founder of Fedora, an online course-hosting platform with more than 4000 instructors. From his unique vantage-point, he's got some insight into what separates top-selling courses from the rest of the pack. Ankur gives some innovative ideas on how to use free distribution platforms like YouTube and even Udemy to build an interested audience and drive them to your premium course. We get into how to come up with your course topic, the tools to create your course quickly, and som...
Jun 04, 2015•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Last year, Lise "came out of nowhere" as they say, and published 13 books in 6 months, and now earns between $3000 and $4000 a month in author royalties. Of course the truth is she didn't come out of nowhere at all; she came out of New Zealand and had already built a successful freelance writing business. However, the hustle of delivering work for clients all day had her seeking a more time-leveraged use of her skills. Since she already knew how to write well and write quickly, she figured book ...
May 21, 2015•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Freelancing or selling some useful service is one of the fastest ways to earn more money. It may not be as sexy as "passive income" but it does come with instant gratification. Make deals, deliver awesome work, and get paid. In today's show, I'm excited to welcome back Daniel DiPiazza from Rich20Something.com. You may remember Daniel from Episode 35, where he talked about how his "marsupial method" took his tutoring business from $18 an hour to $1000 an hour.
May 14, 2015•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week's show, I'm joined by Steph Halligan, who runs ArtToSelf.com. She's a talented cartoonist who began a daily blog and email newsletter with inspirational and affirmational art -- all created by her. The site is 100% supported by donations from her followers, and even though it's very early in the journey, I think there's enough validation to say she's on the path her 1000 true fans doing work she loves.
May 07, 2015•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast I was very excited to sit down with Mark Podolsky, The Land Geek, to talk about his side-hustle-turned-full-time-biz of investing in raw land. In fact, he was able to replace his day job income and quit his job only 18 months after starting. Mark calls it the best passive income model because you don't have to worry about building a website, building a product, dealing with tenants, dealing with repairs, or selling a service.
Apr 30, 2015•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dorie's latest book is called Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It, and it is the perfect companion to anyone trying to build a personal brand, an authority website, or an audience-based business. This episode is a little different from other Side Hustle Show episodes because we actually don't talk much about Dorie's personal story or experience at all, but rather dive into the research and examples that went into Stand Out. Listen in to learn how you can...
Apr 23, 2015•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast I've been medium-obsessed with the idea of early retirement ever since I discovered this little blog called Mr. Money Mustache a couple years ago. The basic formula goes like this: once you have 25x your annual spending in invested net worth, you can theoretically live off growth/interest/dividends in perpetuity. On today's episode you'll meet Jeremy Jacobson, who retired at 37 and now spends his days traveling with his wife and soaking up new cultures and experiences -- and blogging about finan...
Apr 16, 2015•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Four months ago, Andy Slamans gave us a detailed look at Amazon FBA product selection, working with manufacturers, and bringing those products to market. But the most common question I get from listeners is how to find that first product to import. How do I find a profitable product? How do I measure the competition? How do I validate the demand and the pricing? In today's episode, I sit down with Will Mitchell from StartupBros.com to dive into those exact questions.
Apr 09, 2015•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
