Exploring the option of a side hustle? We're learning all about it this week with Nick Loper, the creator of sidehustlenation.com. Nick left behind a corporate job to explore a few side hustle ideas, and now Side Hustle Nation is enough to cover his living expenses and more. Tune in today to hear how he did it, and how you can, too!
Exploring the option of a side hustle? We're learning all about it this week with Nick Loper, the creator of sidehustlenation.com. Nick left behind a corporate job to explore a few side hustle ideas, and now Side Hustle Nation is enough to cover his living expenses and more. Tune in today to hear how he did it, and how you can, too!
Nick Loper [00:00:00] Start to pay attention to the questions that people ask you, because I think where you perceived expertise is. And so that may be a sign to get those spidey senses tingling again, that maybe there's a business on the other side of those problems.
Desiree White [00:00:16] You are listening to Business Edge, the podcast for professionals looking to excel in the workforce. You'll hear from new guests each week as they dive into their personal and professional experiences to give you an edge in the marketplace. This podcast is recorded by Desiree White and Chrissy Vasquez at the Alpha Kappa Psi professional Business fraternity office in Indiana.
Desiree White [00:00:38] Welcome back to Business Edge. Thanks for tuning in. Today's episode is all about the side hustle with Nick Loper. Nick left behind a corporate job to pursue a side hustle and now operates Side Hustle nation.com and the Side Hustle Show podcast, where he discusses new business ideas each week. So thanks for coming onto the show, Nick.
Nick Loper [00:00:56] Thanks for having me.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:00:58] Yeah. We're excited. So can you start off by telling us a little bit more about yourself? We read your website and definitely it looks like you've had some amazing experiences, but kind of how did you get started out and what was your corporate job before you left?
Nick Loper [00:01:11] Well, corporate gig. So I did what you're supposed to do. Following graduation, following my my time in AKPsi as an undergrad was, you know, get a big boy job, get a real job. But so that was kind of at the bottom rung of the corporate ladder for Ford Motor Company, where my role was a dealer rep on the service and parts side of their business, which was fascinating for a young graduate to kind of come into this, you know, 100 year old corporation and interact with some of these dealers who had been in business for generations in some cases and say, look, you know, it was one part sales role, one part customer service role, and one part of this consultative role, which was really cool. No two days were alike, and I got a company car, which is a cool perk, but at the end of the day had very little desire to climb the corporate ladder there. So it was always trying to figure out, okay, what's going to be my escape plan here.
Desiree White [00:02:11] And how long did you end up staying there before you decided that that wasn't for you, and you were ready to pursue something else?
Nick Loper [00:02:18] So I spent three years there. And those three years I spent the nights and weekends building up my original side hustle, which was a footwear comparison shopping site. You guys are probably too young to remember this, but in the early days of the internet there, was this thing called comparison shopping, where, you know, you go to a price grabber or a next tag or a shopping.com and you'd punch in what you were looking for and they tell you, well, it's available at these ten stores here. Here's where you can find the best price. And so my idea was, well, what if I did that instead of trying to do that for every product under the sun? What if we just focused on footwear? Could we build a better algorithm, a better search experience around that? And that was the vehicle that I ultimately felt confident leaving my day job to become a full time online shoe salesman.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:03:12] So what was that like, leaving? I mean, you said you knew that you wanted to leave corporate and corporate wasn't, you know, kind of the life you wanted. But what was it like making that leap?
Nick Loper [00:03:21] It's still a scary move to make. Even though I had and would recommend this to other side hustlers as well. Like this track record of revenue going back 6 or 12 months that would at least cover my monthly expenses. I don't think it was to the point where it had fully replaced my day job salary yet, but I was confident with an extra 40 50 hours a week to dedicate to it that I could get it to that level and beyond. Which is what happened. But it was still a scary conversation. I remembered after dinner with my boss and I, you know, I was on, you know, on our second beers before I got up. I got up the nerve to finally tell them, look, me and I'm out here. And what I did was a huge weight off my shoulders. But it was, I don't know, because you go, you go to school, you go through all these motions. Can I really cut my own paycheck? Like, is this is this allowed? Like, I haven't been doing it, but, you know, is there any is there any evidence it's going to continue? I don't know.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:04:17] So kind of looking back. So you went school in Washington, right?
Nick Loper [00:04:22] Yes.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:04:24] And that's the Rho chapter.
Nick Loper [00:04:25] Yes. University of Washington, I want to say, is established like 1919. It goes way back.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:04:31] Yeah. One of the original chapters. But was it your chapter because we're actually similar ages, believe it or not. So you apparently think I look young through the video, so thank you. Was it the Rho Chapter that had its own business on campus, or am I thinking of another chapter, or maybe was that not in your time?
Nick Loper [00:04:49] If they did, I don't think they had it at the time that I was there.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:04:52] Okay. Did you guys have a big investment account?
Nick Loper [00:04:56] Not that I know of, but one of my most striking memories of my time there was that everybody seemed to have something going on on the side outside of school, like we had a guy who was like importing digital cameras, and a guy who was doing real estate stuff, like it was a very entrepreneurial group within the whole business school community there.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:05:20] Nice. So maybe it was that. There might have been. It might have been before your time and before my time because we were in school about at the same time I was at Arizona State. Different Pac ten, Pac 12. What are we now? Pac 12 group. But I think they used to operate some sort of business on campus, like maybe a coffee shop or something. And it was, you know, that's why people joined AKPsi was to get this part time job at this coffee shop, but also to learn those entrepreneurial skills, I think it was Washington but I it could be it could be a little fuzzy on that.
Nick Loper [00:05:49] One of our good friends here is a Sun Devil alum.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:05:53] Frank Alvarado.
Nick Loper [00:05:55] I think I met Frank at one point at, at a Success Institute or something, but Jessica Hill was very close to us.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:06:03] Oh that's right, because you live in California. Yeah. Jessica Hill is one of my best friends.
Nick Loper [00:06:07] Oh, nice.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:06:07] Her, Frank, and I used to run around. I know, small world. We used to run around together, the three of us. And AKPsi's very big in all of our lives because it's kept us connected over the years. But. So back to your side hustles. You said your first one was shoes. How many have you had to this point? And what are some of the different industries or things that you've done?
Nick Loper [00:06:29] Well, I naively thought that the shoe business could just be my thing. I could be the guy that, like, sells online. I could just do that for the rest of my days or till retirement or something. But during the time of running that, I was really grateful to have started several other side projects, just in in my spare time. And most of those were complete and total failures. They're rotting away in some dark corner of the internet, but a couple of them stuck around, and had some staying power. The first was a virtual assistant kind of comparison site and maybe a comparison site review site and directory that's called virtual assistant assistant.com, and actually ran that for almost ten years and just sold it, late last year. And then the second one did stick around was the side hustle nation project started in 2013, and that within a year and a half or so kind of became my main focus because it was it was becoming more rewarding to work on, and it was really fun to have these conversations with, with other, you know, been there, done that, entrepreneurs and try and deconstruct. Well, hold on, how does that how does that work? Where does the revenue come from and all that stuff?
Desiree White [00:07:42] Well, that's kind of a perfect segue into our next question. Tell us a little bit more about Side Hustle nation.com and what people can expect to find, with your new side hustle.
Nick Loper [00:07:53] Yeah. You bet. So it started as kind of a soul searching project of, well, what do you know? What do you want to be known for? When somebody Googles you and you kind of go through a lot of the question about myself and other, you know, online business teachers trying to tell you, well, what are you interested in? What are you excited about? What do you never get tired about talking about? And it was this lower risk brand of entrepreneurship that kind of kept coming back and deconstructing the business model that we talked about. So that was kind of the origin story of it. And I thought of myself as a writer first and foremost. But, the podcast ended up taking off, quite a bit faster in that first year. What the site aims to accomplish is to showcase different, legit ways to make extra money outside of your day job. Whether your goal is $100 a month or whether your goal is $10,000 a month, there's 400 something episodes of the podcast archives featuring different entrepreneurs and how they're getting it done, and a big library of blog content as well, and different case studies. To that end.
Desiree White [00:08:57] And what would you say over the years? What is, maybe your top 3 or 4 ways to make that money outside of your day job?
Nick Loper [00:09:07] Oh my gosh, some of the surprising ones. One of my favorite stories is a mechanical engineer in Chicago whose original side hustle was fixing motorcycles in his garage, straight up service based business hours for dollars, ad on Craigslist. Don't take it back to the dealership, bring it to me. I know what I'm doing. I'll. I'll fix it, you know? And what Matthew did that was really forward thinking, I think was set up a little camera in in the corner of the garage and filmed himself doing these repairs. So now all of a sudden he's got content for YouTube. He ultimately started selling like full engine rebuild videos. And so what started as trading time for money turned into this really time leveraged, side hustle and business at this point. Now he's making money from, YouTube ads, making money selling these digital products. He's doing time delivers like brand partnerships because of his YouTube presence. You've got affiliate relationships. "Hey, here are the products that I recommend are the tools that I use." And so the illustration there was kind of this, if you if you envision your income as a pie chart and everybody starts out with a job and like 100% of the pie is, is active income, right? It's trading time for money. And you got to carve out a little bit of time in your week, in your month to try and build that passive piece of the pie. And I thought Matthew was a great example of that. But a couple other stories that come to mind when, business model, broadly speaking, that I'm excited about right now, are just the opportunities inside local service based businesses. And the reason for that is it seems to be a growing demand or a growing, like specialization of labor, like as, as a homeowner, like I just want to deal with the stuff. Who do I call? How do I, you know, better yet, if I don't? To call anybody. If I could just hit a button and hire somebody. Even better, make that pain go away. And the illustration was a gal who was on the show started a pet waste removal business, a pooper scooper business out of Michigan. And when we spoke, she had something like 80 to 100 recurring weekly customers. Obviously not the most glamorous work in the world, but pretty predictable revenue. And then when we caught up later, she had outsourced, you know, some of the scooping business, and she was working in kind of like the administrative side, the marketing side, growing the team, I was like, okay, this is really interesting. So the pie keeps getting bigger in these local services. And in the meantime, the competition oftentimes is not the most tech savvy. So if you can come in with a little bit of digital savviness, I think there's an opportunity to, carve out some market share there.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:11:53] Wow. That's interesting.
Desiree White [00:11:55] Yeah, that makes me think of the app. Thumbtack. If you guys have ever used it, it's a. Yeah, it's a great way to find, you can find big companies, but you can also find local people that are maybe just doing it out of their house if you need plumbing or if you need something fixed around the house, anything like that. So I've been able to use that a few times in my new house, and it's always cheaper. And they respond within, you know, a couple hours.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:12:19] Oh that's awesome because that's the biggest challenge is people don't respond. You're like, I can't give my money away.
Nick Loper [00:12:25] You know, I say, is business really that strong for you that you can afford to treat potential clients like--we had a guy who started a piano tuning business. He's like, I don't play piano. I don't know anything about it. But it was the same experience. I was trying to get my piano tuner, and the guy said he was going to show up, didn't show up for a $125 job? Like, are you so busy that you were turning down this? I was like, oh, that's, you know, so he taught himself how to do it. He's like, it's not rocket science. So he ended up doing pretty well with that. I don't know if it was Thumbtack that he got business on or if it's just, you know, a couple, like Facebook ads for local stuff. But I'm excited about that, local service opportunity for sure.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:13:06] Yeah, that's really cool. I was just thinking. So this new building has a bowling alley in the basement. Which is pretty cool, but the couple of the lanes need some servicing, and we cannot from I understand, we cannot get anybody to return our call to fix the bowling alley. And it's kind of the same way. So maybe we need to find somebody that's willing to train themselves and it. And that could be their side hustle is fixing bowling alleys and they could start with us.
Nick Loper [00:13:28] That's a very niche service for sure.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:13:32] I'm sure a lot of buildings around here have bowling alleys. Talk to us a little bit about your podcast. So what is your intent with the podcast? What is your audience? How do you find your guests and kind of what's the goal for listeners?
Nick Loper [00:13:44] Yeah, the goal is with every episode to have some sort of transformation from, you know, what did I come into the show knowing versus what did I walk away knowing? And hopefully you have the knowledge that you can go take action or you're kind of inspired to go learn more about this particular business model, or you learned some specific marketing tactic, like today's episode was how to get more traffic from Pinterest. Here's what's working today. But a lot of the episodes are kind of case study style of, oh, I saw this online course on how to, play piano or how to grow microgreens in my garage or something, have just people come up with the most interesting and innovative things based on their own experience, and trying to figure out, okay, well, how do you get customers for that? How did you figure out how much to charge for that? You know, what else did you market? How did you market this business? Was kind of the typical structure for the episodes, but they often start with, okay, what's what's that hook? And so we had a recent, guest on the show, a woman who started reviewing fitness products. She had, I think, a background as a personal trainer and evidence and even necessarily, a prerequisite. But she started doing fitness product comparisons, and a lot of the content was like peloton versus Regatta, which is one article of hers that I found and she broke down, you know, the pros and cons of each. And because it was kind of a longer tail keyword in the world of of search engine optimization. You started to get some traffic on this, on those types of articles, even as a relatively new site. And she when she pitched me on coming on the show, she's like, I'm making 200 bucks a day in affiliate commissions from this site that's about a year old. I was like 200 bucks a day. She's in commission, like, you know, show me your secrets, tell me your ways. And so that was a lot of the stories these days kind of bubble up from from the community, which is which is really exciting.
Desiree White [00:15:43] Yeah, I think that's really fun to, you know, allow the space for everyone to share their story, no matter how small of a side hustle it is or how unique it is. I think that makes it even more fun. So I love that idea.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:15:56] Yeah. So now that you have this podcast, you have a blog and you have community that's following you. How are you able to build this from scratch? You have 400 episodes. That's clearly taking a long time to get, you know, what goes into making an episode and finding a guest. So, you know, talk to us a little bit about how you were able to build that.
Nick Loper [00:16:15] I was super nervous early on. You know what? You know, I got to do the show once a week. What am I committing myself to? What if I run out of gas? And then I found out. Well, and other people doing this daily, like, well. And radio shows are on the air. You know, 24 hours a day. If they could figure it out, I could figure out how to do an hour a week. But it definitely was nerve racking early on. There was a lot more kind of proactive guest hunting early on, whereas now most of the pitches come in, reactively or kind of bubble up, like I said, from within the community. It's, it's been a long, slow grind. Like I said, it's probably a year ish before there was any meaningful income from the site, maybe a year and a half before it was, and even then probably wasn't, you know, a full time income. But it was like, okay, if this is going to be my thing, I think I can get it there. And since then, of course, it's grown to six figures and beyond. But it was just kind of hold your breath and try and build up this audience. For as long as you can stand. And the other thing was, I found that I really enjoy doing it, and I think that's where other people kind of give up on it is to say, and this is a lot of work. I'm not seeing any results and I think it's time to pull the plug. I was like, I saw just enough results, like the chart was moving up into the right, just enough to kind of keep going. And combined with the fact that I was really enjoying the connections that were being made. Kind of gave me fuel in those early years.
Desiree White [00:17:46] And I know a few, blogs that you have on your website is, you know, you're talking about how to use your side hustle to kind of cover your day daily living costs. So what kind of side hustles are you pursuing to do so, and how would you advise others to do that? Is it just one? Do you need a few? How would you be able to do that if you're not following that corporate corporate job?
Nick Loper [00:18:09] As a general rule, I would say simplify first and diversify second. So if you are pursuing one business idea, you know, give it enough of a chance to get off the ground before, you know, chasing, you know, all of the different shiny objects. It's the old, you know, chase two rabbits catching on kind of, kind of mentality. I think what else on that topic? Is the framework that might be motivating to start with is what I call the side hustle snowball in in homage to Dave Ramsey. If you're trying to pay down debt, he's like, well, list out your debts, you know, smallest to largest and tackle them in that order. Similarly, in the side hustle snowball, list out your monthly expenses from smallest to largest. And if you, because everybody wants to, well, I want to live rent free. I want a raise. My mortgage is like it's an awesome goal or I want to replace my day job salary. It's an awesome goal. But like, I want you to be able to celebrate the small wins over time where it's like, oh, I paid for Netflix this month. I erased my cell phone bill this month, or I knocked out my car insurance with side hustle A, side hustle B, side hustle C even if it's, you know, I got a freelancing job or I sold something from my garage on eBay or, you know, whatever it is to kind of knock out those lower tier things while you build up what may eventually be the the job in the job replacing thing.
Desiree White [00:19:33] Oh, that's really good advice. I like that being able to separate it out by your expenses and then celebrating those small wins along the way.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:19:41] Yeah. I never thought about just getting a side hustle to cover my Netflix and my Hulu and, you know, my car wash and things like that. You talk a lot early on about you had side hustles and not all of them made it. So talk to us a little bit about how you coach yourself through failure, and how you learned from the failure, and turn it into a success later in something else.
Nick Loper [00:20:04] Yeah, the biggest shift for me, because, I mean, failure sucks. There's no there's no like, sugar coating it, right? But what has helped me is positioning it as an experiment, as a test. And I read somewhere that at any given time, Amazon is testing maybe a thousand different variables on their site, trying to eke out, you know, incremental performance gains, like all of this out of 0.02 better conversion rate, over 10,000, like, okay, like that's the level that they're at. And so you may not need to run a thousand tests, but I think at any given time maybe set these up as monthly challenges for yourself. You know, what would happen if you guys decided to make a YouTube video every week? What would happen if you decided to get up at 530 and try and move the ball forward on something that you care about in trying to position this little experiment? Because if if they fail, if it doesn't work out like, oh, okay, wasn't too bad. Like, you know, go back to the drawing board, try again versus like, I'm a horrible failure. I'm never going to I'm never going to be able to speak to my family again. And as long as you minimize your downside and the upside, that's another thing. Like when you're considering your side hustle, like, okay, what is what does success look like in 3 to 5 years if this thing works, is that desirable? Is that a lifestyle that I want? But another friend of mine kind of put it that way, where it was like, if you can keep your downside risks low and the startup costs for just about anything, I think everything that I started almost was under $500 initially, and then it invested more over time. Like you can get something off the ground pretty affordably to see if it works, validate it. And as long as the upside is strong enough, you only need to be right once before the races. All of those, quote, failed attempts, right? And and you're off to the races.
Desiree White [00:21:52] Oh, I like that. You know, you only need to be right once.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:21:55] Yeah. I'm going to keep that in mind for a lot of things in my life.
Desiree White [00:21:59] And so now that we've all kind of experienced working from home, and I think the side hustle is becoming more popular. What do you think is the future of, you know, corporate America versus entrepreneurship?
Nick Loper [00:22:13] And that's a good one. I wish I had a crystal ball there. I would love to see more people entering the side hustle space out of, desire, out of pro activeness, rather than out of kind of being being forced into it by economic necessity. Oh my. The crystal ball, I guess, is definitely seeing a shift towards, remote work, which is really cool, both for employees and employers. Right. I can broaden as an employer. I can broaden my talent pool, not just to, you know, who happens to be within a 30 mile radius of me. And for a, an employee or a freelancer, like, oh, all of a sudden, now I have access to jobs, really all over the world. Maybe they pay better than the local companies. So that's exciting. And there is this, you know, maybe the pandemic has given companies the the confidence to say, oh, maybe remote work can can work for us versus, you know, some the future of commercial real estate is probably up in question of like, you know, these long term office leases that, you know, are going to sit half empty anymore. But I don't know. I wish, I wish I had a better crystal ball for what the what the future may hold. So we're seeing, shift toward remote shifts towards, specialization. And I guess, like, by that, I mean, you know, I don't even know how to describe it, but, like, you know, specializing in a specific software or role versus saying I'm a, you know, broad data analyst or something, you know, and that's, that's not a very good, explanation.
Desiree White [00:23:51] Like wearing one hat instead of wearing multiple. We're seeing a little bit more of that, maybe.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:23:57] Yeah, less of a generalist in certain areas.
Nick Loper [00:24:00] Yeah. I give the example. Like in my business, I have hired specialists for podcast editing or specialist agencies for podcast editing, for Pinterest management, for for bookkeeping and stuff like that, versus hiring a general admin person and trying to train them on all of those things like, okay, let me go find somebody who's an expert in that field, and go from there.
Desiree White [00:24:24] Okay. Yeah, I think it's an exciting time. I think we're going to see a lot of changes, with what the pandemic has done, making us all work from home, I think it's going to be interesting to see how that changes everything the next probably five years.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:24:40] Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if there will be a craving for people to want to be around people. And so we'll kind of see the pendulum swing the other way of like, okay, I've had enough alone time or I've had enough in my own four walls, it's time to get back into the office. Even today, I had to go run a couple errands for work, and I went by our office and I'm like, wow, it just feels nice to be out. Yeah. No way. From my desk and away from my break for my dogs and, just from the space. So kind of looking at the side hustle. What do you think are the most important traits somebody may have or skills they may have in order to be successful at this skill?
Nick Loper [00:25:14] Number one, that willingness to try something out, even knowing that it might fail. Just because you you never know. You don't have to see the whole mountain. You just have to kind of see step one, step two, and can kind of pivot and adjust from there. Skill number two is this ability to figure stuff out, which is something I kind of, I don't know, kind of took for granted, like the ability to Google something and the ability because I get questions like, how do I how do I sign up for something? And it's like, just click, click the thing. Like, I don't know, like why you're emailing some stranger on the internet hoping for a response you could have figured this out on your own. So that problem solving ability is on the list as well.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:26:00] And do you think there's a trait that if somebody doesn't address, is going to bomb their success or experience?
Nick Loper [00:26:08] It's just going to be a harder road for you? I don't know. I would like to think that we we have this innate entrepreneurial ability because if you zoom out, you know, 200 years pre-industrial revolution, like now is the reality for a lot of people. Like, I think it's in our genes to be able to cut our own paychecks. And, you know, granted, a lot of people we're doing so in agriculture at that time. But it's like, did we did we somehow lose this ability over the course of, you know, 200 years of industrialization and, and educational training to say, no, I need somebody else to tell me what to do all the time. Like, I, I don't know that the answers are always going to be there for you. And I think the pandemic, in thinking, especially in the initial spike of jobless claims, it's like, okay, I really need the ability to kind of recession proof my own career and be able to bring in my own paycheck if, if the need arises.
Desiree White [00:27:03] Yeah, I think that's interesting, just to kind of have the confidence to do that and it gives you a good backup in case something like this does happen again. So you're not you're not caught up in kind of in a mess once again.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:27:16] Absolutely. Do you. so how did this change when kids came into the picture, or did it change for you?
Nick Loper [00:27:25] The big change was that we got two boys there, five and three. the big shift was a, a deeper focus I think where as you have less time, the there's a law, right. You know, the work expands to fit the time that you have. And I think that was definitely true pre kids. And it's probably true post kids as well. So a deeper focus like trying to figure out okay what really is the 8020 of what is driving results here. What's working okay. Let me do more of that in the hours that I have versus all of this other stuff that I somehow found time to do prior, okay, that that isn't important anymore. That's getting hacked. I'm going to outsource that. And let me focus on the stuff that I can do best.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:28:12] And so looking back on all you've accomplished. Can you tell us about a time when your personal values were challenged and how you were able to handle it?
Nick Loper [00:28:20] Well, there have been occasions on the podcast where the guest, you know, rubbed somebody the wrong way or they. They presented to this model that is deemed unsavory to some, actually a recent guy was flipping domain names is a domain name investor and one of the responses was like, this guy adds no value to the universe. He's a domain squatter. You know, he is an enemy to entrepreneurs like you and I. And I was kind of surprised by that because I was like, why is there? You know, I asked the guy, like, is there a difference between domain squatting and domain investing? Like, is there a right way to do this versus the wrong way? And he wasn't very satisfied with that. So I guess as the audience grows, the realization that you're not going to make everybody happy all the time is stressful for me because I kind of want to be a people pleaser like that. That kind of conflict makes me feel icky and like, did I did I just promoted somebody who's like, not not a good person, but I don't know. It was never, you know, those Spidey senses never went up during or before the conversation. But afterwards, like, oh, did I, did I make people feel gross by airing this? I don't know. So those are always those are always kind of tough. And those are kind of the, the most sleep, the sleepless nights that I've had after hearing certain episodes, you know, getting some on. Not unwelcome, but just unexpected feedback in response to the, from the audience, based on some of the content is always like, kind of makes me feel like, oh, did I, did I do something wrong here? But thankfully, those are pretty few and far between.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:30:06] Yeah, I can understand where that would be nerve wracking a little bit. And I think providing those different perspectives and providing something that maybe not everybody agrees with every time is important for people, you know, open up their thoughts. So, a little random fact. So somebody bought akpsi.org years ago and we were still using akpsi.com before there was like a big division between using org for nonprofit. So we went to them and traded a life membership for the domain name. And that's how we have akpsi.org today. So this was like 20 years ago but.
Desiree White [00:30:42] Yeah. It's funny I had no idea.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:30:43] Yeah. Most people don't. A little fun fact there.
Desiree White [00:30:47] Well, before we close up here, Nick, do you have any other advice, to share for students maybe just graduating or other entrepreneurs have an idea that just need to take that first step?
Nick Loper [00:30:59] For students just graduating it. I think it's awesome that you're thinking about this at such a young age. I'm really grateful to have had some entrepreneurial experiences through AKPsi throughout the college years. So, I mean, what I would probably recommend is to begin documenting what you are learning and, putting that on line in some form, even if it's just a private blog. But, you know, if it's on YouTube, maybe even better, because I found that YouTube in particular is a great question and answer engine. So if you have figured out something in in your own life, odds are other people are probably getting that into. If you can be the solution to their problem, there's a chance to build an audience that way and ultimately drive revenue down the road. But you kind of start to pay attention to the questions that people ask you, because that's where your perceived expertise is. And so that may be a sign to get those Spidey senses tingling again, that maybe there's maybe there's a business on the other side of those problems.
Desiree White [00:32:02] Awesome. I like that recognizing what questions are asked of you often. That's a really good way to kind of get a little self-assessment of what your skills are. So I like that.
Desiree White [00:32:12] And what your perceived skills are. Absolutely. And that could go even from just doing contract worker consulting. It doesn't have to be actually hustling any sort of product or selling any product. So great advice. Yeah.
Desiree White [00:32:25] Well, Nick, where can our listeners find you if they want to learn some more?
Nick Loper [00:32:29] Sure. So of course, we'd love to have you tuned into the side hustle show in your favorite Podcast player app. If you are, looking for a side hustle idea, the archives are a good place to start, but site isolation.com/ideas is, my totally free, laundry list of part time business ideas, which you can start today. There's no opt in required over there. And my hope is that you have, you know, 8 or 10 different browser tabs open by the time you make it down to the bottom of that list and, get the creative juices flow in that way.
Desiree White [00:32:59] Awesome, I love it. Thank you so much for joining us, Nick. We really appreciate it.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:33:03] Thank you very much. So our dedicated listeners and those that maybe just joined us for the first time, I'm very sad to say that Desiree is leaving us.
Desiree White [00:33:16] I've loved this journey so much. And thank you all for listening and following along. It's been fun. To learn more about podcasting and editing and I've loved doing it with you. Chrissy. You're amazing!
Chrissy Vasquez [00:33:28] It's been so fun. It really has. When, you and Steve and Jason asked me, I was like, oh, this will be fun. We'll do it a couple of episodes. But, you know, we found our groove and it's just been really awesome to watch you come into your own as learning how to, you know, do all the podcasting equipment and everything. And I just think that you always ask the most thoughtful questions. And she does a great job of preparing our questions. As we started off the conversation, we keep it very conversational, so we don't always follow the script, but we definitely need a jumping off point. And so it has been really great doing this for what, 18 months now?
Desiree White [00:34:01] Yeah, it's been a while.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:34:03] Yeah, that's a long time. And Covid days. Yeah.
Desiree White [00:34:06] So we've gotten a lot of great episodes out there. So we hope that you guys can go to our website, check them out. We might be taking a little bit of a summer break, but hopefully we'll be back in the fall, with some new episodes for you.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:34:19] Yeah, we'll be excited to pick up again. I don't know who my co-host is going to be, so right in your suggestions, who knows? I might be out of a job too. We might be a package deal, and I don't know it yet. But thank you for everything that you've given, and it's really been a lot of fun doing this with you. So I wish you the best of luck in your new job and your new endeavors.
Desiree White [00:34:39] Thank you. Right back at you. Thanks for listening to Business Edge. If you have questions, comments or topic suggestions for us, email Business Edge at archive.org.