0:00

Side Hustle stacking, how one income stream

0:02

can turn into a whole lot more.

0:05

What's up? What's up, Nick? Hello, Looper

0:07

here. Welcome to the Side Hustle show,

0:09

part of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, because you're nine to

0:12

five, maybe you're living, but you're five to nine, makes

0:14

you alive. One idea that

0:16

I've advocated for on the show is

0:18

this, simplify first, diversify second. You're going

0:20

to have something working first before you

0:23

can even worry about diversifying. But

0:25

this is an episode about that second part.

0:27

How do you know when it's time to

0:29

diversify? When is the time to branch out?

0:31

How do you add a side hustle to your side hustle?

0:34

And how can one income stream unlock more?

0:37

Today's guest is a pro at this

0:39

with several projects all stemming from an

0:41

original blog. In fact, we

0:43

covered that blog's origin story 10 years

0:45

ago on the show. That's crazy from

0:47

Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro,

0:49

Bjork Ostrom. Welcome back to the Side

0:51

Hustle show. 10 years. Maybe we

0:53

can schedule it. I'll put it on my calendar.

0:56

A little more for you. Once a decade interview.

0:59

And we'll see which one of us

1:01

in our 70s is still showing up with

1:03

the podcast in front of us recording

1:05

episodes. Yeah, episode 6,000 and

1:08

something. Where are they now? Update.

1:11

Our seventh interview in the Once a Decade

1:13

series. It's great to be back, Nick. It's been fun

1:15

to see your journey. It's awesome. I

1:17

just love that so much of this is continuing to

1:19

show up every day. You're such

1:21

a great example of that. It's fun to

1:24

be here with you talking about all things

1:26

entrepreneurship, side hustle, business building. Let's do it.

1:29

Well, it's been a blast. Table to do what I

1:31

do and get paid for it. I think it's the

1:33

best job in the world. Yeah. We're

1:35

playing around with a new format this week. We're

1:37

calling it three rounds with Bjork. Round one is

1:39

this idea of side hustle stacking. Round

1:42

two is the donate a business idea round. A

1:44

business you could start today, something that ought to

1:46

exist into the world. And business,

1:48

or round three rather, is the triple threat.

1:50

A marketing tactic that's working right now. A

1:53

favorite new tool or new to you tool

1:55

and Bjork's favorite book from the last 12

1:57

months. We're going to start off with

1:59

round one. one stacking complementary entrepreneurial

2:02

pursuits. You've started a ton of

2:04

projects, Pinch of Yum, the original

2:06

food blog, Food Blogger Pro,

2:08

helping other food bloggers get started and grow

2:10

in this space. WP Tasty,

2:12

like Pinterest plugin, thenewoneclarity.com. Let's start

2:14

with the first spinoff, which was,

2:17

I think, Food Blogger Pro. Talk

2:20

to me about the origin of that. Pinch

2:22

of Yum is a food and recipe website

2:24

and social media accounts, primarily personal

2:26

brands. So it's my wife, Lindsay, who's

2:28

producing that content, online.

2:31

We monetize those through traditional

2:33

advertising. We work with an

2:35

ad network called Raptive. We

2:38

also work with sponsorships on Instagram. So Lindsay has

2:40

1.4 million followers on

2:42

Instagram. And so she has a lot

2:45

of attention there. What happened was, 14

2:47

years ago, when Lindsay started Pinch

2:49

of Yum, she was really

2:51

interested in all of the same

2:53

things she's interested in today. Recipe

2:56

development, photography, storytelling, connecting

2:58

with an audience. And

3:01

by chance, I was interested in the things

3:03

that were really complimentary to that. So like

3:05

business development type stuff, search engine

3:08

optimization, growth tactic type stuff, and

3:10

also just some of the more

3:12

boring logistical things that need to

3:14

happen behind the scenes for

3:17

food and recipe sites or just the business in general.

3:19

And so what ended up happening is we

3:21

had this great pairing. And for

3:23

a while, I would write about kind

3:26

of the business side of building the

3:28

site on Pinch of Yum. And

3:30

from that, we got a lot of other creators

3:33

who followed along with our story because they were

3:35

also trying to figure it out. And

3:37

so I would write a blog post and say,

3:39

hey, here's the things that we learned about how

3:42

to use an ad network or the things that

3:44

we learned about search optimization. Eventually,

3:46

we had enough people following along there

3:49

where we were like, there might be something

3:51

here to like create an actual community around

3:54

this group of people. And that's where Food Vlogger Pro

3:56

came in. So we launched that

3:58

probably three years after starting Pinch of Yum. of

4:00

Yum! that was in 2013 and we've

4:02

kind of done different versions of that

4:04

along the way where we've seen an

4:06

opportunity and then we create a

4:09

business around that all within

4:11

the niche of publishing and usually

4:13

with a focus on

4:15

food content. It's interesting because there's

4:17

like lots of people teaching you how to

4:19

blog but a lot fewer people teaching you

4:21

how to start a food blog. So I'm

4:23

going to take this tiny segment and become

4:25

the go-to person, the go-to source in this

4:28

tiny little niche and I think it's something

4:30

that you've done really well. In response to,

4:32

yeah, you kind of went the proactive route,

4:34

you put out content on this and

4:36

started to build a critical mass of following

4:39

in questions and answers around that but

4:41

saying, okay, I'm not going to build it first.

4:44

I'm going to almost pre-validate it very inexpensively. I

4:46

mean, it takes your time to create that kind

4:48

of content but not going out and

4:50

spending eight weeks filming a course or something and then

4:52

trying to go out and sell it. We

4:55

actually sold access to the

4:57

course before we had built any of it. So

4:59

it was like the ultimate pre-validation. We're

5:02

going to sign up. I think there's maybe $10,000

5:04

that came in. We kind of used that money

5:06

to seed the initial round of building the website.

5:08

So yeah, it was exactly that. So is it

5:10

originally course membership content? What

5:13

else was there or is there today?

5:15

Very similar. There's deals

5:17

and discounts for certain

5:19

services, subscriptions that would

5:22

be beneficial for people in the food space. There's

5:24

a forum. There's training. We do

5:27

live Q&A, so we'll have an industry expert.

5:29

We have somebody who has a Pinterest agency and

5:31

Kate All from Simple Pin Media comes on and

5:33

is like, here's the state of Pinterest and here's

5:36

what's happening in Pinterest. We might

5:38

do that with SEO or food photography.

5:41

So it's really industry-specific things and

5:43

anything in the world of publishing,

5:45

podcasting as an example or Instagram,

5:48

there's a subset of

5:50

that where you have to be different in terms

5:52

of your strategy based on the type of content

5:54

that you're producing. And so we kind of cover

5:56

all of the different things that you'd need in

5:59

order to build. build a food and recipe

6:01

following online, and all the different

6:03

strategies from the artistic things, food

6:06

video or food photography, to more

6:08

of the technical things like what does structured

6:10

data for search engine optimization look like for

6:12

a food site. So that's kind of what

6:15

we cover from a content perspective and do that in

6:18

multiple different ways. So now,

6:20

let's draw back in the Google world in terms

6:22

of algorithm updates in the last several months. Like,

6:25

are you seeing new food bloggers weather that

6:27

storm and like be able to compete with

6:29

some larger sites and build up their EAT

6:32

and everything else that Google is

6:34

looking for in ranking new

6:36

content, new food content in particular? All

6:39

across the board, we've seen and talked to

6:41

people who have been like, shoot, this is

6:43

a real bummer because I had worked hard

6:45

for five, 10 years, I built up really

6:47

great following and traffic, search

6:49

traffic, Google pushes out an update

6:51

and they're like, it's the helpful content update. And

6:54

they're like, I have really helpful content.

6:56

I've been creating content that

6:58

feels like it was in line

7:00

with what Google would recommend and somehow

7:02

they're penalized. And that's

7:04

a huge bummer. And you also see

7:06

people on the other side where it's like an update

7:09

comes out and they benefit from it traffic goes up.

7:12

In our world, we've seen both. We've seen people who

7:14

have been hurt by it, people have benefited from it.

7:17

I think a better way for us to frame

7:19

food blogger pro and they're probably the rebrand in

7:21

our future is like food creator

7:23

pro. Most of the people

7:25

who are coming to us now are like

7:28

a social media platform first. They

7:31

grew a following on Instagram, they grew a

7:33

following on YouTube, they grew a following on

7:35

TikTok. And now they're starting

7:37

to think more holistically around like, Hey,

7:39

I should also build a site so

7:41

I can point people somewhere. That's an

7:43

interesting evolution over the last 10

7:45

years where it's like the blog

7:47

may be a component of it, the website may be

7:49

a component of it, but it's probably

7:51

not the main thing anymore or it's a

7:54

piece of the pie rather than the main

7:56

thing. That's a really interesting shift.

7:58

So kind of the food creator pro. is maybe

8:00

more accurate going forward. All right,

8:02

so that is side hustle stack

8:04

number one. Basically like taking something that's

8:06

already working, pinch of yum and

8:08

answering some of the questions. We wanna do what

8:11

you did, right? If we were to go down

8:13

the same path, guide us along that way. So

8:15

Food Blogger Pro becomes a thing, validated with pre-sales

8:17

like very low risk, right? You knew there was

8:19

an audience for it. What was the next product

8:21

or whatever that's stacked on top of that? To

8:23

speak to that real quickly, I think this

8:26

is me speaking to people who are listening. My guess

8:28

is there's a subset of this group

8:30

of people who are kind of exploring what is gonna be my

8:33

side hustle? What am I gonna do? One

8:35

of the things that you can do, and this is what we did,

8:38

which helped us build another business, was

8:41

as we were trying to figure out the

8:43

current business that we were in, we

8:45

were creating a business. And so when

8:48

I talk about doing kind of some of those state

8:50

of the business reports, the first one we did was

8:52

like our site earned $20, and

8:55

here's what we're trying to do. We're trying to get

8:57

that to $40. Like

8:59

we were documenting the process. I think there's

9:01

an opportunity even for people who don't know

9:04

what they are doing

9:07

to start the process of

9:10

doing their thing by documenting their

9:12

journey into it. This is the work in public

9:15

thing. This is a common unlock.

9:17

Even going back to Matt Bocknock,

9:19

he was repairing motorcycles in his garage

9:21

as his side hustle, but sets the

9:23

camera up in the corner. Exactly, yeah.

9:26

Doing repairs. Now he's got over 100,000

9:28

YouTube subs. Like it's

9:30

become, the content has become a thing

9:33

much more than turning wrenches ever was. And

9:36

I think it becomes a flywheel in

9:38

that it's also great advertiser. Like

9:41

for somebody who sees him working on a

9:43

motorcycle, you start to know him, you trust

9:45

them. And so it's like, maybe I'll bring

9:47

my motorcycle there and get it fixed. Or like you see

9:49

that with people who do a car detailing business. And the

9:52

other thing though that I think it does, and

9:54

I think this is really

9:57

valuable, is that it's a little

9:59

bit of... of a pressure system

10:01

that forces you to refine your

10:04

process, your skills,

10:06

your expertise, because

10:09

you are being documented. And

10:11

for him, my guess is he's

10:14

a better motorcycle repairman

10:17

because of the fact that he sets the camera

10:19

up and records himself doing it. And

10:21

so not only does it

10:23

become a great advertiser for you, not only

10:25

does it also become potentially a business where

10:28

you have subscribers, but I think even if

10:30

nobody showed up at

10:32

your business and nobody subscribed to

10:34

you, you still would probably

10:36

be better at whatever it is that you're doing

10:39

because you're going through the process of documenting it.

10:41

So I feel like it's worth pointing

10:43

out in the consideration for people who are listening and

10:45

kind of in that exploration stage, that

10:47

there's value in you

10:50

working in public or whatever it might be. Sure.

10:53

So the next thing for us was we had Pinch

10:55

of Yum, we had Food Bugger Pro, and

10:57

then we had these two software services called

10:59

NutriFox and WP Tasty. NutriFox

11:01

was a nutrition analysis website, WP Tasty

11:04

was a WordPress plugins business. I

11:06

say was, they still exist, but we sold

11:08

those. So we built those companies and

11:11

we sold those companies. They're no longer part

11:13

of what we have as our kind of

11:15

holding company, which is tiny bit. So

11:18

we sold those, it was about two years

11:20

ago, but that was the same thing. We

11:22

noticed that there was a need for us

11:25

to have certain functionality within our website. And

11:27

so we built a tool, in this

11:30

case, the bigger company was

11:32

the WordPress plugins business that

11:34

allowed us to do the things we wanted to do.

11:36

And then what we did is we packaged those up

11:38

as plugins and then sold those to

11:41

other WordPress site owners. So

11:43

we were gonna go through the process of creating

11:45

it anyways, and then it made sense

11:47

for us to package those up and

11:49

offer them as a product themselves as well. So

11:52

that was the next thing in kind of the journey. All

11:55

right, so we're hitting on lots of common themes here.

11:57

We have the document the process, work in public, good

11:59

things can happen. Next we have the

12:01

solve your own problem, scratch your own itch kind

12:03

of idea validation phase. Were these

12:05

pre-sold prior to development or is it

12:07

like hey we're gonna build this anyways

12:09

for our own use and then we

12:11

can sell that license to somebody else?

12:13

Yeah these weren't pre-sold. So these were,

12:15

once we had it to kind of

12:18

like what we would consider a helpful

12:20

functional point, we offered it as

12:22

a product that people could buy and sign up for and

12:24

use. And you know it's like a

12:26

slow build and then you build it up and then

12:28

you have a team and we had somebody in the

12:30

role of general manager who would oversee the day to day.

12:32

We had a contracted developer that we

12:34

worked with to do those who eventually was

12:36

W2 for a little bit and

12:38

then a customer support team as well. What

12:41

came next, what else have you

12:43

stacked on top of this expertise

12:45

and authority in the food blogger

12:48

space? So the other noteworthy one

12:50

would be a site called clarity,

12:52

clariti.com. And that was our first

12:54

play into going beyond

12:56

food. It's great for people who

12:58

have a food site but it's not only for people

13:00

who are doing food content. And essentially

13:03

clarity is this hub that brings

13:05

in WordPress data, it brings

13:07

in Google Analytics data and it brings in

13:09

Google Search Console data. And

13:11

then it allows you to sort and

13:13

filter and understand your

13:15

content in a really easy way.

13:18

And an example of something that you could do is

13:20

you could sign up for clarity and then once

13:24

all that data's brought in you could look and say,

13:26

hey, show me all of the content on my site,

13:29

posts and pages that have images without any

13:31

alt text which is like best practice, you

13:33

wanna have alt text on your images. And

13:36

you'd really quickly be able to surface that and see that. Or

13:38

you could say, show me any

13:40

content that has broken links. Like you have a

13:42

link on the page but it's broken. Or

13:44

another one that's really important, show me pieces

13:47

of content on my site that don't have

13:49

any internal links from other

13:51

pages on my site. So it's

13:53

almost like you can do kind of a little mini audit

13:55

with it. And so that's a tool that

13:57

we've been really excited about. We've been working on that for a few

13:59

years. We use it ourselves day to day. That's

14:02

a true software as a service

14:04

path tool. And you don't have to

14:06

be in the food vlogger space to use anybody with a

14:09

website that's been around any length of time. This is

14:11

one of these ongoing projects, like

14:13

the site audit project. Well, what posts don't

14:15

have any internal links? Like you said, what

14:17

posts don't get any traffic anymore? Do we

14:19

really need this progress report

14:21

from Q3 2015 anymore? And

14:25

a huge part of it, to your point, oftentimes

14:27

with a site like yours or a site like

14:29

ours, you've been publishing content for a lot

14:31

of times. You might look back and be like, gosh,

14:34

we posted this article on like, in

14:37

our world, this like pre-made cookie dough that we really

14:39

love. It's like, that's just not what we

14:41

didn't actually do that. But like, that

14:44

would be an example of like a post and it

14:46

probably doesn't get any traffic. We should just delete it.

14:48

It's kind of to use the garden analogy for

14:50

people who have been publishing content for a decent

14:52

amount of time. Sometimes

14:54

the strategy isn't like you have a garden

14:57

and you're just gonna plant more into it.

15:00

The strategy is like, you're just gonna really

15:02

pay attention to the plants that you do

15:04

have, the posts and the pages, update

15:06

those, make sure they're healthy, reshare

15:09

them with your audience. And

15:11

that's gonna be one of the most strategic things you

15:13

can do as a content creator, is really treating

15:16

your existing content well, going back and

15:18

updating it, making sure that it has

15:20

everything that it needs, as

15:22

opposed to just churning out new content. And

15:24

so clarity is kind of built

15:26

with that in mind where there's

15:29

a new wave of

15:31

content creation, which is updating

15:34

and maintaining existing content as

15:36

a priority, oftentimes

15:38

alongside creating new content. Yeah,

15:41

totally. There's usually a better

15:43

ROI or maybe a more predictable ROI and

15:45

updating that old post that had dipped

15:47

a little bit in rankings, then rolling the dice

15:50

and trying to hand it out completely new posts

15:53

that may never make it to page one. So I'm with you there. More

15:55

with Bjork in just a moment, including three

15:57

ways you can identify it, whether that new

15:59

project, object is worth pursuing or

16:02

if it's just a distracting shiny object. That's

16:04

coming up right after this. They

16:07

say the only constant is change. And right

16:09

now, nothing is changing faster than the world

16:11

of AI. If you're like me,

16:13

you're pretty sure there's a way to get more done with

16:15

the help of AI or at

16:17

least accelerate some of your existing processes, right? But

16:20

you're not sure where to start and you don't want to get

16:22

left behind. Enter the next wave.

16:24

If you're AI curious and want to learn

16:26

how to implement it in your business, the

16:28

next wave is the podcast you got to

16:30

check out. Last year, we did

16:32

a whole episode on AI side hustles with

16:34

Matt Wolf, and he's one of the co-hosts

16:37

of the next wave, helping break

16:39

down the latest trends, tools, takeaways,

16:41

and guidance on how to actually

16:43

implement this stuff into your world.

16:45

So let Matt and his co-host Nathan

16:47

Land be your on-demand chief AI officers.

16:50

The next wave is a weekly show

16:52

with key insights, examples from lots of

16:54

different industries, and practical advice on how

16:56

to work smarter. So make sure

16:58

to check out the next wave in your favorite podcast

17:00

app or on YouTube and give it a listen. When

17:04

you're hiring, it feels amazing to finally close out

17:06

a job search and hit the ground running with

17:09

your new hire. But what if

17:11

you could get rid of the search part and

17:13

just get matched with qualified candidates? Well,

17:15

now you can with our sponsor, Indeed. It's

17:18

simple. If you need to hire, you need Indeed. The

17:20

matching and hiring platform is trusted by

17:22

over three and a half million businesses

17:25

worldwide to connect with great talent faster.

17:27

And 93% of employers agree that Indeed

17:29

delivers the highest quality matches compared to

17:31

other job sites. For my next hire,

17:33

I'm using Indeed to tap into a

17:36

talent pool of 350 million unique monthly

17:39

visitors. And what else is

17:41

cool is Indeed's matching engine is constantly

17:43

learning from your preferences. So the more

17:45

you use it, the better it gets.

17:48

And how about this? Side Hustle show

17:50

listeners get a $75 sponsored

17:52

job credit to get

17:55

your jobs more visibility

17:57

at indeed.com/side hustle show.

18:00

indeed.com/side hustle show right now and

18:02

support our show by saying you

18:04

heard about Indeed on this podcast.

18:07

indeed.com/side hustle show, terms and

18:09

conditions apply, need to hire,

18:12

you need Indeed. Now

18:14

the question with all of these projects is,

18:17

how do you know, maybe we should just double

18:19

down on what we're already doing. Like what if

18:21

we poured all that time and effort and energy

18:24

into Pinch of Yum versus starting a

18:27

course in community versus starting software businesses

18:29

versus doing all these plugins? How do

18:31

you know what's a shiny object versus

18:33

what could be a meaningful second

18:35

income stream? One of the questions you can ask

18:38

is like, is the adjacent thing making you better

18:40

at the first thing? And

18:42

in the case of FoodBlogger Pro, the answer to that

18:45

was yes. Like it for

18:47

sure requires us to take time to

18:49

like spin up a membership site and

18:51

to sell that. And there's

18:53

a lot of considerations around just what does it

18:56

look like to create a thing? But

18:58

it's different than if we had

19:01

gone and started a shoveling business

19:04

or snow removal business is maybe a better way

19:06

to say it. We're in Minnesota and so like

19:08

you could easily start a snow removal business. But

19:11

one of the things that happens and one of

19:13

the reasons why it's easy to continue to do it

19:15

is just as an example, like I get on a

19:17

call once or twice a week, just like

19:19

this, you and I, and I

19:21

have a conversation with an expert on how to

19:23

be better in the world of food publishing. And

19:26

like, that's extremely complimentary

19:28

to what we're doing. It's

19:30

kind of like I'm

19:32

doing these consulting calls really. Like

19:35

somebody saying, here's how to do

19:37

search optimization better for recipe websites.

19:39

Or somebody saying, here's what's working

19:42

well on Pinterest or Instagram or

19:44

TikTok, or here's a strategy that

19:46

you should consider. So I

19:48

think that's one of them. Like if you can

19:50

create an adjacent thing that is

19:53

making you better at the first thing,

19:55

there's not as much risk in

19:58

lost ROI because. Chances

20:00

are it might

20:02

be that the thing that

20:04

you are doing is actually making you better at the

20:06

first thing So I would say that would

20:08

be the one consideration So

20:10

trying to find something that's complementary or it makes

20:12

sense Yes, it's on the shoulder of the thing

20:15

you're already doing versus being completely out in less

20:17

field. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly I think

20:19

the other thing is sometimes it actually is just

20:22

better to keep doing what you're doing and to

20:24

go deeper on it and To

20:27

get hyper focused on it and

20:29

I would say there's one reality where

20:32

both Lindsay and I are Obsessively

20:36

focused on pinch of yum in

20:39

that reality just purely

20:41

from a finances standpoint There's

20:44

a high likelihood like if I were to

20:46

bet my bet would be financially we'd be

20:48

in a better spot If

20:50

that was who we are and how we operated like

20:53

if we didn't do anything else and we just

20:55

hyper focused on growing pinch of yum Yeah,

20:57

I think that two considerations within that

21:00

are number one we

21:02

have to consider who we are as

21:05

individuals and Who

21:07

I am is like I really love zero

21:09

to one. I love starting a thing I

21:12

love building a thing and if I'm gonna

21:14

show up on your podcast a

21:16

decade later and Still be excited

21:18

to talk about this stuff. I'm

21:20

gonna have to be doing things that

21:23

make me excited and For

21:25

me, it wouldn't have been going Super

21:29

super deep on like SEO For

21:32

a food site in a recipe site

21:34

like that's an important You're incremental every

21:36

10% every month Yeah And

21:38

it would have been great if that was

21:40

me and I think that financially would have

21:42

been probably better if that was true But

21:45

it's just not who I am and so I think

21:47

that's a huge part of it Like how

21:50

do we continue as creators as entrepreneurs as

21:52

business owners to like continue to show up

21:54

inspired every day? that's

21:56

a factor in our success

21:58

and needs to be

22:01

considered. I would say the other thing is there's

22:04

something to be considered around diversification.

22:06

And in the

22:08

world of anything

22:10

online, it can change

22:13

really quickly. And we've seen that, you

22:15

talked about helpful content. Yeah, you're one

22:17

algorithm away. You're one algorithm away, yeah.

22:19

If I'm relying on Pinterest, then the rules

22:21

changes. I'm relying on Google and then the rules change.

22:24

Right. You build a big following on Instagram. And

22:26

so there's all these different layers of diversification.

22:30

Within the Pinch of Yum ecosystem, we have an

22:32

email list. We have an Instagram account. We have

22:34

the blog itself. All of

22:36

those are mini diversifications that

22:39

we've had within that system. But then we

22:41

also have a membership site.

22:44

In Food Blogger Pro, we have a software

22:46

service. So there's a certain

22:48

level of diversification there in the online

22:50

businesses. But then we also

22:52

do commercial real estate. And that's another

22:55

diversification into something very different.

22:57

It's like brick and

22:59

mortar. It's slow

23:02

moving. It's antiquated

23:05

industry. That's interesting. I

23:07

didn't know that. That's cool. Yeah. So that's like,

23:09

I would say, it's like taking some chips off

23:11

the table and putting it into something that

23:14

is completely uncorrelated to the online

23:16

business. Completely uncorrelated, yeah. It's like

23:19

there's a Pizza Hut and

23:21

an Edward Jones. And those

23:23

are our clients. And they're

23:25

probably not going to be affected by an algorithm

23:27

in the same way that we

23:30

would be with Pinch of Yum. Again,

23:32

though, to your point, I think it's a really valid

23:34

one. And if you are somebody who can

23:36

go deep and can focus and

23:39

you find something that works, keep

23:41

doing that if

23:43

you can continue to stay engaged and

23:45

interested in it. It sounds

23:48

like that's one of the beliefs that

23:50

you have. And I would affirm that

23:52

for anybody listening to say, before

23:55

you go out and diversify like crazy

23:57

or kind of stack.

23:59

these businesses like we talked about,

24:01

just continue to like drill. If

24:04

you strike oil, continue

24:07

to get that oil until

24:10

it's all gone. Yeah, yeah, get well, they're getting good. I

24:12

think some people are like, oil, this is awesome to have

24:14

oil. I wonder if I can get oil over here. And

24:17

then you go and drill and it's like, oh, you could

24:19

just continue to stay where you were and

24:21

just continue to go deeper, which is a

24:24

lot easier than like drilling somewhere else. And

24:26

so I think to the extent that you

24:28

can be somebody who does that, I would

24:31

say go for it and continue to do it. And I think

24:33

it's really wise to continue to go

24:35

deeper as opposed to trying to like spin

24:37

up a correlating thing, especially to do that

24:39

too soon. Yeah, I know those are really

24:42

helpful. So the shiny object test was number

24:44

one, is the adjacent thing making you better

24:46

at the main thing? Like, is it gonna

24:48

be complimentary? Is it gonna be, I think

24:51

Tim Ferriss put it this way when he's starting his podcast.

24:53

How do I make it a win for me, even if

24:55

I lose, even if nobody tunes in, right? 100%, yeah. Number

25:00

two was consider who you are as an individual.

25:02

What do you like doing? What are you most

25:04

excited about? What are you curious about? I think

25:06

that really hit home for me. And that's the

25:08

reason the show still exists. 11 years later is

25:10

it's still interesting and exciting to learn about

25:13

different side hustles. And finally,

25:15

this diversification play, like I wanna continue to

25:17

get while the getting's good, but I also

25:19

wanna take some chips off the table and

25:21

maybe allocate 5%, 10% a month,

25:24

like put it into something, how can I get paid

25:26

over and over again from this work that I do

25:28

once, something that's uncorrelated, unrelated, and

25:31

just build up this other little piece of the

25:33

income pie over here. Yup. Those are

25:35

all really good. Yeah, totally. Well, that

25:37

was round one, side hustle, stacking, incremental

25:39

income streams, all that fun stuff. Round

25:42

two is donate a business idea.

25:45

So I'll kick it over to you. If you had time

25:47

for something new, what would you start? The

25:49

thing that I really like to think about is what

25:52

is an industry that is evolving?

25:55

What is an industry that is trending?

25:57

And then what are the tools that that industry...

26:00

industry needs, what are the

26:02

support mechanisms that that industry

26:04

needs? There's this rise in people

26:06

creating content. You're one of those people,

26:08

I'm one of those people. We now

26:10

have multiple friends who have built creator

26:13

businesses. And these aren't friends

26:15

that we became friends with them because they were

26:18

creators. We were

26:20

friends with them, they became creators, and now

26:22

that's what they do full time. It's just people

26:25

are doing this as a job. And

26:28

what we're seeing is these

26:30

solopreneurs, these kind of independent business

26:32

owners, have these really

26:35

specialized needs for people to come

26:37

alongside them. And there

26:39

are people building those businesses. So an example

26:41

is our friend Landon. He shoots video

26:44

for us, Pinch of Yum. He also shoots

26:46

video for his friend TJ who does birth

26:49

order humor on TikTok

26:51

and Instagram, like middle childhood, this

26:53

older child, this has like multiple

26:56

millions of followers. But

26:58

there's all sorts of different

27:00

specific needs that creators have.

27:03

And so one of

27:05

them might be you are an

27:07

expert in file organization. And

27:09

that's just always what you've done really well.

27:11

You have opinions on it. And

27:14

you're really good at creating organizational

27:16

structures for a remote team that

27:18

has significant media

27:21

assets. I spent probably

27:23

a week researching this. Okay, we

27:25

have video files, we have photos, we work with the

27:27

remote team. Where do we store this? How do we

27:30

back it up? How do we

27:32

make sure that we can access it easily across

27:34

our remote team? We have at

27:36

this point 90 terabytes of data stored online.

27:39

And how do we back that up? What's

27:41

the most affordable way to do it? There's

27:43

an entire industry that somebody could build around

27:46

being the expert on

27:48

online media storage, backup

27:52

and transferability. How do you get access

27:55

to that? You could develop opinions on

27:57

it. You could teach people on it. You could educate people on

27:59

it. People could. and just hire you to do it. Google

28:02

Search Console is an example. Google Analytics

28:04

is an example. Or maybe

28:06

you're just somebody who loves analytics and

28:09

you get really good at

28:11

understanding TikTok analytics and you

28:13

work with creators to

28:15

partner with them, to help them see

28:17

like, hey, this did well, here's why

28:19

we think it maybe did well. Or

28:22

this did well, you need to

28:24

make sure that you're capturing any

28:26

of the audience in this video by doing these

28:28

things. So it's like, what are

28:31

the support mechanisms you

28:33

can build an adjacent expertise

28:36

within that realm that

28:39

can fast track you to

28:41

revenue by having

28:43

it be service-based or product-ized

28:46

service. Right, agency-based, much

28:48

faster than like, than the

28:50

typical creator. To be a creator, totally.

28:53

Which takes a really long time to build that

28:55

up. So Broadstroke's

28:57

strategy is looking for a growing

29:00

industry, looking for a gold rush, essentially,

29:02

to sell shovels into, right? In this

29:05

case, talking about lots of

29:07

people getting into the content, creating space. What

29:09

are the shovels I can sell to these

29:11

people? The pics of shovels, just like a

29:13

gold rush analogy. Maybe it's video editing. Like

29:15

Justin Tan was doing Video Husky. We had

29:17

him on the show. It could be a

29:19

podcast editing service. It could be this Google

29:21

Analytics. It could be this remote

29:23

data buffer. That sounds really technical. I don't know.

29:25

It could be more so, nine or 12 months

29:27

ago, like building. Can you just make it

29:29

look like Google Analytics, Universal Analytics? I

29:32

don't want GA4. Like, can you just make my dashboard look how it

29:34

used to look and give you the same reports that I used to

29:36

get? Maybe there would have been something around

29:38

that. So that's kind of, if you had to start over,

29:41

looking for this content creation, gold rush, and

29:43

then picking a service that you already know

29:45

how to do and could apply that

29:47

to somebody else's business. Let's move on

29:50

to round three, the triple threat. First

29:52

off is a marketing tactic you see

29:54

working right now. Yeah, so

29:56

this is probably the least

29:58

juicy marketing tactic ever get,

30:00

but it's just like manual

30:03

outreach. We're in the

30:05

stage of building the

30:07

podcasting advertising. Like we're just building

30:09

up kind of a client list.

30:12

And one of the things that we've found is like to

30:15

send an email to somebody and be

30:17

like, we're working on this thing. We're

30:20

interested in having you be a

30:22

partner. Would you want to

30:24

jump on a call and like talk through

30:27

potentially working together as a partner? And

30:29

within that, like I'm also starting to do

30:31

some of the sponsor content for Pinch of

30:34

Yum, the significance of getting

30:36

on a call with somebody and saying,

30:39

what are you trying to do has

30:42

been incredibly helpful for us

30:45

to work with somebody and say, Hey,

30:47

we can be a partner with you based

30:50

on what you are trying to do. An example is

30:52

we're working with a, we won't talk about it yet

30:54

because we don't have the contract signed, but like a

30:57

travel based agency. So like

30:59

every state has like a travel

31:01

based group that they have money and then

31:03

they encourage people to like travel to that

31:05

state. We're working with one of these groups

31:08

and we went to them and we said,

31:10

they reached out initially. And so

31:13

my first interaction is like, can we get on

31:15

a call? And one of the

31:17

main thing that I'm trying to do, isn't

31:19

selling them on working with us,

31:22

it's understanding what they're trying to

31:24

do. And once I have

31:26

a clear idea of what somebody's trying to do,

31:28

it's so much easier

31:31

to say to them, here's

31:33

how we could potentially work together based

31:35

on your interest in

31:38

getting exposure to this unique

31:40

area of the state that

31:42

people might not be aware

31:44

of. Like, and the point is like,

31:47

sometimes I think in the world of online

31:50

business or digital sales,

31:53

we forget that one of the

31:55

most effective mechanisms that we have

31:57

is the ability to

31:59

connect with. with somebody to have a conversation with

32:01

them. It's not efficient, it

32:03

doesn't scale, but it's

32:06

been extremely helpful for us. But that's why

32:08

people don't do it. Can

32:10

I plug it into my form letter and blast out to 500

32:12

people? Right,

32:15

right. But it's been extremely

32:17

helpful for us. And it also has

32:19

helped with repeat clients. And

32:22

even with our software service, like with

32:24

Clarity, we're trying to think about how

32:26

do we actually connect

32:29

with people more and

32:31

interact with people more, as opposed

32:33

to try and figure out how

32:35

to do it all with email and chat

32:38

or marketing that you see on Facebook. And

32:40

so for anybody who's in the

32:42

early stages or in

32:44

the middle of building a thing, as much

32:46

as possible, I would encourage you to have

32:48

conversations. That's maybe the marketing

32:50

hack, is talk to people.

32:53

Because it will really refine your product, but it

32:55

will also, I think accelerate

32:57

your ability to partner with

32:59

somebody for you both to

33:03

accomplish what you wanna do. For

33:05

you to sell a thing, to create

33:07

revenue, and for a business owner that

33:09

you're working with or like a brand that you're

33:11

working with, maybe it's exposure, maybe

33:13

it's getting a problem solved, whatever

33:16

it is that you're selling, just

33:18

having that conversation is extremely helpful. Yeah,

33:20

absolutely. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily scale, but

33:23

at the beginning, you're just trying to

33:25

get off the ground. Don't worry

33:27

about that yet. Get somebody to say yes to you. First,

33:29

yes to the conversation, yes to buying a thing, yes to

33:31

working with you. Now that makes sense.

33:33

How about a favorite new tool or

33:35

new to you tool that you've been

33:38

liking lately? You'd think that we'd have

33:40

used these tools more often because we're

33:42

in the world of SEO, but

33:44

I've just started to more

33:47

deeply start to use Ahrefs, A-H-R-E-F-S,

33:52

which is a search optimization tool, allows

33:54

you to understand keywords and whatnot. So

33:57

that's been one that I've started to spend a little bit more time with.

34:00

We've always had an account. We've always used it, but

34:02

like just starting to think a little bit more strategically

34:04

with it. The other one

34:06

that I've really loved lately, Mint closed

34:08

down. And so this

34:11

sounds like like a personal finance kind of consumer

34:13

app, but, and it is, I think technically, but

34:16

I've started to use an app called Monarch

34:18

Money, and it's actually

34:21

one of the original product managers

34:23

from Mint that started the site,

34:25

raised a bunch of money. Earlier

34:27

I referenced one of the things that I have

34:30

in my vivid vision is like, we make this

34:32

much and we spend this much. And

34:35

I want to have a really good understanding of

34:37

what that is. And so I

34:39

actually have two Monarch Money accounts. One

34:42

is every single business

34:44

account, it's commercial real estate. It's

34:47

our businesses. It's our personal accounts.

34:50

It's all of our investment accounts.

34:52

It's like an estimate on the

34:54

value of the businesses as well.

34:57

It's all rolled up into one account. And

34:59

it's kind of like the hub for

35:02

everything that we have. And I categorize everything

35:04

that comes in, like organize it.

35:07

The other thing that I have is an

35:09

account that is just our personal budget. Like

35:12

how much are we personally spending

35:15

in our family every month? And

35:18

I use those to have a beat

35:20

on our holistic across

35:23

the board, all the different businesses, what does that

35:25

look like? And then

35:28

including Chipotle

35:30

and the new bike

35:33

that we bought for a daughter and our

35:35

mortgage, when all of that stuff is rolled

35:37

up, tennis ball machine that I

35:39

just bought, what does

35:41

it look like on a month to month basis for

35:44

what we're spending personally? And what that's been

35:46

helpful for is to see like, okay, we're

35:49

making this much within the businesses, here's

35:51

what the cashflow looks like, including all

35:53

the business expenses, that's one Monarch account.

35:56

And then the other one is just

35:58

personally. how much are we spending?

36:01

And what's interesting with that is like, you

36:03

get to a point potentially

36:05

where you'd have, they talk about the 4% rule, and

36:09

it's like I think financial

36:11

freedom for a lot of people would represent,

36:14

you get to a point where you have

36:16

your investments and

36:18

those are worth a certain amount. Let's

36:20

say you have a million dollars across

36:22

everything. And let's say in your personal

36:25

life, you're spending 40,000. A

36:29

lot of financial experts would say that 4%, you're

36:34

kind of at like a break even point

36:36

where you're financially free. You could live off

36:38

of that million dollars forever. And so those

36:40

two accounts allow me to kind of have

36:42

a read on what that looks like. So

36:44

that's the other tool that I've really liked

36:46

is Monarch. It's funny that you mentioned that.

36:48

I've been loving it too as kind of

36:50

like the financial dashboard. Yeah, they've actually been

36:52

a sponsor on the show this year. Oh,

36:54

nice, look at that, like the ultimate. Yeah,

36:56

I swear I didn't pay Bjork to say

36:58

that. But no, it's really cool.

37:00

It's like that financial snapshot, the monthly

37:02

cashflow, the network, and you customize it

37:04

to the metrics that are important to

37:06

you. And right now I may

37:08

have to separate it out because if you

37:10

have the business and personal life all

37:12

combined into one, but maybe it makes sense to

37:15

separate that out to get. Yeah, well,

37:17

and even for me, one of the things that's

37:19

nice to have separate is we'll have a quarterly

37:21

tax payment. And so four times

37:23

a year, we'll write a big check. And

37:26

then what I struggled with when I

37:28

had just one account was like, do I

37:31

count that as an expense or do I not?

37:34

Like I wanted to have one that was purely like,

37:37

this is how much we're spending based

37:40

on the things that are needed to sustain our

37:42

lives as opposed to we have

37:44

a tax payment. It's like technically that's an expense,

37:47

but it's only an expense because we had

37:50

income. And that feels better to

37:52

put it in the bucket of like everything

37:55

as opposed to just like personal

37:57

spending. Yeah, all right. Money

38:00

when we got up a refs. Longtime

38:02

fan of that as your software as

38:04

well. About the best books from the

38:06

last twelve months. One of the books

38:08

that I've been slowly working through. Dan

38:10

Martell who is that kind of software

38:12

Sas expert. Wrote. A book called

38:15

by back Your Time. And.

38:17

I mean, it's kinda sounds like what it is,

38:19

which is how do you think strategically about. As

38:22

an entrepreneur who has a lot of

38:24

things business owner as just as people

38:27

in general like busy people, how do

38:29

you think strategically about. Buying.

38:31

Your time back by were nine of

38:34

the people are outsourcing things. Some it's

38:36

been helpful or it. Absolutely. And

38:38

it's funny, it's like a work in progress

38:40

was so er, how the staff is my

38:42

first met your it's Sep twenty. Twelve

38:45

Twenty throughout the Alice Ouseley a

38:47

conference I'm hosting at a table

38:49

other find out how to work

38:51

with virtual assistants the I work

38:53

at us on Buyback are times

38:56

I think totally obvious years later

38:58

absolutely will examine up as well.

39:00

Pinch of yum.i'm fine, I'm over

39:02

their food blogger pro course the

39:04

new clarity that Tom Software for

39:06

optimizing your existing content. Clariti's.com Let's

39:09

wrap the sing up with your

39:11

number one tip for Side Hustle

39:13

Nation: Twenty Twenty Four Addition: This

39:15

comes back taxi the name of our company which

39:17

is tiny bit. Tiny. Bit of

39:19

space and his premise of showing up and

39:22

getting a tiny bit better every day forever.

39:24

And I think that you hear this code

39:26

often, but people overestimate with the can do

39:28

in a year. They. Underestimate what they

39:30

can do in a decade. I. Think

39:32

is really cool that we are having

39:34

this conversation at that can a decade

39:37

mark. It's really incredible and I think

39:39

that. For. Anybody listening no matter

39:41

where you are in the dirty, but

39:43

especially if you're in the earlier stages.

39:45

The first few years I would. Encourage.

39:48

You to think about? How can you show up. Every

39:51

day. And. Think about. How.

39:53

Can I just get a tiny bit better? Like What does

39:55

this thing that I can do to improve? A.

39:58

Tiny bit today. And. And

40:00

how do I continue to do that

40:02

in pursuit of my goal? Defining.

40:04

The game that you play. Over a

40:06

long period of time and I think that's

40:09

the key. To. Unlock.

40:12

Major. Success and the.

40:15

Kind. Of interesting observation with it is.

40:18

Often. Times those major successes.

40:21

Com. Not because of one.

40:23

Sprint. But. Because of the

40:26

marathon that you engage and. And

40:28

show up every day doing that. so.

40:31

The. Name of a company we believe in as

40:33

her feels like have we that as like

40:35

them One tip the and things and enough

40:37

I was a reference to him. Bits and

40:39

bytes bytes tiny bit get a tiny. Either

40:41

that or everyday. Very similar. Twenty Fourteen, just

40:43

one percent Infinity. Get warm said better every

40:46

single day. In for the Tides

40:48

And and it's still what we're all

40:50

about. The biggest difference is that we

40:52

named our company after it. Yes, it's

40:54

the compound it affects and in the

40:57

early days? okay, one percent. Don't.

40:59

Feel like a lot better over the course of

41:01

a year? Of course of ten years. It. Has

41:04

incredible compounding power says acts does my son

41:06

snow name is cousins Japanese hard for one

41:08

or something finity like continuous improvement and italic

41:10

a loss at want to get like a

41:13

little tattoo of the characters to the something

41:15

to think a lot about plainly physical get

41:17

a tiny bit better Everyday York been awesome

41:19

again thanks as my situation You have to

41:22

do it before the next decade is sci.

41:24

You can buy the calendar invite for twenty

41:26

thirty four Some hard to say. That

41:29

item already have already bought that even more

41:31

Plenty of sum it are on us. If

41:33

you to to to this make sure to

41:35

check out the original episode from the archives.

41:37

It's as if you to be mysql back

41:40

a farce believe that up if you're not

41:42

sure what so as to do next on

41:44

invited grabby personalized lay list at Hustle that

41:46

show thousands of listeners had already claimed there's

41:48

how it works is easier if you sort

41:50

multiple choice questions and then the machine is

41:53

going to be back out his custom to

41:55

rated playlist of the episodes of the be

41:57

most relevant and it as tools. for you

41:59

based on the answers. So again, that's hustle that

42:01

show, you can do it on your phone and

42:03

add those episodes to your device to listen to

42:06

next. Big thanks to Bjork for

42:08

sharing his insight. Big thanks to our sponsors

42:10

for helping make this content free for everyone.

42:12

You can hit up side hustle nation.com/deals for

42:14

all the latest offers from our sponsors in

42:16

one place. That's it for me. Thanks so

42:18

much for tuning in. Until next time, let's

42:20

go out there and make something happen. And

42:22

I'll catch you in the next edition of

42:24

the side hustle show. That's a lot.