on the podcast today, I've got Ryan Garrow with us who is going to help us determine our side hustle, talk about goals, figure out that whole stage. So this is going to be really valuable, especially if you're just getting started and looking for some advice before we get too much into it.Ryan, how are you doing today?

Have him do an awesome Blake. I'm excited to be here.

Ryan just started his own podcast that we'll get to at the end as well. So we're, we're going to learn a lot here. I want to get some quick context on you before we dive into the technical subject matter of side hustling. So if you could just run, walk us through really briefly the story of your career from how you got started to where you got or how you, how you got to where you are now.

Okay. I don't think our podcast is long enough to cover all of it, but we'll touch on some high points. I've, been in the digital marketing space for about a decade, was CEO of a company that got acquired. I'm now working with the company that acquired us. And so my focus is primarily in the eCommerce space.

most of my days advising businesses on how they can grow their e-commerce, what they can do in strategically. well how they can compete better. But I also have five businesses with my wife outside of that. So I do have the side hustle game going where I have a brand selling direct to consumer. I also have a wholesale division on that.

My wife has a retail store that also sells online. I have a wine and beer retailer. I have a marketing company that tests new products into markets. And then we have a, an investment organization for e-commerce technology. So I am literally all over the place.

I have so many questions, but I, I can't dive in just yet cause I have one more contextual question I ask everybody there. So I'm curious what you would say is your professional superpower.

Strategy. Seeing where something can or can't work.

I love it. I can already tell. We're going to get along great. You're so, so simple. Direct, straight forward. It's going to be fantastic. My first question, because I do this every bit as much for me to learn as for the audience to learn so. You've mentioned you've already got several side hustles, especially some e-commerce stuff.

I'm really curious. First off, we can go into how you get the ideas for that, but then I also want to bring up, before I forget, how do you actually get the system in place to like get, somebody to manufacture it if you need that or how, like how do you build those relationships as well? So let's tackle the idea first, then we can get into the more technical side.

for me, the ideas are generally easy. And the problem for me is, is refining. And figuring out which ones are bad and which ones may have potential. so my wife is usually my best filter. She, she shoots down most of my ideas and tells me they're dumb. And so that's my step one. Like, all right, what do you think of this?

Oh, I think it's bad. Okay, let's maybe table that and I'll try to refine that. But I usually, when I'm advising, cause we have 800 employees here, I'm advising on a lot of side hustles internally for people under 30 but what I like to tell people too is if you're going to make a side hustle work, you've got to be passionate about it or have some interest.

Otherwise it's just going to become another job or a grind and you're not going to keep going and pushing when you're not making money. Cause most side hustles in the eCommerce space. You're grinding now and hoping for pay late, or whether you're working to become an influencer or whether you're working to set up an econ business for success and to scale and pay for generations of wealth type thing.

So I think passionate interest is one of the biggest things I would filter an idea through. And then I think secondary below that is. What kind of con connections do you have or what kind of opportunities do you have to meet...