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WESLACO, Texas – Economist Luis Torres of the Texas A&M Real Estate Center says the path to recovery for the Rio Grande Valley economy depends on COVID-19 outcomes.By way of an example, Torres said the number of unemployment claims in the region grew around July 4, just as the number of coronavirus cases increased. He called this “worrisome.”Torres made his remarks as keynote speaker during a recent webinar hosted by the Rio Grande Valley Partnership. It was titled Economic Indicators in Housing and Commercial Markets–Texas & RGV.“The good news is the economy is on a recovery path, after the lockdown. But, the only thing here is, the recovery is going to depend on the COVID-19 pandemic. That is the issue going forward,” Torres said.Torres pointed out that the current economic crisis started because of a health crisis. “It was not started by economic forces. So, we closed the economy voluntarily. It was a self-induced coma of the economy. Now the issue here is the severity, because it will depend on health outcomes and the uncertainty going forward, the duration and the impact.”Torres said the uncertainty is affecting everyone. “Households, businesses, all of our planning for the future depends on how well we control the COVID-19 pandemic. It affects investments, consumption decisions and, of course, that affects economic activity.”Torres said the Texas A&M Real Estate Center has developed a weekly index for the Texas economy. “We need to know right now, in a timely fashion what is happening with the economy. There has been an uptick. However, we are currently in a recession.”Torres said the Brownsville Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) lost about 60,000 jobs once the pandemic hit, while McAllen MSA lost around 28,000 jobs. He said things have recovered since then. “Things are still negative but the good news were are on a recovery path.”The Valley economy was doing well before the pandemic, Torres pointed out, with unemployment in Brownsville at 5.7 percent and in McAllen at 6.5 percent. The stay-at-home orders and closure of certain business sectors led to a 19 percent unemployment rate in McAllen and a rate of almost 18 percent in Brownsville. Brownsville is now reporting 10.4 percent, Torres said, and McAllen 12 percent.The sector hit hardest, Torres said, was leisure and hospitality. Editor’s Note: Click here to read the full story and view a slideshow of Luis Torres’ powerpoint presentation.

We continue our conversation with the host of MSNBC's "The Last Word," Lawrence O'Donnell, who talks about Mister Sterling, the show he created that starred Josh Brolin as a newly-appointed senator from California who everyone assumes is a Democrat. Lawrence shares behind-the-scenes tales of TV production; his favorite bits of direction; the real-life sources of drama and inspirations for fictional characters; the identity of the so-called “101st Senator;” how actors remember forever the parts they don’t get; how casting sessions work (and don’t work); games senate staffs play; shout-outs to great and important mentors; the possibilities and challenges of rebooting Mister Sterling or any shows like it; the extraordinary journey it took to realize multiple Tony-winning actor Audra McDonald was right for a role; things you can still shoot in quarantine; and, in a 17-year-old journalistic coup — and after 700 episodes — Finally! The RSC Podcast has its first scoop! (Length 34:06) (NOTE: Click through to find links to Part One of this interview.) The post More Lawrence O’Donnell appeared first on Reduced Shakespeare Company.

Note: Click here to provide input on YOUR sales challenges.Earlier in the year, if Bill Farquharson or Kelly Mallozzi had asked, "What are your top sales challenges?" you might have replied with answers like, Voicemail or Time Management. But in this Summer of COVID, those seem like simple matters.Separate of each other and based on conversations with clients and sales people in the graphic arts, Bill and Kelly each came up with a list and share it live in this week's Short Attention Span Sales podcast.After you listen, make sure to go to ShortAttentionSpanSales.com to take part in a quick survey/questionnaire. Help Bill and Kelly identify your sales challenges and then be a part of the solution.For more information, contact Bill at 781-934-7036 or BillFarquharson.com. Kelly can be found at 773-680-5134 or SuccessInPrint.net

Liam Austin made $50k off his first online event, and hasn't looked back. Since then, Liam has hosted another 17 virtual summits and online business networking events. In total, these events have brought together more than 400 speakers and 100,000 business owners. Virtual summits allow you to connect with industry leaders and influencers in your niche while growing your own audience. Hosting a virtual summit sounds pretty straightforward: interview a bunch of influential people in your niche collect registrations of people who want to watch those interviews sell access to the recordings after they expire But the virtual summit model has a lot of nuance and strategy, and behind-the-scenes action that all has to come together to make it a hit. That's why I invited Liam on the show. Note: Click here to download Liam’s top tips for planning and hosting a virtual summit from this episode. If you’re looking for ways to grow your business and make meaningful connections within your industry, this episode lays out that blueprint for you. Tune in to hear Liam talk through: The core benefits of hosting a virtual summit How he made $50k from his first summit and learned some valuable lessons What it’s going to take to create your own virtual summit in your industry And more

NOTE: Click here for the take-home guide!

Would 10 new clients solve all your business worries? That was the position Helen Pritchard was in back in 2008. On the back of a financial and personal crisis, Helen needed 10 clients paying £250 each to pay her bills. She turned to LinkedIn to find those clients, and it didn’t take her long. Since then, Helen has pivoted her business and now teaches other people how to get clients and grow their business using LinkedIn. Note: Click here to download Helen’s top tips for attracting your ideal clients on LinkedIn from this episode. In fact, I found out about Helen through a listener of the show: I do not work for Helen. Nor do I do her PR. I just want to nominate her because she changed my life. Thanks to her, I have filled my client roster and have more money coming in as an entrepreneur than I ever did working for someone else. That’s an awesome testimonial for Helen, and solid proof that her methods work. If your goal is to leave your job in the near future, you don’t want to miss this one. What Helen teaches is probably the fastest way to start your own business with the least upfront expense. Tune in to hear Helen talk through: the processes she teaches students on her LinkedIn mastermind how to set up your LinkedIn profile as a landing page that converts how to connect with potential clients and more

Are you struggling to get traction with your blog? Are you concerned your niche is too competitive or you’re starting too late? If so, you’re going to come away from this episode with loads of actionable tips to put those questions to the side. “I have learned, it is never literally too late to ever start anything,” today’s guest Jennifer Marx from JenniferMaker.com told me. Jennifer has taken her DIY/crafting site from a part-time hobby blog earning $33/mo to bringing in more than 6-figures every month in just a few years. Note: Click here to download Jennifer’s top tips for growing a blog into a 6-figure business from this episode. She knows a thing or two about entering a competitive niche, finding, and cultivating an audience. First, she mastered Pinterest, then Facebook, and just over a year ago she entered YouTube and already has an audience of more than 225k subscribers! Dominating a source of traffic and growing an audience is something Jennifer excels at, and in the blogging world, there’s huge profit in doing so. Tune in to hear how Jennifer found her initial traction in a competitive niche, what’s driving traffic for her today, how her site makes money, and how she’s built an email list that’s almost the population of Cleveland!

Do you want to generate more leads for your business? Are you struggling to turn prospects into paying customers? If you’re saying “yes” to either of those questions, you’re going to get tonnes of value out of this episode. I invited Kai Davis of KaiDavis.com and DoubleYourEcommerce.com back onto the show as he’s a pro when it comes to this stuff. (Kai was actually guest #4 on The Side Hustle Show way back in 2013, he also had an encore performance a year later in episode 59.) This time around, Kai walks us through the 3 levers that anyone can use to grow their business: Find new customers Get referrals from existing customers or your network Sell more to existing customers Note: Click here to download Kai’s top tips for finding prospects and turning them into sales and paying clients from this episode. With a little creativity and tenacity, you can begin to implement his strategies right away. Tune in to hear the techniques Kai is using to generate more leads for his business, how he’s turning these prospects into sales and profit, and the 3 specific actions anyone can use to generate leads for their own business.

Melissa Fassel Dunn has built a thriving - and profitable - online community serving residents in her small town. The interesting part is that she didn't start her Facebook group or website with the goal of making money. She did so to solve a pain point she was experiencing finding information about services in her town of Milton, a suburb of Boston. “I needed information about kindergarten, I needed information about a plumber, an electrician, and I felt like there wasn’t a go-to place for any of that. “So, I thought, I’m going to start a group, I’m going to add some of my friends and we can exchange information with one another,” Melissa told me. She started Milton Neighbors, a Facebook group for residents of Milton to share information and recommend local services. That was in 2013, today the group has more than 11,000 members and is almost a 6-figure business. Note: Click here to download Melissa’s top tips for growing and monetizing an online community from this episode. Tune in to hear how Melissa built up her group, how she keeps people engaged, her monetization methods, and how you can replicate her model with a Facebook group of your own in just about any niche.

This is episode #42! If you are in the field of education, our next guest doesn’t need an introduction. I want to introduce a concept that he would say is “like fairy dust to the brain”[i], and use “virtual transportation” or mental time travel to take a trip down memory lane, visualize and remember when you first heard about Dr. John Medina and his Brain Rules Series[ii] that he wrote with the idea in mind to redesign our schools and workplaces. I was given my first copy of Brain Rules when I worked as an inside sales rep, in a cubicle, for Pearson Education, (2009) by my Sales Manager, who knew I needed to read this book. At the time, I had no idea just how important these Brain Rules would be for me, however, 5 years after this, when my Character and Leadership Programs were chosen by the State of AZ for a Grant, and I was urged by an educator to incorporate brain-based learning into these programs, it was Dr. Medina’s Brain Rules that I grabbed off my bookshelf to understand how the brain impacts learning and achievement. If you have read his book, and it’s impacted you in any way, you must listen to today’s interview. You can listen to the interview here, or watch the visuals on YouTube. Welcome to the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast, my name is Andrea Samadi, I’m a former educator whose been fascinated with understanding the science behind high performance strategies in schools, sports and the workplace for the past 20 years. Each week we bring you an expert who has risen to the top of their industry with specific strategies that you can implement immediately, whether you are a teacher or student in the classroom, or working in the corporate world, to take your results to the next level.Welcome Dr. John Medina.John, before we get into the questions,  I’ve got to tell you that I emailed you back in 2014 to ask if I could use your book cover and your headshot in my presentations as I mentioned you as an early influencer with my work. Of course, you said yes, and I presented a slide with your book series ever since then so you would understand why I’m thrilled to speak with you today as your work has significantly impacted mine, and I can see that many others feel the same way. Thank you so much for being here today.Question 1: Dr. Medina, I know that you wrote Brain Rules (the 2nd book in your series) to redesign classrooms and workplaces with the brain in mind. These rules are all brilliant, with so much research to validate each rule.  Can you give us some concrete examples for those of us looking to implement these rules in the K-12 school or workplaces.  Where have you seen your Brain Rules working really well? What exactly would a school or a workplace of the future look like to you? Of your 12 Brain Rules, which ones do you think would impact schools and our workplaces the most? Question 2: Everyone loves this topic, which is obvious with how much interest and feedback I have had with this podcast, but there’s so much pseudoscience out there. What would be some best practices that you suggest preventing the repetition of some of the most common myths, and stay true to current evidence-based research?Question 3: We all want the best for our children and students, (and I know that you feel the same way) and as a parent, there’s nothing I want more for my 2 girls than their happiness. With the clear fact that anxiety and depression are a nation-wide epidemic, (it is so bad where I live in Chandler, AZ that audiences gasp when I talk about the statistics of teen suicide within my local community) so I’m always looking for ways that I can be a better parent and spread the word to change these dismal statistics. What does the research say about the best ways to raise our children/students these days, to be confident, resilient and hopefully bypass anxiety and depression?Question 4: When I was researching your work, watching your Talks at Google[iii] you mention Art Linkletter and his show “Kids Say the Darndest Things” a few times. I actually met Art Linkletter in the late 1990s and asked him to write the foreword to my first book after his speech where he told us about the day that his good friend Walt Disney took him to a place in Orange, CA full of orange trees and said “Art, look at this land...do you see what I see? I see a place where families and children will come and play, laugh and experience joy. It will be a theme park right here and it will be the happiest place on earth. Do YOU see this, and will you be my partner in business with this idea?” Art looked carefully at the land, but explained that he didn’t see Walt’s vision and declined this partnership. He also declined, politely, to writing the foreword to my book, via fax, which was ok, I did find a better match, but Dr. Medina, when you hear Art’s story, what do you think? I’ve heard you talk about Theory of Mind as being “as close to mind reading as brain science gets.”[iv] With an understanding of Theory of Mind (ToM)[v] why couldn’t Art see his good friend Walt Disney’s vision? (NOTE: Click this link to take the test to test your social intelligence).  If they were good friends like Art mentioned, wouldn’t Art have been able to use this Theory of Mind to tap into Walt’s vision enough to change his no to a yes? Can you explain what theory of mind is, and perhaps how we could learn to develop it, so we could use it to our advantage and not have any regrets in life like Art Linkletter? Question 5: To tie these Brain Rules all together, we have covered the ones you think would make the best schools and workplaces of the future. You have offered us some thoughts on how to be a better parent to raise resilient children that bypass anxiety and depression. Is there anything that you think we have missed that’s important that would help us all to improve our lives and results whether we are a teacher in the classroom, working in a corporate office, or even an athlete looking for an edge to improve their performance. What final advice would you give us?Thank you so much Dr. Medina for the time you took today to share your research and books and take a deeper dive into your Brain Rules Series. For people who want to buy your books, and learn more, they can go to http://brainrules.net/ and find a ton of resources, video, references and tips to learn more. Is there anything you are working on now that you want to share?BIODr. Medina[vi], a developmental molecular biologist, has had a lifelong fascination with how the mind reacts to and organizes information. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School[vii] -- a fascinating book with 12 Rules that challenge and reshape our thinking around how our schools and work environments are not currently designed with the brain in mind. Then there’s Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five that helps parents like me, doctors and educators to learn about brain science so we can all raise happy, smart and moral kids. His latest book in the series "Brain Rules for Aging Well: 10 Principles for Staying Vital, Happy, and Sharp” offers some ground-breaking ideas for those of us who want to stay healthy and happy as we age.RESOURCES:Test your social intelligence score and how well you can read the emotions of others by looking in their eyes with the Theory of Mind Test.NOTE: My score was 29/36  http://socialintelligence.labinthewild.org/mite/REFERENCES:[i] How to Hack Your Brain at Any Age Dr. John Medina and Dave Asprey on Bulletproof Radio EPISODE #509 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWIKtkU6H4c [ii] http://www.brainrules.net/buy [iii] Brain Rules for Aging Well YouTube Published January 17, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NujSdn1bg5k [iv] As Close to Mind Reading as Brain Science Gets YouTube Published July 11, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELOXxwyRN74 [v] Theory of Mind: Mechanisms, Methods and New Directions Published August 13, 2008 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3737477/ [vi] http://www.brainrules.net/about-the-author [vii] http://www.brainrules.net/buy 

Helping people make decisions is a big business! In fact, these two Side Hustle Show listeners started a website to do just that, and it's now bringing in $17-20k a month. Oh, and the project is only a little over a year old. Alex Goldberg and Healy Jones run a site called FinvsFin.com, which focuses on reviews and comparisons of direct to consumer brands. They earn money as affiliates -- basically earning a commission on sales that are referred through the site. Note: Click here to download Alex and Healy’s top tips for growing and monetizing an affiliate site from this episode. FinvsFin is an example of what I’ll call the modern comparison shopping site -- helping readers make decisions and getting paid for it. And since comparison shopping was my original side hustle over a decade ago, this was especially fun to dive into. The impressive part is that this is still very much a side hustle. Both Alex and Healy have full-time jobs, and their business falls under the “passive income" business model. Tune in to hear how Alex and Healy prioritize and create their content, what they’re doing to market the site and drive traffic, and how you can borrow some of their same strategies in your own niche.

Can you really get paid to answer questions? That’s exactly what Debbie Gartner from TheFlooringGirl.com does - and her answers are earning her $20,000 a month. Debbie used to run a local hardwood flooring consultation business. She’d estimate jobs, make recommendations, and match homeowners with reliable installers. In her spare time, she started her blog with the goal of showing up in some local search results to generate some more business. “I wrote blog posts that were questions that my customers would have,” Debbie told me. Note: Click here to download Debbie’s top tips for growing and monetizing a blog. But as you might have guessed, the site soon started to reach an audience well outside her local area. A couple of years later Debbie got out of the brick and mortar flooring business and decided to monetize her blog. She was already pulling in more than 100,000 visitors and by simply turning on ads she made $1,100 in her first month. From there she continued to grow her traffic numbers, added affiliate posts, created her own products, and is now making more than $20,000 a month. Tune in to hear how Debbie is driving traffic, how her site earns money, and how you may be able to replicate some of Debbie’s tactics in your own niche. Note: If you don't have a blog of your own yet, my free video series will show you how to get up and running quickly and affordably.

A small blog doesn't have to mean a small income. By helping a specific group of people solve their problems, Carol Tice has attracted more than 1500 members -- at $25 a month -- to join her community. Note: Click here to download Carol’s top tips for starting and growing a paid membership community from this episode. Carol went from working as a freelance writer, to coaching others how to become freelance writers, to building one of the largest online membership sites for freelance writers. (I found Carol while doing keyword research for terms like “get paid to write” and “make money writing” – and Carol OWNS this space.) The best part is that the paid membership model is an awesome way to build an online business, and it’s a model that can be applied to just about any niche. It didn’t come without sacrifice for Carol, who was working full-time and had two preschoolers when she started her blog. “I didn’t see a TV show, I didn’t go out to a movie, I didn’t go to dinner parties,” Carol explained. But with hard work, a laser-focused attitude towards her goals, and good communication with her audience, Carol has built something special for freelance writers. Tune in to hear how Carol built her membership site from the ground up. She explains how she uses funnels to constantly bring in new members, and how she keeps members engaged (any paying) for the long-haul. You’ll learn loads of actionable stuff, and how you can also apply the same tactics to develop a recurring revenue business of your own.

A location-independent consulting business that replaces your day job income in a matter of months? That's exactly what Paul Minors accomplished with his virtual software consulting business. You might recognize Paul’s name. Paul is a productivity blogger and consultant from New Zealand. He was part of a fun productivity roundtable episode we did towards the end of 2016 -- that was episode 197 if you want to go back and check it out. What I now know, is that at that time Paul was putting the wheels in motion on his consulting business centered around specific software tools. Which as a side hustle tactic, is fantastic. If you can hitch your cart to a rising tide of interest in a particular tool, and become the go-to expert in that space, you can do really well. And, that’s exactly what Paul has done. Note: Click here to download Paul’s top tips for setting up a location-independent consulting business and landing your first clients from this episode. Paul was able to leave his day job within a couple of months of starting his business. He was then able to go traveling with his wife for 6-months while working 15-20 hours a week from his laptop. After arriving back home, he started working full-time on his consulting business. “I noticed the impact of that straight away, within a couple of months I had doubled my income,” Paul told me. It's clear Paul has figured out this business model. This one’s packed with ideas you might be able to apply to your own areas of expertise. Maybe you’ll even uncover some areas of expertise you never really considered that special before. Tune in to hear how Paul came across the idea of offering his first consulting services “by accident”. As well as how he’s used several different marketing channels to drive targeted traffic to his website, and how he’s been adding more products and services to his portfolio and seen his revenue increase as a result.

Amy Feierman and Kristin Ostrander of MommyIncome.com have generated over $2 million in sales on Amazon over the last 12 months with a unique strategy that has high margins and lower costs per sale. What are they selling on Amazon? Bundles -- Think shampoo and conditioner, peanut and butter, or any 2-6 products that compliment each other and provide some added value and convenience to the buyer. Note: Click here to download Amy & Kristin’s top tips for sourcing, packaging, and selling wholesale bundles on Amazon from this episode. Amy and Kristin have both been selling online for over 10 years, but recently they have shifted their focus onto this specific strategy of wholesale bundles – and it’s working really well for a number of reasons. These bundles make life easier for the 1-click ordering, free Prime shipping Amazon customer, and they make life better for you as a seller because you face less competition and can earn better profit margins. Tune in to hear how Amy and Kristin go about their product research that leaves them confident their bundles are going to sell without any paid ads, product reviews, or marketing efforts. You'll also learn how they're sourcing their inventory, the kinds of upfront investment needed, and the price points and margins they're working with.

He'd just gained 3000 subscribers and made $8000 in a matter of days, but Chris Ritter's first virtual summit didn't deliver the result was looking for. As a personal trainer for swimmers, he was looking for more clients to coach online. Not a single one signed up. Still, the summit was a serious turning point in his business--one that turned into a 6-figure side project in its first year. He started serving an entirely different set of customers, and went from working one-on-one to one-to-many. Note: Click here to download Chris' top tips from this episode. His multi-year journey includes in-person personal training, seeking online clients, writing blog posts, selling an e-book, hosting a hit virtual summit, and more. Listen in because you’ll pick up some tactics and ideas you can apply to your own side hustle as this is one that’s ripe for replication across different niches. It’s a story about leveling up your reach and impact and income, and evidence that opportunities start to appear once you’re in motion.

A few years ago, a side hustler named Brock McGoff reached out to me with a guest post pitch. The post detailed how he was making, at that time, $4,000 a month, from his blog about men’s fashion, on the side from his day job. Since then, Brock has turned TheModestMan.com into his full-time focus, into a 6-figure income, and into a media empire that expands well beyond the blog itself. Note: Click here to download Brock's top tips for growing an online business from this episode. In this episode, Brock talks me through how he generates content ideas, how the business makes money, where he’s focusing his energy for the best results, and how he’s taken his site from a side hustle to a full-time business. Don't have a website of your own yet? Check out my free video series on how to get up and running in no time.

Note: Click here to download Stacy’s top tips for buying, improving, and managing online businesses from this episode. Stacy Caprio was desperate to leave her day job. She ended up doing just that after acquiring – and improving – a portfolio of mini online businesses. In her case, these were websites that make money from advertising. Now, this asset class can be risky, and Stacy is open about her early failures. But if you have some online skills, (or management skills to bring people in if you don’t want to run the site yourself) this can be a fast-track to the cash flow you need to fund your lifestyle. Since websites often sell for 20x monthly earnings, they're perhaps 10-15x "cheaper" than if you were to rely solely on traditional investments and a 4% withdrawal rate. Sound like the kind of investment that suits your lifestyle? Tune in to hear where Stacy finds these businesses to buy, her unique filtering criteria, and a few quick ways she’s been able to accelerate the cash flow of her portfolio for even better returns.

Florida loves to fish! They love to fish for sharks from the beach. It's quite popular to fish for sharks from the beach in many parts of Florida. The fishing practice is a bit controversial as many anglers have been taking selfies with the sharks they catch.  Why is that so controversial? The fishers are excited about what they caught. They followed the rules, for the most part; however, the act of taking a selfie many not be allowed anymore because it is not good for the shark. The big problem with taking a photo with sharks on the beach is that the anglers will drag the sharks out of the water and hold them there for the perfect shot. sharks need water to breathe; therefore, holding the shark out of the water is torturing them.  The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has taken the advice by various shark scientists, policy makers and the conservation community and are getting ready to accept and implement rules of no photography of sharks after the catch.  Take a listen to the episode for my thoughts on the matter and the challenges that come with this type of rule. Note: Click here to listen to Dr. David Shiffman speak on why the rules are so important. Do you think this new rule will be easy to implement? Share your thoughts in the Facebook Group: http://www.speakupforblue.com/group. Want to get started on living for a better Ocean? Sign up for the Grove Collaborative and get a free gift: http://www.speakupforblue.com/goocean. 

With 250 million active users, Pinterest is a content discovery platform nearly every blogger and business owner should be spending some time on. The Pinterest tactics shared on this podcast in late 2015 by Rosemarie Groner were extremely effective ... for a while. But I began to see declines in traffic, and today Pinterest brings in perhaps a quarter of the visitors it used to. Still, I’m convinced I could be doing better on the platform to reach more people and help more people with my content. Just like Google, a top-ranking pin can bring in consistent qualified traffic month after month after month. But also like Google, there’s a certain science to the Pinterest algorithm. To help me breathe new life into my account — and walk through how you can do the same even if you’ve never used Pinterest before, I invited Kate Ahl from SimplePinMedia.com to join me on the show. Note: Click here to download Kate’s top tips for creating and optimizing your Pinterest account from this episode. She’s an expert on all things Pinterest marketing, and in this episode, she breaks down everything I’m doing wrong and what you and I should be doing instead to start reaching more people and driving more traffic. Tune in to hear the right way to set up your profile, how to set up and optimize your pins and boards to increase your reach, and how to rank you content in Pinterest's search results to drive more traffic to your site.

Meredith Marsh is a “total introvert with over 3 million views on YouTube.” When Meredith started VidProMom.com she didn’t set out to be a “YouTuber”. She started a blog and YouTube channel because she wanted to help families better capture those classic, picture-perfect family moments. What she discovered was “a pretty big gap in the whole video creation side of things for people who are creating videos for fun,” Meredith said. She started creating a video series on how to use a GoPro and some of the software - and things quickly snowballed. Her YouTube channel was getting more subscribers than all her other social media metrics and blog visitors added together – so it was obvious that YouTube was the ideal platform for her content. Note: Click here to download Meredith’s top tips for growing a YouTube channel from this episode. A year after starting her channel Meredith left her day job, and her blog/YouTube channel that started as a side hustle is now her full-time job. Tune in to hear how to set up your YouTube channel for success, how to master the YouTube algorithm to reach more people, and how to make money from your new video content.

“Everyone needs it, people tend not to get enough of it – so that’s how the site came about,” said Kieran. Kieran MacRae is talking about sleep. The site he started is called TheDozyOwl.co.uk, a UK-based site that Kieran has taken from $0 to $2.5k a month in revenue in its first 12 months. Note: Click here to download Kieran’s top tips for building a profitable site from this episode. Do you remember Alan Donegan from PopupBusinessSchool.co.uk in episode 306? He told the story of one of his students getting frustrated with the business generation process; they were having a hard time coming up with anything that really got them excited. "I just really like sleeping," they said in exasperation. And for a while, Alan didn't have a great response. That is, until he learned about Kieran, who was earning a full-time income blogging about sleep and sleep-related products. Tune in to hear how Kieran came up with the idea for his site, how he creates the content, and how the site makes money – without a server-shattering volume of traffic.

Her escape plan was an interesting one. April Whitney was staring at a future of pharmaceutical copywriting, and wanted out. Today, April is the leading voice in the niche of petite fitness. Where the story gets exciting, is that it’s a niche that for all intents and purposes, April invented. Nobody was searching for this stuff, which would normally be a huge red flag. But when women came across April and her content, something resonated. Note: Click here to download April’s top tips from this episode. Starting a little over a year ago, she’s built a tribe of over 10,000 followers, raised $8,000 on Kickstarter for her first product, and now sells $1000 worth of that product on autopilot every month. April built most of her tribe on Instagram, a platform that’s saturated with fitness-related content and notoriously difficult to convert followers into customers. Tune in to hear how April found her tribe, converted them into followers and customers, and the products and services she created that ultimately funded her quitting that cubical job to do something she loves.

How a “punctum” can make your software demo more persuasiveMost software demos are dreadful. They lack any sort of persuasive selling power and are far too long. This results in boredom for the audience. But what is it that gives some software demos the je ne sais quoi? In this episode, Michael and I describe what a “punctum” is and how it can make your software demo instantly more persuasive.NOTE: Click here to download Michael Humblet’s FREE course - https://schoolofsales.be/p/accelerate-your-business-with-value-laddershttps://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhumblet/ Don’t forget to give Michael feedback on his course. ;)

At a certain point, you reach the ceiling of your own capabilities, of your own capacities, and no amount of productivity hacks are going to get you to the next level. So what do you do? You hire some help! That’s exactly what Bonnie Fahy started doing when she needed help with the day-to-day tasks running her real estate consulting business. Note: Click here to download Bonnie's top outsourcing and hiring tips from this episode. Soon after she put a virtual team in place -- headed up by a US-based project manager -- she was able to free up more of her time to focus on sales, marketing, and other areas of her business. Those shifts ended up quadrupling her income in just a few months. With more than 300 hires behind her, Bonnie now runs LiveMoreFormula.com where she teaches other entrepreneurs the skills of “Hybridsourcing” she’s learned over the years. This means finding a balance between hiring domestic and international virtual assistants with the right skills to take some of your workload off your hands – at a cost-effective price. She uses some interesting techniques too. Preferring to put candidates through “Interview dates” over traditional interviews, she explains the types of questions you should be asking potential hires, and what you should expect to pay for skilled international workers. Tune in to hear the simple 4-step process Bonnie has refined over the years to make finding hires quick, identify top performers, and start adding virtual assistants to your team.

“I tell people I work on my cleaning business about an hour a day because 5 minutes doesn’t seem believable,” Chris Schwab said. Chris is the founder of ThinkMaids.com, a residential house cleaning service in the Washington DC area he started on the side while still a university student. Less than two years later, the business is doing $60k a month worth of cleaning work, all without Chris ever lifting a mop or dusting a shelf himself. Note: Click here to download Chris’ top tips for starting and growing a local service business that scales from this episode. In this episode, Chris shares some of the unique tactics he used to start and grow his cleaning business, and then remove himself from the day-to-day operations. Tune in to hear how Chris came up with the idea for his cleaning business, how he found his first customers and cleaners, and how he manages the entire business remotely.

Rene Delgado started an online drop shipping store with no ideas and no inventory and went from $0-300k in his first year in business. It was the search for an extra stream of income that led Rene Delgado to consider e-commerce; selling physical products online. “Drop shipping” is a form of e-commerce where your suppliers ship products directly to customers on your behalf. Note: Click here to download Rene’s top tips for starting and running a drop shipping business from this episode. Your role is to drive traffic to your storefront, forward the purchase order details to your supplier when a visitor makes a purchase, collecting the retail price and buying the goods at wholesale. Rene went through a very specific product research process and ended up starting BounceHouseStore.com, where he sells bounce houses and other products related to bounce houses. He’s already started scaling his business on the success of his bounce house store. Rene has now outsourced the day-to-day operations of this store and started a new drop shipping store that has already turned over double what his bounce house did in its first year. There’s no luck here. “It’s hard work,” Rene said. That and some careful planning and execution. Tune in to hear why Rene was attracted to drop shipping, the criteria he used to find the bounce house niche, and how he generated $300k of sales in his first year in business.

Bill Nowicki has a unique side hustle. He has a podcast show called MariettaStories named after Marietta GA, a suburb of Atlanta with a population of about 60,000. Having a podcast show isn’t unique but producing a show that’s focused on a local community is something a little different – and something you might consider doing for your local community after hearing Bill’s story. Note: Click here to download Bill’s top tips for starting and growing a local podcast from this episode. Bill is a former Navy submariner, still a nuclear engineer by day, and had different side hustle aspirations at first – he wanted to make videos for local businesses but was finding it hard to land clients. After meeting a charismatic 78-year-old woman at his local church he had the idea to start a podcast about people in his local community, for his local community. He thought this would be a great way to generate videography leads. But as his show has grown and become a profit-center of its own, Bill realized that not only in his time better spent on his show but the medium of audio is more enjoyable and profitable for him than video. Tune in to hear how Bill started his podcast show, how he marketed his show and became known in his local community, how he’s monetized the show to turn it into a revenue generating side hustle and some of the exciting things he has planned for the future.

Austin Miller built a $1.2 million real estate portfolio at 31 years old -- for free. Note: Click here to download Austin’s top tips for finding and financing property from this episode. He's a side hustling real estate investor specializing in "creative" financing deals -- houses he can buy without using his own money. Austin is the author of Free Houses: How To Build Your Real Estate Investment Portfolio With No Money. His basic strategy is this: Find a killer deal on a house that needs some work. Buy it with the creative financing methods Austin talks about in this episode. Either do the work yourself or hire contractors. Put a paying tenant in the newly rehabbed home. Refinance the home with a traditional bank loan and pay back the original funding source. The end game is positive monthly cash flow from rental income, plus building a long-term wealth through tenants paying off the mortgage. Austin has developed some unique and interesting ways to hard money and private money to fund his property purchases. The best part – it’s truly a side hustle that can be done in a few hours a week the end result is passive income from rental revenue. Tune in to hear how Austin finds killer deals, buys the houses without risking his own capital, and then rehabs them to get ready to rent.

May Najafabadi earned $12,000 in 8 weeks -- working just 1 hour a day. Her side hustle? After school enrichment classes teaching crafts and jewelry making. Note: Click here to download May’s top tips for creating and running after school classes from this episode. As a long-time entrepreneur in the e-commerce space, May was used to enrolling her son in these classes to buy herself an extra hour in the afternoons. Over the last couple years though, she wanted to diversify her income away from Amazon and wondered if she could be the one selling those classes instead. May chose arts and crafts, a subject her son enjoyed in first grade but didn’t see available for second grade and above. With no experience working with crafts or teaching children May jumped right in with a lunchtime demonstration and handing out flyers to the kids. “The kids went crazy, they just loved the crafts. It was a big hit,” May said. With her hopes set on 6 or more kids for that first class, May had 18 sign up at $120 each. She soon expanded to larger schools, with larger groups of kids, and hired helpers. She's released a book, a training course, and hosts birthday parties and summer camps, and has hopes of franchising her model. Tune in to hear how May has grown her after school class business and how you may be able to borrow this creative side hustle idea.

Note: Click here to download Jonathan’s top tips for starting and growing a podcast, blog, and online community from this episode. 10 months! Just 10 months after starting his side hustle, Jonathan Mendonsa was ready to quit his 6-figure job and take the business full-time. What's the hustle? A podcast called Jonathan co-hosts with this partner Brad Barrett ChooseFI. “You need to either be first or be different. We couldn’t be first, so we wanted to pivot and be a little different,” Jonathan said. When the project started, he was working full-time as a pharmacist, living a frugal lifestyle, and was an avid consumer of financial independence content. From the offset, he knew that, “If we can create a show that’s information, accurate, good, entertaining, and also inspirational, that’ll be addictive.” In this episode Jonathan shares some of the unique tactics and tips he and Brad used to grow their audience, community, and business so fast. Tune in to hear how ChooseFI earned 2 million downloads in its first year, and how they monetize the show to support two families.

In this episode, I go over some news items and discuss trap treatment options for trappers.  Enjoy!   Note: Click here for an article I wrote last year on dyeing with cold dip.  There are some great comments on the post as well. The post Trapping Today Podcast Episode 28 – Dyeing, Waxing and Dipping Traps appeared first on Trapping Today.

When Abbey made $8000 from her 1000-person email list, she knew she was on to something. Over the last several years, Abbey Ashley has gone from earning $25 as a virtual assistant, to coordinating monster 6-figure launches of her own product. I actually met Abbey at the bar during Traffic and Conversion Summit. Her “Virtual Assistance Is My Jam,” t-shirt caught my attention and I had to know more. Eight months pregnant with her first daughter, she couldn't imagine putting her child in day care just to go back to work at a job she hated. Note: Click here to download Abbey’s top tips from this episode. So she started devouring everything she could find online about working from home and virtual assisting. Before long, she'd landed her first clients and booked enough work not to have to go back to her old job when her leave was up. Eventually she started subcontracting out some of the work, which was her first taste of passive income. As some of her clients were doing really well selling online courses, Abbey tried to enter that world as well. Her first course launches were major flops. Then she did what all good entrepreneurs do when a first attempt doesn’t go as planned. She looked at what went wrong, made the necessary changes, and tried again. She pre-sold her next course idea to the tune of $8000 from a 1000-person list. Her second launch generated $40k in sales, and 6 months later her next launch generated $160k in sales. Tune in to how Abbey walked The Side Hustle Path, her actionable hacks and strategies along the way, and how she built and sold her online course even without a huge audience starting out.

FoodTruckEmpire.com generates $60k a year on the side from Brett Lindenberg's marketing consulting job. Why'd he start a blog about the food truck industry? “I started the blog at a time in my life when I was looking at just a whole bunch of different business ideas,” Brett said. Originally, Brett wanted to start his own food truck. While researching how to start a food truck business he discovered there wasn’t enough quality information online. So, he did what all good entrepreneurs do – capitalized on this gap in the market and started his own blog. Note: Click here to download Brett’s top tips for starting and monetizing a part-time blog from this episode. Brett creates the bulk of his content interviewing food truck owners and influencers in the industry. He’s grown his blog to $60k a year in just 4 years through building an academy course, securing paid advertising, running AdSense, and selling ebooks. And spoiler alert: he never ended up starting that food truck! Tune in to hear Brett's content strategy, the different ways he monetizes his business, and how you can apply these methods to your own blog.

In his first 3 months, he'd booked more than $4000 worth of work. “I’ve never been very good at working with people, so I wanted something that was flexible,” James said. Sound familiar? These are the words of someone who was not happy being a shoe salesman and wanted out. James was looking for that location independent lifestyle, and when he was approached to ghostwrite a book for $300 he knew what he wanted to do from that point on. Fast-forward a couple of years and James now charges $300 per 1000 words for his freelance writing, and most of his work is at least 2500 words ($750). Note: Click here to download James’ top tips for becoming a freelancer writer from this episode. He’s also started up a cool business at FreelanceWritersSchool.com teaching others how to follow in his footsteps. Tune in to hear how James landed his first clients, his strategies for growing a portfolio, and some of his favorite hacks to overcome writer's block.

Corey Jeffreys turned an $800 investment into $3k in the first year and has been growing his business and adding more automated processes each year. His entrepreneurial adventure began by exploring the world of real estate investing, when he happened upon a slightly different rental business model: inflatable bounce houses. Note: Click here to download Corey’s top tips for starting and growing a passive rental business from this episode. Corey started out renting a bounce house to his aunt as his first customer and doing all the labor himself, to where he is now with a virtual assistant from Upwork taking bookings and a delivery guy from Craigslist handling the delivery. This is a very different side hustle from the online businesses we see more often, but Corey managed it with a small up-front investment and it set the cogs turning with possibilities of other industries this can be applied to. Tune in to hear how Corey found his first customers, grew his business through word-of-mouth and online marketing channels, and hired help to automate his business processes and remove himself from the day-to-day operations.

Note: Click here to download Matt’s top SEO tips for writing and ranking epic content from this episode. “Go big or go home, that’s kinda my whole philosophy with SEO,” Matt said. And his results speak for themselves. It’s been more than 200 episodes since we last heard from Matt Giovanisci. Back then, Matt was explaining how he was growing his authority site SwimUniversity.com with epic content and strong SEO. Since then he’s started 3 more authority sites and has fine-tuned his SEO practices for even bigger and quicker results. His latest site BrewCabin.com is just a few months old and Matt is already ranking well for high traffic “money” keywords – without building backlinks or promoting this content. How is he doing this? It’s not through longtail keywords. Quite the opposite, Matt goes after those high traffic keywords and outranks his competitors by producing epic content that people want to read. Tune in to hear Matt explain how he does his keyword research, how he formats his content to ensure strong on-page SEO, and why he’s seeing such rapid growth across all of his sites. Note: This is "round 2" of SEO for Bloggers. Round 1 was this conversation with Joseph Hogue last year.)

A $425k exit on a 2.5 year old business!? Recently a friend of mine posted about how he sold his 2.5-year-old Amazon FBA business for over $400k, which I thought was incredible. The twist was it turned out the buyer was a familiar face as well. Spencer Haws of NichePursuits.com was the seller, and Ace Chapman of AceChapman.com was the buyer. They are both previous guests of the show. Spencer was on episodes 18 and 70 of The Side Hustle Show talking about niche sites and software, and Ace was a guest on episode 182, talking about investing in digital real estate. Note: Click here to download Ace and Spencer’s top tips for building and selling an FBA business from this episode. Why did Spencer decide to get into the Amazon FBA business? “I had an idea for a product I used every day, couldn’t find exactly what I wanted on Amazon. So, I decided to find a manufacturer that can make a variation of what I like,” Spencer said. Why was this business an attractive deal for Ace and his investors? “The thing that I liked about the deal was the different sources of income,” Ace said. I decided to invite them both on the Side Hustle Show to give you both sides of the deal. You’ll hear how Spencer built up the business so quickly, why he decided to sell up, and how Ace found himself on the other end of the deal. Tune in to hear how Spencer built an FBA business from $0-400k in less than 3 years with no prior experience in this private label space, and how Ace helps his clients raise the funds to buy online businesses.

Paul Brodie is a former special needs teacher turned 11-time Amazon bestselling author. What started as a side hustle writing about his own weight loss journey turned into a string of bestselling titles on Amazon, $3000 paid speaking gigs, 1-on-1 self-publishing coaching, and ultimately the group coaching program I invited Paul on the show to share more about. Why go down the group coaching route? After working with other authors on a 1-to-1 basis and seeing them achieve similar success self-publishing their books on Amazon, Paul had "an epiphany.” By developing a group coaching program there was no limit to the number of authors he could work with. Note: Click here to download Paul’s top tips for setting up and selling a group coaching program from this episode. Paul dove right in with a live webinar to test his idea for a group coaching program without a huge audience or list of his own. With 5 students signing up on the spot at $1.5k each, he started work on the content and drip-feeding modules out on a weekly basis. Tune in to hear how Paul used the momentum from self-publishing books on Amazon to open up several other business opportunities before landing on the group coaching program. He covers how he set the price for his program, the methods and tools he uses to automate accepting new students, delivering the weekly modules, and where he goes from here.

It's such an elegantly simple -- yet powerful -- way of looking at what really matters in your business. Perry Marshall's "Tactical Triangle" identifies the 3 primary levers in any business as: Traffic Conversion Economics And even more powerful, there's an 80/20 Pareto Principle inside each of those. Start tweaking a few of the most important variables and you start to see some serious impact on your bottom line. (image credit) Perry is the author of one of my all-time favorite books, 80/20 Sales and Marketing. (You can get it on Amazon, but you might want to get it at PerryMarshall.com for just "a penny plus shipping" -- which will get you a front row seat to some of the best copywriting and upsell sequences in the biz.) Over the last 15+ years, Perry has built a business as a copywriter, an author, and a sought-after trainer and consultant. In this episode we dive into the Tactical Triangle, looking for areas to improve traffic, conversions, and economics to double your business in the next 30 days. Note: Click here to download Perry’s top tips from this episode. Tune in to hear Perry’s Star Principle, how to position your business to be #1, how to run an 80/20 survey to find out what your customers really want, and why you might consider adding a Power Guarantee to your business.

Coby Cagle | John 11 | March 18, 2018 Lent 2018 - Heal Us - "Waiting For Healing" Pastor Coby Cagle explores John 11; Mary & Martha wait for their brother to be healed by Jesus. NOTE: Click here to view the video of Soong-Chan Rah discussing the importance of lament. Learn more about Ecclesia Clear Lake Sign up for our eBlast newsletter

John made $1614 before 11am the day we recorded this episode. His business model? Buying industrial byproducts, the kind of stuff that’s used for shipping like pallets, cardboard boxes, crates, and so on, and selling them on for a profit. John Wilker started out buying or being given pallets free by businesses that had no need for them and selling them to pallet yards. Realizing the pallet yards were selling them on for a profit to businesses that did have a need for them, John saw an opportunity. “Bottom line is I’m a middleman,” John said. Note: Click here to download John’s top tips from this episode. John hit the pavement and started knocking on the doors of industrial businesses, large warehouses, distributors, and scrap yards. He asked if they had pallets and other shipping byproducts they didn’t need, what they were currently doing with these items, if they needed any items, and explained how he could help. Wanting to operate without storage space and employees John has found the perfect balance between supply and demand. He spends his mornings picking up items from one business and selling them on to another just a few miles away. “It’s quite simple…but has to be set up in the correct manner for it to work,” John said. It’s certainly one of the more interesting side hustles, and it sets the cogs turning to think of other niches that can fit this model. Tune in to hear how John found his first suppliers and buyers, how he sets his prices, and how he transports this stuff without having to store it.

Coby Cagle | John 10 | March 11, 2018 Lent 2018 - Heal Us - "Heal Our Ears" Pastor Coby Cagle explores John Chapter 10, as Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd. NOTE: Click here to view the YouTube video mentioned by Coby near the end of the episode. Learn more about Ecclesia Clear Lake Sign up for our eBlast newsletter

Getting paid to turn away work? Being in the position to turn away work as a freelancer or consultant is an envious place to be in, but being in the position to turn away that work AND get paid for it? Even better! John Doherty had spent years working in the digital marketing space, both as an employee and a freelancer. As his SEO consulting business crew, he reached the capacity of how much he wanted to work, and started essentially selling leads to friends and colleagues he trusted. That little side side hustle is now John's full-time focus, and today GetCredo.com is generating $500-600k worth of deals for its partner digital marketing agencies. As the connector and facilitator of those deals, John takes a commission. It's affiliate marketing, just with a bit of a twist from the kind we've covered before. Note: Click here to download John’s top tips for getting paid to play matchmaker from this episode. “I purposely set out to build a brand that is outside of just me,” John said. “I’m really trying to make this a high-touch service to really help businesses connect with the right agencies for their needs.” Tune in to hear how John earned his first finder's fee, how he's built up both sides of the Credo marketplace, and how he's priced his service in this high-touch affiliate marketing model.

How much will you save from the new tax law? It turns out that while there are some great "gives" from Uncle Sam for entrepreneurs, there are several potentially costly "takes" as well. Death and taxes, right? To help talk through how some of the most important tax law changes will impact your bottom line, I invited Josh Bauerle from CPAonFire.com back on the show. You might remember Josh from episode 208 where he answered tax questions from the Side Hustle Nation community. This time, Josh talks through the new benefits for pass-through entities, changes in C-Corp taxes, the new standard deduction amounts, changes to child tax credits, and more. Note: Click here to download Josh’s breakdown of how the new tax law impacts your personal bottom line. Tune in to hear Josh talk through the most important tax changes and how they affect you as a small business owner or side hustle entrepreneur.

How would you like to add thousands of dollars a month to your bottom line, on autopilot? Sounds pretty good, right? Greg Hickman of System.ly has achieved this for his own 6-figure a month business and does the same for his clients using marketing automation and effective sales funnels. If you're wondering what marketing automation is, in Greg’s own words it's, “How to use technology to enable your sales and marketing and fulfillment strategy.” Greg is a master in the art of offering compelling lead magnets to attract potential customers, setting up onboarding sequences and follow-up emails to keep them interested, and converting them into paying customers. Note: Click here to download Greg’s top tips for creating marketing automation processes and sales funnels from this episode. The best part is that it doesn’t need to be complicated as his own simple 4-step formula from Facebook ad to paying customer proves. Plus, when your marketing automation sequence is set up it runs itself bringing in new clients all year round. Tune in to hear the types of lead magnets and sales strategies Greg sees working today, the questions you have to ask yourself before writing any email sequence, and how he communicates with prospects on an ongoing basis.

Women pay up to $2000 a month to hang out with Natalie Eckdahl for a few hours. The mother of 3 has turned her BizChix podcast (which started as a side hustle) into a thriving business based largely on paid mastermind groups. She curates groups of high-performing female entrepreneurs – and gets paid handsomely to do it. Is this a revenue stream you could add to your business? Note: Click here to download Natalie’s top tips for creating and selling a mastermind group program from this episode. If you’re in a consulting, freelancing, or coaching role and trying to figure out what the next step is to scale up your business, a group mastermind program could be the answer. In fact, a paid mastermind was the first thing I sold on Side Hustle Nation, but I put the program on hold after our son was born. All of a sudden that extra hour or two in the evening became a lot harder to part with! I wanted to pick her brain on how she set everything up and sold it to her audience. “What I’m trying to create is an amazing brainstorming opportunity for the women that join the group,” Natalie said. Today she’s running five separate premium-priced masterminds for 5- and 6-figure entrepreneurs, with prices ranging from $600 to $2000 a month. But it almost didn’t happen. She was a few weeks away from putting BizChix on pause, when a fateful few customers sparked a major turning point. Tune in to hear how Natalie sets up her groups for success, structures the meetings, and 20x’d her rates in 3 years.

Could a part-time blog really bring in that kind of cash? Rosemarie swears she only works 20 hours a week! Yes, The Busy Budgeter is back for her 3rd round on The Side Hustle Show, and it's a good one. If you missed the first two: In episode 142, Rosemarie Groner's blog was about a year old and earning $5k a month. She shared a step-by-step system for generating massive traffic from Pinterest, which I immediately implemented myself. A year later, in episode 199, she was earning $20-25k a month, and shared her "date your list" and "core affiliate strategy." A few months after that recording, she started posting consistent $100k months from her blog, so of course I had to invite her back to hear what changed. Note: Click here to download Rosemarie’s top tips for improving your blogging ROI. If you guessed creating her own products and driving paid traffic, you'd be the big winner. “I eliminated anything that wasn’t important for my growth,” Rosemarie said. Tune in to hear how Rosemarie started selling her own products, the sales funnels tactics and tools she uses to turn subscribers into customers, and her tips to keep improving your ROI so you spend less time working while increasing your revenue.

Brian Winch calls it “America’s Simplest Business.” What started as a side hustle way back in 1981 has now grown into a $650k a year operation. So what does Brian do? His company picks up litter from parking lots. Sadly, it's still an essential service (boo litterbugs!), but has very low startup costs and Brian says you can earn $30-$50 an hour doing this on the side. Note: Click here to download Brian’s top tips for starting and scaling a service business from this episode. What prompted Brian to pick up the phone and ask property management companies if he could handle their litter picking contracts? “I decided I liked my job but I couldn’t see myself doing this for the rest of my life and I wanted more,” Brian said. In just a few months he was earning more part-time in this side hustle than he was at his full-time job. It's freelancing -- brick-and-mortar style. Tune in to hear how Brian landed his first clients, how he priced his service, and how he scaled the business to remove himself from the day-to-day trash pickup. With the decent pay, hours that fit around most day jobs, minimal start-up costs, and no prior experience necessary, it’s a side hustle success story that's worth checking out.

With a user base of 800 million people, there are enough potential customers for everyone on Instagram, regardless of your type of business. Instagram is the first app I check in the morning, but I don't really use it for business. To help school me on this massive social media channel, I invited Allie McAdam on the show. Allie is an Instagram strategist and the host of the Passion in Business podcast, which is primarily an Instagram marketing podcast. Allie started off on the platform as many of us do, using it for personal pictures and keeping in touch with family and friends. It wasn't until she started working for an MLM company and seeing some of the top earners leveraging Instagram for sales that she saw the potential for Instagram-specific marketing. Allie started to reverse engineer what they were doing. She went from 300 followers to 3k in just six weeks, now has more than 10k followers, and teaches others how to do the same. Note: Click here to download Allie’s top Instagram marketing tips from this episode. The first question everyone asks is, “Is there a market for my business on Instagram?” “More often than not your audience is there. What matters is how you’re going to market to them,” Allie said. Tune in to hear Allie explain how to find and market to your audience on Instagram, her top tips to increase your followers, and why Instagram might be the social media platform to take your business to the next level.

"I teach women how to get dressed in the morning." That's how Kelly Snyder from AdoreYourWardrobe.com introduced herself to me at FinCon. (The more "official" tagline is that Adore Your Wardrobe teaches women how to confidently dress their unique bodies through the principles found in math and science.) There's a niche for everything, right! It’s a really cool business idea that sits firmly outside of the usual internet marketing space and has helped thousands of women be less frustrated and a lot happier with their wardrobe. Kelly has used an interesting strategy of challenge marketing to grow her business to multiple 6-figures in under two years. Note: Click here to download Kelly’s top challenge marketing tips from this episode. But the 14 Day from Frustration to Functional Closet Challenge is just one piece of the puzzle, or one piece of the "customer success path," as she put it. As the challenge wraps up, she invites participants to join her flagship course, and she's added a couple more upsells beyond that as well in response to customer feedback. So how about results? Each time she runs a challenge she adds another $100k in revenue to her business! There are some interesting and unusual techniques to her challenge marketing strategies, and definitely some scope to apply these techniques to your own business if you sell courses or any other service. Tune in to hear how Kelly structures her challenges, how she gets people in the door, and how she converts free participants into paying customers.

It's no secret that Amazon FBA is one of the hottest side hustles going right now, and it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. FBA is Fulfillment by Amazon, the program that allows you to list your own products for sale on Amazon, tap into their giant audience of customers, and have them handle all the shipping when orders come in. The trick is figuring out which which products to sell, and that's where Greg Mercer comes in. Note: Click here to download Greg’s top Amazon FBA private label tips for 2018 and beyond. Greg has launched over 100 successful products on Amazon, including a few public examples like bamboo marshmallow sticks and hooded baby towels he shared on the JungleScout.com blog. Just those two products alone are earning $12k a month in profit, and he’s formed some cool partnerships with Doctors without Borders and Pencils of Promise to put the proceeds to good use. Now, you might remember Greg from an episode we did a couple years ago, How to Find Your First Amazon FBA Private Label Product. At that time, we talked about private label research and strategies for starting an FBA business. Since the landscape has changed a bit since then, I invited Greg back on the show to dive into how he's picking products today. The 3 strategies we cover are: Big demand / bad reviews. Big sales / poor marketing. New markets / immature listings. Greg also breaks down the criteria he likes to see in new private label products, how Amazon ranks products in their internal algorithm, and how he successfully launches his new products quickly.

Is your website guilty of these common sins? How secure is your site, really? WordPress is like the new toy you unwrap on Christmas morning -- you know it's going to be awesome, but there's some assembly required. To break down some of the most common website mistakes, I invited my friend Anthony Tran on the show. Anthony runs MarketingAccessPass.com, a web design and development agency, as well as AccessWP.com, a WordPress support company offering unlimited support for a low monthly subscription. (Get $20 off your first month of Access WP through my affiliate link) With years of experience building websites for himself and for clients, he definitely knows his stuff. Note: Click here to download Anthony’s top tips for optimizing your WordPress site. In this episode, we walk through how you can tighten up the security of your site, speed up your load times, and some quick changes that’ll improve your SEO and user experience. Whether you’re new to WordPress or have been blogging for years, I think you’ll take something away from this episode as Anthony shares his tips, tools, and best practices from years of working online for himself and for clients. Note: If you don't have a website up and running yet, my free video series will show you how to get online quickly and affordably.

I felt gross. I was tired from chasing a toddler around, out of shape, and fighting a series of frustrating injuries. And I realized it was hurting my output at work. Building a business takes real energy and real brainpower, and I wasn't performing optimally because my body wasn't performing optimally. I knew I had to do something about it. A friend introduced me to Rob Dionne, a certified personal trainer who works with clients online and in person. He also co-hosts the Open Sky Fitness podcast with his wife Devon and runs the really active Open Sky Fitness Facebook group. Since we started working together, I've lost 5 pounds, gained strength, and generally feel more energized during the day. On the surface, investing 20 minutes in a workout seems like going backward; that's 20 minutes I should be working! But I've found it pays dividends in better energy the rest of the day and better sleep at night. Note: Click here to download Rob’s top tips for fitness and nutrition for busy hustlers from this episode. During our coaching calls, I'd often find myself saying, "This is really good stuff, we should be recording this." And that's how this episode came to be. Tune in to hear the most important health and fitness factors, how they can fit into any schedule, and Rob's analysis of one Side Hustle Show listener's daily routine.

A lot has changed in Ryan's "buy low, sell high" business built on Amazon's FBA program. This week’s episode is a “where are they now?” show as I catch up with Ryan Grant from OnlineSellingExperiment.com. Ryan first appeared on the show back in 2014 on episode 61. Back then he had just quit his $50k a year job to sell online full-time using retail arbitrage. (He’d started out flipping textbooks in college and then got into Amazon FBA retail arbitrage; buying low from stores locally and re-selling on Amazon.) Fast forward 3 years and Ryan’s business has grown at an incredible pace. Note: Click here to download Ryan’s top tips for starting and scaling a retail arbitrage business from this episode. He’s had some pretty impressive media exposure off the back of a Reddit AMA and is on track to sell more than $4 million worth of stuff in 2017. What were the driving forces behind this accelerated growth? “I wanted to make it a true business,” Ryan said. He now has a team of 11 people working for him, has put processes in place to find more items in retail stores, has started buying at wholesale, and can now use his own time more efficiently to work on growing his business and finding expansion opportunities. Ryan’s success is proof that retail arbitrage is still a viable side hustle. In this episode he explains what he’s learned over the last 3 years, and how the retail arbitrage landscape has changed for new sellers. Tune in to hear Ryan explain how he grew his business into a multi-million-dollar operation, how he grew his team and developed processes to scale up, and what he’s focusing on in 2018.

This week’s show is a roundtable episode on the topic of YouTube, and specifically how 3 different channel hosts have gone about growing their presence and profits on the YouTube platform. My esteemed panelists are: Jon Shanahan from The Kavalier, a men’s style / men’s fashion channel. Pete Sveen from DIY Projects with Pete and DIYPete.com, a home improvement channel and website. Matt Tran from Engineered Truth and EngineeredTruth.com, a career advice channel. They explain how and why they started using the free YouTube platform to grow significant followings and income streams, and share some actionable advice on how you can do the same. Note: Click here to download the panel’s top tips for building an audience and generating revenue on YouTube from this episode. They each raise some interesting points as they have very different approaches to how they publish content and monetize their channels, proving there are many ways to turn a YouTube channel into a side hustle or a full-time business. Jon uses what he calls a “spray and pray" strategy for content creation. Pete’s DIY videos are edited down from 3-5 hours of footage to just 8-12 minutes and he releases one a month, while Matt publishes once a week (usually interviews) to, “try to get the weekend crowd.” On the monetization side, Jon has opted to go ad-free for a better viewer experience and earns $4-5k per month from affiliate income part-time. Pete has taken a different approach making around $1400 a month from YouTube ads, but has several other income streams including courses, affiliate offers, sponsorship deals, website ad revenue, and direct donations. Matt makes $10k a month funneling his subscribers to his money-making videos selling a digital marketing course, and $3k a month from YouTube ad revenue. With more than 450k subscribers between them, this episode is packed with actionable tips to grow and monetize a YouTube channel that has worked for Jon, Pete, and Matt. Listen in for actionable advice on how to grow and monetize your own YouTube channel.

It's like owning a parking lot, Jefferson Lilly explained. And you can earn 20% cash on cash returns too. That got my attention, though those returns are coming from a surprising real estate niche: mobile home parks. Jefferson Lilly is a mobile home park investment expert, educator, and industry consultant who has been featured in the New York Times, Bloomberg Magazine, and on the ‘Real Money’ television show. Through his company Park Street Partners, they currently own about $50 million worth of mobile home parks coast-to-coast. Note: Click here to download Jefferson’s top tips for investing in mobile home parks from this episode. Jefferson is also the host of the Mobile Home Investors podcast, so it’s fair to say he knows this niche inside and out. The mobile home park niche doesn’t fit the typical real estate guidelines. It’s a shrinking market and offers some interesting and unique investment opportunities if you know where to look. In addition to the shrinking supply, the tenant turnover is lower than other real estate niches, and most tenants own their own homes -- meaning lower maintenance costs. Tune in to hear how Jefferson went from purchasing his first park after receiving 58 "no's" from banks when trying to raise the capital, to forming Park Street Partners and boasting a rapidly growing portfolio with more $50 million invested in mobile home parks.

You might know Michelle Schroeder-Gardner from her super-popular blog MakingSenseofCents.com where she gets hundreds of thousands of readers and makes 6-figures a month. Around $50k of that monthly revenue (or more) comes from affiliate marketing. Note: Click here to download Michelle’s top tips for maximizing affiliate revenue from this episode. Michelle’s online journey started in the summer of 2011 when she decided to start blogging about paying off her student debts, “I didn’t know what blogs were at the time… I literally didn’t know that you could make money with a blog,” she said looking back. It was when she made her first $100 six months later with a sponsored post that she knew she wanted to build an online business. “It became super addicting,” Michelle said. Fast-forward just two years and Michelle had become a full-time blogger making money through affiliate marketing sponsored posts, working as a freelance staff writer and selling display advertising. She started to focus on affiliate marketing, and with her most profitable post making more than $400k to-date it's fair to say she's nailed the right way to do affiliate marketing. The secret to her success? Listening to her audience and providing relevant content that solves a pain point. Sounds simple, right? Tune in to hear Michelle explain how she finds the right affiliate products to promote to her audience, as well as her tips to maximize conversions, increase your social media following, diversify your traffic sources, and much more. Don't have a blog yet? My free video course will help you get started!

By day, Bryan Orr helps runs an air conditioning company in Central Florida, and by night he’s a father of 9 -- yet somehow he's found the time to build his HVAC School podcast into a 5-figure a month business in less than a year. And it might sounds like an overnight success, but Bryan's actually been side hustling for quite a while, mostly in the podcasting and freelance audio production space. Tasked with training technicians at his day job, he had the idea to put it into an on-demand audio format, and that's where he found his side hustle sweet spot. Note: Click here to download Bryan’s top tips for growing a niche side hustle from this episode. It was on a whim he decided to publish the content online and make it available to a wider audience. “In the process it just exploded, I never thought there would be an audience like the audience that I found,” Bryan said. With 1000 downloads in the first 48 hours and synergy with his day job, Bryan started allocating more time to his show. As his audience grew he started negotiating sponsorship deals with large companies in the HVAC niche. Less than a year into this new side hustle, he's built an email list of over 7500 subscribers, generated more than 500,000 podcast downloads, and is earning $11k a month in sponsorship revenue. Tune in to hear how Bryan promoted his show to gain that initial traction, how he worked with influencers in his niche for extra exposure, and how he secured sponsors to monetize his show.

“You have a skill, but you’re not using it correctly." That the tough love advice Vincent Pugliese's father gave him. Vincent was working what he thought was his dream job as a photojournalist. He'd just won the most prestigious award in his industry (International Sports Photographer of the Year), and he and his wife Elizabeth had a baby on the way. Yet the newspaper job didn't pay well. With the impending arrival of their son, Vincent took a hard look at his financial picture: he was in his mid-30s, 6-figures in debt, and earning $15 an hour. Not great. Something had to change, and something did. Four years later, the family was debt free and self-employed, thanks to the success of their freelance photography side hustle. Note: Click here to download Vincent’s top tips for creating freedom through freelancing. I met Vincent at Podcast Movement and invited him on the show to share his inspiring and relate-able story. With a growing trend toward freelance workers, his transition is one many people will need to make over the next few years. With his newfound time freedom, Vincent has kept busy with a number of new projects including his upcoming book Freelance to Freedom, and an online course teaching parents how to take better sports pictures of their kids. (Even though Vincent had no "audience" of his own to sell to, the course did over $30k on launch day, giving us the hook for this episode.) Tune in to hear how he and his wife got it done and how you can apply the same strategies to the skills on your own resume.

When Jesus has done great things for us, we can't help but worship Him and share with everyone what He has done. NOTE: Click here for the video we played before recording began. Support the show (http://faithassemblyarlington.com/giving)

Would you trade $1000 for $2000? How about $10,000 for $18,000? If you're anything like me, I'll make those trades all day long! Well, Deacon Hayes is doing exactly that every month through his blog, Facebook ads, and affiliate marketing. Note: Click here to download Deacon’s top tips for running profitable Facebook ads from this episode. Although he'd been blogging for years, his traffic and revenue had kind of stagnated. Inspired by the success of The Penny Hoarder using a similar strategy in a similar niche, Deacon decided to jump in and throw $1000 toward his new Facebook Ads experiment. Within a month he'd effectively doubled his investment. Ten months later he's built a beautiful machine that combines compelling helpful content, affiliate relationships, and the massive reach of Facebook. In this episode, you'll hear the type of content Deacon has found most profitable to promote, the types of ads he runs, and how he's able to get his costs per click down to around $0.05

Dustin Lien from StrategicSauce.com reached out to me with an interesting pitch for an episode. Dustin had experienced a side hustle failure and wanted to know if the Side Hustle audience would be interested in hearing his story. I threw the idea out to the Side Hustle Facebook Group and received an overwhelming amount of feedback saying, “Yes,” they wanted to hear the “other side” of a side hustle when it fails. In this episode Dustin lifts the lid on a business he invested a large chunk of time and money into, only to pull the plug on it a year and a half later. Note: Click here to download Dustin’s top tips for launching a physical product and the lessons he learned from his failure in this episode. He designed a great product that solved a pain point for people in the fitness community. So, what went wrong? Tune in to hear exactly what did and didn’t work for Dustin, and why he decided to throw in the towel on this project. Dustin shares what he would do differently if he had to start over, as well as what he's working on today. He's loaded with valuable insight for anyone starting a new venture.

Note: Click here to access my bonus interview with Lynn Singer about the process she went through to create her multi-media project, Breaking Into Brilliance. Hell Yes Lifers, today my guest is Lynn Singer. Lynn is an actress, renowned voiceover professional and voice coach, and also the author of a new one-of-a-kind multimedia project called Breaking Into Brilliance: An Awakening of Creative Consciousness. Lynn describes Breaking Into Brilliance as an interactive, animated, emotional, online experience masquerading as a book.… Read more

The holy grail of side hustle business models is software, right? Built it once and sell it over and over again for almost zero incremental cost! Having built the online graphic design tool Snappa to $33k in monthly recurring revenue in 2 years, Christopher Gimmer rounds out our "recurring revenue" theme for the month. The software as a service aims to help bloggers and content creators make perfectly sized social media graphics or blog images easily and professionally. “Create online graphics in a snap,” the tagline says. The cool do-it-yourself tool is sold on a freemium or monthly/annual subscription model. Note: Click here to download Christopher’s top tips for bootstrapping and scaling a recurring revenue business model from this episode. “I just wanted to know whether people were having the same issues I was having,” Christopher said, talking about the hassle he experienced creating quick and professional looking social media and blog graphics. This is the fourth episode in this series of recurring revenue shows. If you’ve missed any of the previous episodes, be sure to check out: How a full-time cop built a subscription box service to $15k a month. How a massage therapist built a $15k a month business with short-term rentals. How a former alcoholic built a service business to $400k a month in under 3 years. In this episode, Christopher shares how he validated his idea, successfully launched his new tool just months later and generated $2-3k in the first week, and grew the business to where it is today.

Note: Click here to access my bonus interview with Nathan and Matthew about the key factors to keep in mind when launching a Kickstarter campaign.Today my guests on the Hell Yes Life podcast are Nathan Anderson and Matthew Roberts. Nathan and Matthew are the founders of PEAR cards, and PEAR stands for Positive Engagement and Response. Nathan and Matthew created PEAR cards, a card-based activity for families, friends, coworkers, classrooms, or any social situation to help create positive communication.… Read more

Three years ago Design Pickle didn't exist. It wasn't even an idea in founder Russ Perry's head yet. That's why it seems crazy to me that today the unlimited graphic design service is doing $400k in monthly recurring revenue! Back in 2014 Russ was running a creative agency, but he started to hate everything about it. “I felt like I was in a prison of my own creation,” he said. By January 2015, he'd shut down his agency and started working as a freelancer. Not wanting to build a similar prison again, he sought out a different business model -- one with a simpler service offering that was designed to scale. From taking on a friend as his first client to now completing more than 800 design jobs a day, it’s been an incredibly quick ascension and a great example of how to scale a service business. Note: Click here to download Russ’ top tips for scaling a service business from this episode. Tune in to hear how Russ grew his business from zero to $410k+ in monthly recurring revenue in less than 3 years. We cover his marketing strategies, his hiring best practices, and what Design Pickle does to keep customers coming back month after month.

Zeona McIntyre is earning $12-18k a month through her portfolio of vacation rental properties and her "co-hosting" service for other property owners. All this has afforded Zeona financial independence at a very young age, as she built her operation largely by piggybacking on the growing popularity of Airbnb (get $40 off your first trip!). Note: Click here to download Zeona’s top Airbnb tips from this episode. She first became aware of Airbnb and the potential to earn some extra revenue back in 2011. She was in massage school at the time, but a friend of hers in New York subletted his apartment on Airbnb to the tune of $50k for the year -- all while traveling full-time. “I couldn’t ignore it from then; I started right away,” Zeona said. She started by subletting a room in her apartment, then her whole apartment, and now owns five rental properties and manages or "co-hosts" another 15-20 properties on the behalf of her clients. With a small team, some smart decisions, and some online tools, Zeona now manages her business from her home in Boulder, Colorado relatively hands-off. This is the second episode in our recurring revenue series this month. If you missed last week, be sure to check out how a full-time cop built a subscription box service to $15k a month. This week, tune in to hear how Zeona chooses vacation rental properties, how she calculates the potential ROI, and how you can get started in this location independent side hustle today with just a spare room in your home.

Over the last decade, Cathy Heller has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from her music and helping other musicians license their songs. In fact, you've probably heard some of her music without realizing it. Songs of hers have been featured in ads for huge brands, like McDonald’s, Walmart, Kellogg’s, as well as many popular TV shows. Note: Click here to download Cathy’s top tips for reverse engineering your dream job. Today, the mother of 3 balances family, her art, her agency, her online course, and her new Don't Keep Your Day Job podcast, where she interviews other entrepreneurs, artists, and influencers. Cathy's story is an inspiring one, and it follows a familiar trajectory: freelancer to agency to product. When she moved to LA to be a rockstar, she didn't know where it would lead. That didn't pan out, but she landed at something perhaps even more fulfilling. She called it reverse engineering her dream job, and thinks other people can do the same. Tune in to hear how Cathy walked The Hustler's Path from freelancer to agency to product, and how you can apply her ideas and tactics to find your dream job.

Teresa Greenway is a mother of 10 who went from working part-time in a bakery to making $5k a month doing what she loves – baking and teaching others how to bake. More specifically, she teaches how to bake perfect sourdough bread. Teresa has built a really cool business around this niche at NorthwestSourdough.com. In the past couple of years, her main revenue driver has been Udemy courses, to the tune of several thousand dollars a month. The main driving force behind this? It turns out Teresa's secret weapon is a huge Facebook group of engaged followers, fans, and fellow bakers. With almost 35,000 members, it's one of the largest baking groups on Facebook, and Teresa said it all started “by accident” back in 2013. Note: Click here to download Teresa’s tips for growing a Facebook community and selling Udemy courses from this episode. Since then her business and revenue have grown faster than a loaf of her sourdough bread. Teresa earned $1k in the month she released her first Udemy course in April 2015, and it was a life-changing moment. She went on to earn $20k in her first year, and now consistently brings in $4-5k a month. Teresa did all of this will little to no promotion or marketing. Tune in to hear how she grew her Facebook group so fast, why she decided to start selling courses on Udemy, and how she also uses YouTube and ebooks to drive traffic to her courses and group.

You can be a creator or a consumer, but it’s the creators that get paid. I’ve argued before that creativity is the most important skill for entrepreneurs because before you can sell anything, you have to create that value proposition. But what if you’re not creative? I believe we all have that innate creative spirit in us somewhere, it’s just a matter of flexing that creative muscle. In this episode, I talk with Carol "Stash" Stanley of StashSports.com, and David Fedewa who is an inventor mentor at InventRight.com. Note: Click here to download David and Stash’s top tips to help you unleash your creativity and what to do with your ideas from this episode. Stash holds six patents related to products in the baseball and softball world, as well as footwear safety. She’s worked on these products as a side hustle while working full-time at the University of Virginia. David Fedewa is a serial inventor who has taken the product licensing route as described by Stephen Key in episode 173 to earn passive income from his product ideas. Tune in to hear how they come with ideas, how to unleash the creativity in your own head, and what to do with those ideas once you have them.

As the author of more than 70 books, Steve "S.J." Scott is one of the most productive and disciplined people I know. His latest title, Habit Stacking, became a Wall Street Journal Bestseller and served as the inspiration for this episode. Note: Click here to download the detailed explanation of Steve’s Top 10 hustle habits from this episode. (Long-time listeners might remember Steve from WAY back in the archives; he was my guest in episode 9 where we discussed how to earn money as a side hustling author.) This time though we're diving into a few of the habits that allow Steve to continually drive his business forward, and lead a healthier and happier life. Plus, you'll learn why we think they're important and how you can apply them in your own life. The 10 habits we cover are: Tracking your time Reviewing your goals daily Writing down the tasks you got done Fixing your "broken windows" Wearing a step-tracking device Keeping a food diary Researching one side hustle Breaking down a big project into actionable steps Following an evening shutdown routine Practicing mindfulness As you can see, they're not all directly business-related, but most take 5 minutes or less and are designed to increase your productivity, reduce stress, prioritize your workload, and help you find a healthy work-life balance. Tune in to hear how Steve and I incorporate these habits into our daily routines (or plan to, in my case). As you'll see in the links section below, there are a lot of books, apps, and resources mentioned.

Noah Kagan is Chief Sumo and founder of Sumo.com and AppSumo.com. He blogs about his personal and business experiences at OkDork.com, and his new podcast is called Noah Kagan Presents. Noah has built up a number of successful businesses and is always toying with new ideas or looking for the next big business opportunity, so he was the perfect person to brainstorm with. Note: Click here to download Noah’s tips to help you brainstorm and validate business ideas. If you’re stuck at the idea generation phase or pulling the trigger on your ideas, this episode is going to give you food for thought. Noah is a master at this stuff and doesn't sugarcoat anything. And if you already have an idea you’re sitting on, he explains exactly how he validates his own ideas before moving forward and what steps you need to take. Don’t be afraid of failure either. “I’ve never actually met someone who has made money or grown successful businesses that hasn’t had things that didn’t work out,” Noah said. Tune in to hear how Noah comes up with interesting and unique business ideas, how he validates them, and how he splits his time between content creation and marketing.

As one of several side hustles, Ryan Dowd runs HomelessLibrary.com, a training program that teaches librarians how to confidently and compassionately deal with their homeless patrons. It’s something a little different from the business-to-consumer model we usually see with online course sales and comes with some advantages over the B2C market — namely potentially higher prices and the ability to perform direct outreach. Note: Click here to download Ryan’s tips how to sell and market a B2B online course. By day Ryan is the executive director for a homeless shelter in Illinois, but on the side he’s also an adjunct professor, a practicing attorney, and he’s writing a book — in addition to the 3-15 hours a week he spends on HomelessLibrary.com. (And he’s married with a couple kids, so it’s fair to say he’s a busy guy.) Ryan was working at the homeless shelter when a friend asked if he would speak at a local conference about homelessness to a group of librarian executive directors. His talk went so well he started receiving offers to deliver training in person at libraries. Not having the time to travel to different locations, Ryan recorded a 30-minute video, posted it on YouTube, and sent people the link. Now with over 13,000 views, his video has become a staple training tool for librarians across the country and there was a demand for more. Ryan capitalized on this by recording a longer, more in-depth training. He broke it up into modules and began selling it to libraries across the US. Tune in to hear how that first conference speaking gig Ryan did for a friend turned into a successful side hustle selling B2B online courses and started what he calls, “A crazy wild ride with a completely accidental start.”

“People don’t buy intellectually, they buy emotionally,” Jim Brown told me. By taking a unique approach, understanding your demographic, and identifying the pain points you can solve, you can attract clients and increase sales. Jim is a former professional wrestler, a Marine Corps vet, a sales coach, and is the founder and host of the SalesTuners podcast at SalesTuners.com. In this year’s survey results, a lot of Side Hustle Nation readers said they needed help growing their business and attracting new customers. This is exactly what Jim does with his clients, and he shares his tactics and processes in this episode. Note: Click here to download Jim’s tips to 10x your service business in under two years. As entrepreneurs and side hustlers, we are all the VP of sales for our own businesses. The only person driving a company forward in the early stages is the founder, and nothing happens until someone sells something to someone else. Tune in to hear how you can 10x your service business by setting a revenue goal, breaking down the numbers and planning out a step-by-step approach, and making outreach calls the way Jim does with his clients.

Ben Foley started writing about how to use mindfulness to reduce stress and anxiety at FullyRichLife.com a little over 6 months ago. Since then, his little side project has generated over 6000 email subscribers and $10,000 in revenue. His secret sauce? Tapping into the big audience of readers on Medium.com. Note: Click here to download Ben’s tips for getting your content in front of huge audiences and building your email list. Having overcome stress and anxiety issues himself, he knew this was a niche he could enter and help others. And, with a different approach to using mindfulness in the modern world to help reduce stress working for him, he knew he had a unique angle to blog about. Before starting his site in December last year Ben had never even written a blog post. However, after finding a passion for writing and encouraged by positive feedback, he “tripled down” on content and started getting huge exposure almost right away -- something new sites often struggle with. Related: My free video series on how to start a blog. Tune in to hear how you can use Medium to growth hack your new or existing site, and how Ben is turning those readers into subscribers and revenue.

Perrin Carrell is a senior contributing editor at AuthorityHacker and well-known within the internet marketing community for building niche/authority sites. He has built several successful sites from scratch, including one recent project that went from a valuation of $0 to $200,000 in just under 20 months. Note: Click here to download Perrin’s tips for starting an authority site and getting started in affiliate marketing. Perrin started learning about internet marketing and SEO while working a day job at a global communications consulting firm. Desperate to escape the day job and turn his side hustle into a full-time business he started building sites and learning from his failures along the way. He now has the blueprint nailed for building profitable sites with several different income streams. From planning the site structure, ordering content, carrying out keyword research, to link-building, Perrin shares exactly how he builds his sites in this episode.

Steve P. Young is a side hustler turned full-time entrepreneur. He has hosted more than 500 episodes of the AppMasters podcast, a podcast dedicated to helping app makers get more downloads and sales of their apps. Steve was working full-time when he decided to start his podcast interviewing app developers and putting out content for the app community. Note: Click here to download Steve's tips for turning a podcast into multiple income streams from this episode. Using lunch breaks, early morning, and late nights, Steve found the time to put out two episodes a week and start building up authority and an audience in the app space. Within four months he had his first consulting client, and within seven months he was handing in his notice at his day job as AppMasters became his full-time business. Tune in to find out how Steve built up several income streams around his podcast: The apps (how it all started) Consulting Podcast sponsorship Digital products and courses A private mastermind group A live in-person event You'll hear the hacks he used to grow his audience in a short time period, and how interviewing influential people in the app space helped double sales on his own apps.

Kamila Gornia is the “Blow Up, Scale Up” Marketing Strategist who helps entrepreneurs blow up and scale up their businesses to become true leaders online. And often that means helping them reach a broader audience on Facebook. Note: Click here to download Kamila’s top Facebook ad tips and strategies from this episode. If you’re a freelancer or blogger, Facebook Ads could be a way to grow your business faster. With the social network closing in on 2 billion active users, no matter what you're selling or where you're selling it, odds are your target customer is on Facebook. Whether you’re new to Facebook and setting up a business page from scratch, or you’ve run ads before, Kamila shares tips and advice to help you turn your ad campaigns into a positive ROI.

Don't you just love a good outsmarting the casino story? Bring me an Ocean’s Eleven, bring me a Bringing Down the House -- I’m all about it. Colin Jones is a professional card counter whose blackjack teams won almost $4 million, and he earned over $500k himself. Now a father of 6, Colin's playing days are mostly over, but he's turned his unique skill into a profitable online business at BlackjackApprenticeship.com. Note: Click here to download Colin’s top online business tips from this episode. Did you catch the Holy Rollers documentary about the Christian card counters? Yeah, it was about Colin and his team. When we met at a Side Hustle Nation meetup in Seattle over the holidays, Colin explained that card counting -- though glamorized by Hollywood -- is "a hard way to make easy money." He also pointed out that the math involved is elementary-school level, and done right, it really can be seen as an investment and not a gamble. Today, his Blackjack Apprenticeship site has more than 500 members and in this episode, you'll hear how he's grown this business, how he's priced his different offerings, and how he keeps customers sticking around for more.

Scott Voelker is the host of the super popular Amazing Seller podcast, where he’s recorded more than 300 episodes about the Amazon FBA business model. He's a family man and a serial hustler, having been involved with a number of businesses ranging from construction to photography to ecommerce. His latest project is the 1k FastTrack Challenge, where he takes a group of students through the paces of making their first $1000 selling online. Note: Click here to download Scott’s 5-steps to start selling and earning your first $500 on the side in the next 7 days. One of the biggest challenges people struggle to overcome is deciding on, or even finding a side hustle they can start and take those important first steps. In this episode of The Side Hustle Show, Scott takes you through the 5-steps he uses when guiding his students to earning their first $500 online in just 7 days. He also shares some powerful words of motivation and some success stories he’s been part of, helping you to see just how easy it really is when you follow these 5 simple steps. "You’re probably sitting on a few hundred, if not thousands of dollars in your possession right now that you’re not even aware of," Scott explained. Tune in to find out exactly what Scott is talking about, and how you can start your own challenge today to earn $500 in the next 7 days. No investment needed, no prior experience selling online, just the motivation and willingness to stick to a deadline. Sound good? Join the free SH Nation Facebook group and look for the #7daychallenge thread to post about your results.

Derek Murphy's book portfolio is bringing in $5k a month. He's is a world traveler, book cover design extraordinaire, and the author of a dozen different books, mainly in the young adult fantasy genre. A lot of the self-publishing content and interviews on the Side Hustle Show has been related to non-fiction books, and to me, it's a more straightforward process: help someone solve a problem. Fiction is a bit of a different animal, and something Derek covers in detail over on his site at CreativIndie.com. Derek started out editing books and designing book covers while completing his Masters and PhD in literature. Having an interest in reading fiction and wanting to get away from client work, Derek started writing fiction books. He explained there's a lot more demand for fiction than non-fiction, and because of that it can be easier to make more money. Note: Click here to download Derek’s top self-publishing tips from this episode. It’s not as competitive as you may think either. Although there are literally millions of fiction books available, when you cut through to the books that are being marketed and targeted to the right audience, Derek says it’s not that difficult. Tune in to hear how Derek starts by finding keywords and researching what the readers want based on what's already selling, then testing the market for demand before committing to a series of books. He also shares the methods he used to grow an email list of more than 32,000 as well as advice on how to launch a book with an email list of zero.

Jacques Hopkins is a former full-time engineer who turned his passion for playing piano from a side hustle into a full-time business at the end of 2015. With more time and energy to devote to Pianoin21Days.com, the business continued to reach new heights. It was after reading the entrepreneurial handbook that’s inspired a generation to start side hustles – The 4-Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferriss – that Jacques knew he wanted to start "something on the side that could make money." That was back in 2007, and after several failed ventures, each of which has played a part in getting him to where he is now, Jacques is crushing it with his YouTube videos, ebook sales, and online course. Note: Click here to download Jacques’s top online business tips from this episode. Tune in to hear how Jacques realized there was a market for teaching “regular people learn to play modern songs on the piano in as little time as possible.” You'll hear how he used YouTube to generate lots of free traffic and build his email list, how he doubled his conversions by picking up the phone and talking to potential customers, and how he now lives the lifestyle wants and spends his time promoting the business.

Chad Carson is a 30-something semi-retired real estate mogul, who together with his business partner, oversees a portfolio of 90+ rental units. In fact, he and his wife are in the middle of an exciting adventure — a year abroad in Ecuador with their two daughters. But of course he didn’t start there. Fresh off the football field at Clemson, Chad’s real estate career started more modestly by “bird dogging” and house hacking — two of the tactics he shares in this week’s show. Note: Click here to download Chad’s top real estate investing tips from this episode. You can learn more about Chad and his real estate business at CoachCarson.com, where he writes about using real estate investing to retire early and do what matters. In this episode, Chad walks me through 5 real estate side hustles you can start on the cheap. Tune in to hear: How to use house hacking to earn rental income and live for free How to take advantage of tax-free live-in flips How anyone can start master leasing How to become a leasing agent How to start “Bird-dogging” Chad proves that you that you don’t need a large down payment to get started in real estate. You can even learn “how to do one of the more important parts of the rental business on someone else’s dime” if you’re smart about it. This episode is packed with actionable advice to help get you started with a side hustle in the real estate market, as well as some long-term options to set you on the path to building long-term wealth.

Dan Meadors is one-half of TheWholesaleFormula.com. He and his partner Eric Lambert began selling on Amazon as a hobby with an original investment of only $600. They would work nights and weekends buying products on clearance at local retail stores and selling them on Amazon for profit. It took only a few months before they saw the potential to turn this hobby into a business and they both left their day jobs to sell on Amazon full-time. Since then they have been able to generate over $13,000,000 in total sales on Amazon. Note: Click here to download Dan’s top wholesaling selling tips from this episode. Most of Side Hustle Nation will be familiar with the Amazon FBA program, but Dan's strategy is a bit different from the retail arbitrage and private label strategies we've covered in the past. In Dan's case, he's buying inventory at wholesale prices from a brand or manufacturer, instead of trolling the clearance section at Walmart or having a product built specifically for him by a manufacturer. Then, like the other Amazon FBA business models, it's on him to list and sell it through Amazon. In this episode, Dan talks me through everything you need to know to get started with wholesaling on Amazon, including how to target potential products and brands to sell, and how to reach out to them in a helpful way.

Joseph Hogue is a Marine Corps veteran, a former investment analyst, an author, a blogger, a freelancer, and an all-around super smart dude. We met through FinCon and hit it off right away. Maybe because we have the same haircut?? He blogs at MyWorkFromHomeMoney.com (and several other sites) and his latest book is called Google SEO for Bloggers: Easy Search Engine Optimization and Website Marketing for Google Love. Joseph runs a number of blogs, and through smart keyword research, great content, and some techniques he uses to attract lots of high authority backlinks, Joseph has seen his traffic, and more importantly his revenue increase quickly in the last two years. Note: Click here to download Joseph’s top SEO tips and hacks to generate more organic traffic to your site. Search engine optimization (SEO) doesn’t need to be difficult, time-consuming, or expensive. Joseph uses a simple process to find keywords with “buyer intent”, optimizes his content with on-page SEO, and uses some innovative, but simple techniques to generate powerful backlinks that Google will love and in turn boost your posts in the search results. Tune in to hear Joseph’s SEO tips, techniques, and hacks. He shares examples of his own link building techniques, loads of useful tools to help you gain that competitive advantage over others in your niche, and ultimately ways you can increase your blog revenue.

Kendell Rizzo made over $100,000 in profit in 18 months part-time selling services, workbooks, and other downloadable products on Fiverr.  In addition to being a 6-figure Fiverr seller, Kendell is a crowdfunding expert, a world traveler, an ironman triathlete, and runs her blog at leadandlaunch.com. Note: Click here to download Kendell’s tips and strategies to maximize your Fiverr Earnings. It’s been more than 100 episodes since our last Fiverr episode where Mark (AnarchoFighter) talked me through how he was the first person to make a $10k sale on Fiverr. Fiverr is still going strong, and it’s a great example of a Buy Buttons platform – there's no bidding for work and no outside marketing necessary. This is what attracted Kendell to Fiverr after being frustrated with other freelance endeavors that sap time bidding for jobs or submitting resumes. Within a year and a half Kendell turned over more than $100k in profit, and went from the $5 gigs everyone starts out with to averaging between $500-$900 an order. And with digital products for sale, this was all possible while working part-time. Tune in to hear how she made her gigs stand out from the crowd in the competitive Fiverr marketplace, and why “over-delivering” is a fast-track to Fiverr success.

Nathan Chan is the founder of FoundrMag.com. The digital magazine started as a side hustle in 2013, and has since transformed into a multi-million dollar media company. Nathan is perhaps best-known for growing his business through Instagram, a platform where Foundr now has almost a million followers. But today I want to dive into a different angle of Nathan’s business, and that’s crowdfunding. Note: Click here to download Nathan’s tips and strategies for running a successful crowdfunding campaign. Time, money, and ideas are the big 3 challenges I hear from Side Hustle Nation over and over again, and this conversation attempts to address one possible answer to the money question. Nathan and his team are fresh off a $200,000 Kickstarter campaign for the first volume of Foundr books, a really high-end, beautifully designed coffee table book, which you can find at foundrmag.com/book. In this episode, Nathan shares why Kickstarter is such a powerful platform -- even if you don’t have a big built-in audience, and everything he did to make their campaign a hit. Stay tuned for his advice on why you might consider crowdfunding, how to make the most of your Kickstarter exposure, and some examples of other side hustler’s products that have taken off.

I’m excited to introduce you to a new Buy Buttons opportunity under the Amazon ecommerce umbrella called Merch by Amazon: it’s a print-on-demand service for t-shirts now (and perhaps other merchandise in the future). My wife and I have already made our first sales on this platform and it's become our latest side hustle obsession. To help me explore this business model, I invited Elaine Heney on the program. She’s an app entrepreneur, a former Amazon FBA seller (a biz she actually sold), and last year she sold over $128,000 worth of t-shirts through Merch by Amazon program, of which $53k was profit. You can follow along with Elaine's Merch adventures at MerchEntrepreneur.com. Note: Click here to download Elaine’s tips and strategies for running a successful merch business. The advantage Amazon has over other print-on-demand sites is their massive daily organic traffic. Elaine doesn’t even need to do any marketing to promote her shirts, and using their interface is as easy as uploading a design, choosing colors, and clicking a button to list your shirts. There are no monthly fees, and no inventory risk. In this episode, Elaine takes you through the steps you need to take to start an account on the Merch by Amazon program. She shares how she finds graphic designers to help with her t-shirt designs, how to use the Merch by Amazon platform, and some of her best tips for creating designs that will sell well.

Mark Wills is a professional notary public loan signing agent. It's something he started doing as a side hustle that eventually turned into a full-time business. While his friend Roman Rosario was between startups, Mark showed him how to do loan signings to make extra money. Note: Click here to download Mark and Roman’s online business quick-start marketing tips from this episode. Loan signing agents are the people who walk you through the final paperwork when you are buying or refinancing a home. The signing agent is required to make sure you understand all the paperwork, answer any questions you have, and sign off the documents. These appointments take around 1-2 hours and the signing agent can earn anywhere between $75 and $200. Mark's system worked and Roman had his first signing -- and his first payday -- right away. And that sparked an entirely new business idea. If Mark could teach him how to do this in just a few hours, he could probably teach others online as well. Although Mark had no online or social media presence or audience to speak of, he and Roman set out to validate, create, and sell an online course teaching other people to do what he does. That became LoanSigningSystem.com. Fast forward a year and the guys are making $4k a month selling their course. In this episode they talk you through the steps they took to validate their idea, how they built their course using content from free webinars, their marketing techniques, email responder series, and more.

John Lee Dumas is the undisputed king of productivity, discipline, and focus--the guy is a machine! John is the host of EOFire, where he interviews today’s most successful entrepreneurs 7-days a week. (I was a guest on episode 932!) JLD has grown EOFire into a multi-million dollar a year business with over 1,500 interviews and 1.5 million monthly listens. His latest project is The Mastery Journal: Master productivity, discipline, and focus in 100 days. You can learn more at TheMasteryJournal.com. Longtime listeners may remember hearing John way back on episode 15 of The Side Hustle Show. Three and a half years and 199 episodes later, I’m excited and honored to have him back on the show. In this episode, John takes you through some of his top productivity, discipline, and focus tips that anyone can incorporate into their day, business, and lifestyle. He explains why planning your day helps you avoid OPA (Other People’s Agenda) and keeps you on a productive and focused path. Note: Click here to download John’s top productivity, discipline, and focus tips from this episode. These are the things I struggle with at times--especially focus--and things I constantly hear as challenges from Side Hustle Nation. In fact, I’ve asked thousands of subscribers “what’s holding you back?”, and the lack of time and focus are among the most popular responses. John has developed The Mastery Journal based on his own success building his 7-figure business, and in this episode he shares some of his top tips and gives an insight into the habits and routines that got him where he is today.

Perhaps what we need isn't more hours in the day, but more energy in our hours. That's ultimately what this episode is about: feeling better and more alive so we can get more results from our businesses. Yuri Elkaim is a former professional soccer player, a Registered Holistic Nutritionist, the author of The All-Day Energy Diet, several other books, and you can find out more about Yuri and his health adventures at YuriElkaim.com. Note: Click here to download Yuri’s tips from this episode to double your energy in 7 days. Yuri promotes "energy through tranquility rather than stimulation," which is an ideal that resonated with me. In this episode, Yuri runs through 7 energy commandments to be aware of going into 2017 if you want to be your most energized self to-date.

Nagina Abdullah turned her weight loss blog, MasalaBody.com, into a 6-figure side business. By day, she works for a large consulting company, and with a busy work schedule, a young family, and limited time to work on her side hustle, Nagina has been very smart about her marketing and pricing. Note: Click here to download Nagina’s sales funnel and high-end coaching tips from this episode. After struggling with her weight for all of her adult life, she finally hit on something that worked and dropped 40 pounds! With friends, colleagues, and neighbors asking how she did it, she started her blog to share recipes and tips. But she soon discovered that people didn't want recipes; they wanted to lose weight! Quickly, Nagina adapted and used her own success story as a catalyst to begin helping other women make some serious lifestyle changes. Her sales funnel process is applicable across a broad range of industries and business models, and I think you'll find a way to put some of her tactics and strategies into practice for your own hustle.

As a private label seller on Amazon, Andy has seen his revenue grow from $400k in year one, to $900k in year two, and he is closing in on $1.8 million for year three! I last spoke with Andy "Slamazon" Slamans on episode 84 of The Side Hustle Show. Back in 2014, Andy was wrapping up his first year as a full-time Amazon seller and on the podcast he shared all his best tips for product research and getting started as an FBA private label seller. I was excited to have Andy back on the show along with his Amazon FBA business partner Liran Hirschkorn. Both Andy and Liran are now running 7-figure Amazon private label businesses! In this episode, they share how the FBA landscape has changed over the last couple of years, and how they have moved with the changes to build successful businesses. Note: Click here to download Andy and Liran's top FBA selling tips from this episode. Tune in to hear Andy and Liran explain the process they are currently using to perform product research so they know they are sourcing products that will sell. You'll also learn how they create “bundles” and unique products that separate them from their competitors, and how they launch their products and gain initial traction within the Amazon search engine. This episode is packed with everything you need to know to start your own FBA private labeling business or start taking your business to the heights that these guys are at. You can find out more about how they run their businesses at AmazingFreedom.com/hustle.

Note: Click here to download Josh's top tax saving tips and advice from this episode. Josh Bauerle is the CPA on fire at cpaonfire.com. Josh specializes in tax preparation, tax planning, booking keeping, and general consulting services to take the accounting side of your business to the next level. Just 30 minutes with Josh about a month ago saved me thousands of dollars, so you owe it to yourself to listen to this episode and see if you can put some money back in your pocket too. In this episode, Josh goes into detail about the tax implications with each type of business entity you can form, as well as how you can potentially save thousands of dollars by registering as an S-Corp. Josh also covers which expenses are deductible to your business, how to include health insurance as a tax-deductible, and how you can reduce your tax bill by investing more into retirement accounts. He also spends some time explaining the often confusing issue of how much sales tax FBA sellers should be paying and under which state tax laws, as well as recommending a service to automate the process. Tune in as Josh answers several questions from the Side Hustle Nation community and shares some of his best tax saving tips and advice. This isn’t another one of those dry conversations around tax, it’s packed with actionable tips and advice to help you put more money back into your pocket.

Note: Click here to download Thomas' top YouTube tips from this episode. Thomas Frank is the College Info Geek and you can find him at collegeinfogeek.com. Thomas also has a podcast, and a YouTube channel with an impressive following of over 400,000 subscribers and over 14 million views. Thomas’ blogging journey started back in 2010 when he applied to join a team of writers working on a blog in the college/student niche - but he was unsuccessful. He decided to publish his post on his own site, started introducing different forms of multimedia over the years, and stumbled across a love for producing entertaining YouTube videos. “There wasn’t a whole lot of really compelling content for how to study, how to take tests, how to read text books, all the kinds of questions students were asking me about as a blogger.” Thomas told me. This was an open door for him to produce high-quality informational videos in his niche and provide the kind of content his audience wanted. Thomas is now a “YouTuber”, and although he has many income streams his YouTube channel ad revenue makes up a large portion of his monthly income. Tune in to hear how Thomas grew his YouTube channel to 400k subscribers in 2.5 years. He shares his marketing hacks, tips he used to write more compelling titles that perform well in YouTube’s search algorithm and attracts more clicks, and how he developed a lead magnet that not only attracts email subscribers but earns decent revenue too.

Erin Chase is a busy mother of 4, a former teacher, and today runs 5DollarDinners.com and the 5dollarmealplan. Back in 2008, after some number crunching, Erin was excited at saving 50% on her grocery bills. She shared how she did this on her family blog, but with a low amount of interest she decided to start her own blog to help others make savings on their own grocery bills. You may have heard the saying, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” – well there is such a thing as free meal plans. Erin carried on publishing free meal plans and tips how to feed your family on a budget and her viewership kept growing. Note: Click here to download Erin’s top blog monetization tips from this episode. In this episode, you will hear how Erin capitalized on the momentum of viral social media posts to set up paywalls and start generating more income. You’ll learn how she transitioned from ad networks and affiliate income to selling directly to her audience, and how she set up membership programs for recurring revenue. Today, her online empire brings in a healthy 5-figure monthly income. Related: Want to start a blog of your own? Check out my free guide on how to start your blog.

As co-host of the #1 marriage podcast in iTunes, the ONE Extraordinary Marriage show, Tony DiLorenzo speaks to a worldwide audience about sex, love, and commitment. Along with his wife Alisa, their goal is to reach as many couples around the world as they can, equipping them with the tools and strategies they need to create an extraordinary marriage. With a hugely popular blog and podcast, Tony is a little modest in saying, “that’s consistency over 7 years.” Tony and Alisa sell coaching services, their own products, promote affiliate products, and have sponsorships as some of their income streams. Over the last 7 years they have come a long way with their brand from a side hustle hobby to a full-time business. Note: Click here to download Tony’s top content to cash flow tips from this episode. Want to start an online business of your own? It starts with a website, and my free 6-part video series walks you through how to set it up without breaking the bank. Tune in to hear Tony taking me through the steps he took to build up his podcast to over 150k downloads a month, the tools and techniques he uses to drive traffic to his lead magnets, how he has a tiered upsell funnel, and how he and his wife have built up profitable and diverse income streams.

Note: Click here for the 'Energising Exercises' PDF I mention on the episode. Ever feel drained and like you’re getting things 10x slower than you should be? Yeah, we’ve all been there. That afternoon crash, bit of brain fog or sudden crashing in our mood that slows us down. Not good for anyone. But there are much better ways of dealing with all this than the usual reaching for a Red Bull, brewing up the extra strength coffee or smashing through the sugary snacks. While all these may give a short term ‘buzz’, they’re rarely the best option. Aside from tasting like cat piss (my opinion), they’re also full of all sorts of garbage that belong more on the bottle of some kind of industrial kitchen cleaning product than something you’re going to ingest. So I wanted to share here my top 10 simple, yet very effective, natural strategies for boosting your energy levels (and therefore your productivity and performance). I’ve started with a few simple, more proactive strategies that you may be aware of already, yet still need to be said. Before going into some more advanced shizzle. Let’s start with #1 because, you know, that’s where these things normally start. #1 Start the Day Right! I used to say ‘have a good breakfast’ in this section. But I feel that’s a bit misleading. Because, truth be told, many people do well fasting in the mornings and not having their first real meal until 10am and beyond. So my main point I want to put across here is to not have a shit breakfast! If you’re going to fast, then fast. If you’re not, then eat properly. Toast, croissants, cereals, breakfast bars and all that processed carby stuff is not what the vast majority of people’s bodies are craving for the first meal of the day. Whether you choose to ‘break your fast’ from the night before as soon as you wake up or a few hours later, make sure you give your body a meal containing a healthy dose of protein, healthy fats and a variety of nutrients. My go to is a good quality eggs cooked in whichever way you like and partnered with some coconut oil in there with plenty of low sugar veggies. #2 Stay Hydrated In over four years of working in this industry, I’ve only ever had one client where we haven’t had to increase their water intake. In other words, dehydration is a very common problem. And most people don’t even realise it! There are billions of water-dependent biochemical reactions taking place in your body every single second. So a water is a huge player in maintaining a ‘healthy metabolism’ and, therefore, awesome energy levels. But I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again… the standard, generalised advice of two litres or eight glasses a day is not good enough. The amount of water your body needs is directly correlated to its size. The bigger it is, the more water is required to hydrate it. So we need to take out the guess work and be able to work out how much water your body actually needs. I do this via the simple formula of taking your weight in lbs, halving it and then using that as your daily minimum water requirement in fl oz. If you’re a metric bunny like me then take your weight in kg and multiply by 0.033 to give daily minimum requirement in litres. I start every day off with a big glass of water, at least 500ml and usually up to a litre before doing anything else. This sets you off right for the day and helps to stop you ‘falling behind’ your daily minimum target that could result in diminished energy levels. #3 Invest in Doing Nothing At first, this may seem counter-productive. If you want more energy and to get more done and be more productive, then going the other way and doing nothing for a period of time is surely going to hinder this, right? But the key word here is invest in doing nothing. This is a time investment that can be just 10 minutes at a time and can result in overwhelming improvements in cognitive function, energy levels and productivity. In fact, as I discussed in episode #39 of the podcast last week, meditation has been proven to have all sorts of brain and performance related benefits (1, 2). So I suggest starting off your day by getting up a little earlier and before you do anything, do nothing for 10 minutes. Literally just sit in a chair and focus on your breathing before breakfast, exercise, getting kids up or anything! You can even have these little 10 minute ‘breathing breaks’ sporadically included throughout your day to help give you a jolt of energy where you maybe would have reached for the Red Bull. #4 Sleep Better It seems like every week I mention sleeping better. I guess that’s just a testament to how important sleep is to your health and performance. But it’s about as obvious as the sky is blue that sleep (or a lack of sleep) has a profound impact on your energy levels. Again, I’m not going to go through the ins and outs of sleep her in this podcast. Check out episode #31 of the podcast for my masterclass on sleep and to take a deep dive into the subject. #5 ‘Ground’ Yourself in Nature For me, simply getting out in nature and being around plants, wildlife, the ocean or whatever else considered to be ‘natural environments’ can be hugely beneficial for my mood, productivity and feelings of being ‘energised’. So getting away from the concrete jungle we sometimes find ourselves trapped in and heading for the garden, the park or the beach can be hugely beneficial. I challenge you to go take a walk in the park and not to feel more positive and ready to ‘go’. But we can actually take this further by bringing in the concept of ‘grounding’. This is where you connect your body in some way with the earth without the interference of socks, shoes or clothing. Science is starting to back up this idea that connecting to the earth directly can help us ‘absorb’ free electrons and experience health benefits (3) and improvements in sleep and ability to deal with stress (4) as well as simply creating a more positive mood (5). I know it sounds weird, but try it. It really does feel awesome if you don’t go in with the attitude that this is all hippy BS. #6 Move! So many of us get caught up so much in work that we can go for days, weeks or months where the only movement we do is walking from the house to the car and the car to the office. But what this helps to promote is a metabolism that makes the average sloth look like Speedy Gonzalez. Your body and mind will start to get sluggish, slower and feel ‘off the pace’. A morning workout of some sort is great. Now, I don’t mean you have to do a full gym workout (although that could be great). But just getting yourself moving with a fast-paced walk or a little bodyweight routine in the garden can do wonders for your energy through the day. #7 Use Caffeine Sparingly There’s no getting away from the fact that a big ass coffee can give you an energy kick. But there are two things to remember here. First of all, your body can very easily get used to dealing with caffeine and so cause you to not feel the effects as much. This is how we create the need to have more and more and at greater strengths each time until we’ve suddenly found ourselves needing to have a quadruple espresso every hour in order to feel the ‘buzz’ of a few years ago. Obviously, this isn’t the best and most long-term of options for how to get enough energy to get through the day. So I would invite anyone in this boat to try a ‘coffee cleanse’ for a week before adding it back in at a lower amount. Secondly, coffee can be a very beneficial and enjoyable beverage. But you have to be careful as to what else you’re putting in your body along with it. That instant stuff is full of all sorts of shite. So I advise getting an espresso machine or a good drip filter (or at least a French Press) and get yourself some good quality, organic, ground coffee. When you’re not dependent on it and it’s good quality, coffee can be, in my opinion, a great, healthy option. #8 Energising Exercises Something I’ve found very powerful in helping to feel more energised is looking into more ‘eastern’ philosophies and ideas. This stems from the idea that you must cultivate energy (known as Prana for Yogis or Chi in oriental martial arts) before expending it. The power of this principle stems from the breath. The oxygen we breathe in carries a very strong positive charge, acting like the positive pole of a magnet. And the tissues and water in your body act as the negative pole. Now wherever you find a positive and negative pole, there is energy and work potential. So breathing energy into the body can create this work potential in us. We can manipulate this through specific breathing exercises that effectively help to ‘charge’ the body up and cultivate energy for us to then utilise throughout the day. It’s even possible to target specific ‘zones’ in the body to rebalance the chakra system and therefore reclaim a healthy ‘flow’ of this energy through the body. As you can imagine, this is a more advanced subject than this little piece here in this blog post. But I’ve put together a PDF all about energising exercises, how they work and with specific examples of how you can use them to increase your energy and vitality. Click here and I’ll email the PDF to you straightaway. Checking out some Tai Chi or Qi-Gong classes in your local area or heading to good old grand master YouTube can also be very beneficial. #9 Take Control of Your Environment The environment you’re in can be a powerful player in how energetic, happy and positive you’re feeling. Your brain is constantly scanning your environments and can create incredible neuro-associations with the seemingly minute things around you, causing you to feel a certain way that could be positive or negative. Checkout podcast episode #40 for more on utilising neuro-association. As you can imagine, if you’re trying to work in an office that’s boxed in, congested, messy and generally not very nice to be in, then it can cause you to feel low on energy and drive. So our environments are very powerful tools. Something as simple as having access to natural light as often as possible can improve your workplace performance and mood, according to a study published in the journal SLEEP by Northwestern University. Getting that regular dose of vitamin D from natural light is a game changer when it comes to our mood, so if you don’t have windows then taking regular trips outside or investing in a lightbox would be a good idea. But also getting some greenery around our homes and offices can also be very beneficial for our energy, mood and performance. Plants help purify the air and therefore help to improve the quality and toxicity levels of everything we’re breathing in, which means you get a better air quality and create a much more energetic ‘feel’ about a particular space. So, you can start mastering your environment via the following: Learning about neuro-associations (podcast episode #40) and building more positivity into our environments. Work on strategies for letting more natural light in. Adding greenery and plants into our environments. #10 Get More Magnesium As always, supplementation when it comes to these things comes after all other interventions have been considered. But magnesium can be a key player here. It plays a role in over 300 different biochemical processes in our bodies, ranging from muscle and nerve cell function, to brain health, to our immune system function and much, much more. So if our bodies are under a lot of stress and being worn down, then magnesium can easily become depleted. In short, the result is that our physiology doesn’t operate effectively and we become to feel worn down. And because of how much stress most of us tend to put ourselves under, magnesium gets burned through very easily and deficiency becomes very common. Eating a healthy, balanced diet is obviously a way to get more magnesium. But a good quality supplement can be very beneficial, especially when applied transdermally (via the skin). I suggest using a magnesium spray daily and combining this with a regular bath using magnesium or Epsom salts. There You Have It! So you definitely don’t need to rely on the Red Bull and coffee to get you through each day. A few preventative actions and daily practices can really get you feeling energised, positive and performing like a badass. Take a listen to the podcast episode for this blog post via the player at the top. Or head over to iTunes and subscribe there for Apple lovers, and over on Stitcher for non-Apple peeps. Love, Laughter & Light, Mike P.S. If you haven’t done so already, click here to join my Facebook group and engage with all the other dudes and dudettes in the Enlightened Entrepreneurial Badasses tribe!

It's been widely hailed as the greatest sermon ever preached and a masterpiece of religious and social ethics. Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew 5-7, commences with the "beatitudes", a series of eight blessings that Jesus gives to those who suffer, mourn, and express purity of heart. Bishop Barron walks through each beatitude and unveils its deeper meaning. A listener asks whether, according to Thomas Aquinas, God loves everyone the same or has a special hatred for sinners. NOTE: Click here to donate to our new Pivotal Players series and receive your free gifts! Topics Discussed 0:26  - Bishop Barron's new film series, CATHOLICISM: The Pivotal Players 1:34 - What does "beatitude" mean? 4:35 - How the beatitudes of Jesus are different than other religious teachings 6:25 - How can the "poor in spirit" be blessed? 7:32 - How will those who mourn be comforted? 9:15 - The future promise of comfort for those who mourn 10:06 - What does it mean to be "meek"? 11:21 - How will the meek "inherit the land"? 12:12 -  How God satisfied those who "hunger and thirst for righteousness" 13:49 - What "blessed are the merciful" means 15:09 - How the mercy we express is tied to the mercy we receive 16:55 - How do we become "clean of heart"? 18:39 - Pornography and the "clean of heart" 19:37 - Why peacemakers will become children of God 20:55 - Cardinal George and the eschatological dimension of peacemaking 22:51 - Why religious persecution can be a form of blessing 25:27 - Question from listener: Does God love everyone the same or hate sinners? Bonus Resources DVD CATHOLICISM series, Episode 2 - "Happy Are We: The Teachings of Jesus" (Bishop Barron) Books Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith (Bishop Barron) And Now I See: A Theology of Transformation (Bishop Barron) Homily The Beatitudes: A Spiritual Program (Bishop Barron)   Find bonus links and resources for this episode at http://WordOnFireShow.com and be sure to submit your questions at http://AskBishopBarron