Welcome to another episode of the smart dad podcast. You know what? Everybody needs a side hustle. I think at some point everybody needs a side hustle. That's what we're going to talk about today. You know, I was,
Nine, my brother was maybe 12, and he stood at the curb like a bodyguard, arms folded, nodding slightly in approval as I walked up to the door and rang the neighbor's doorbell. They didn't answer. I would knock. I'd step back, smile wide, and they'd open the door and I'd say, hi, your grass looks kind of high today.
We're offering lawn mowing services to our neighbors. If you don't have a lawn guy, we'd love to do your job. Can you hire us today? Would you like us to take care of your yard?
I heard a lot of nos and every once in a while I hear a yes. That was the start of my very first business partnership. Two brothers, one lawnmower, a gas can and no other overhead. We just had a hunger to make money. We wanted to tops, playing cards. We wanted to buy new shoes. We wanted stuff.
and we were told you had to go get it yourself. I handled the sales. My brother handled the work. Well, the work that I was terrible at. He's older and he's always been better with his hands, better with fine motor skills, woodworking, anything craftsmanship like that was not my cup of tea at all.
If I was anywhere near a weed eater, your life would be in danger. I'd push the mower, follow the lines very precisely. I'd refill the gas tank, try not to spill a drop. In fact, I learned to refill gas tanks in the driveway because when you spill in the yard, it leaves a big old spot. Note to self. I would sweep the driveways. I'd sweep the sidewalks, but the details? No, that was left to Danny.
He could edge, could weed eat, and he didn't even break the equipment. So our second hustle, that was painting the addresses of houses right on the curbs in front of their house. Once again, I'd sell the job knocking on doors, knocking on doors, knocking on doors. We can do a black background, sir. We can do a white background, ma'am. How many numbers are in address? We got that. We have stencils. It'll look very beautiful.
They would pay us when we were done, sign up every two years for a renewal. I'd handle that. And all they had to do is say, yes, cash business profits split 50 50. And I didn't know it back then, but we were a couple of entrepreneurs. Was it a side hustle? Yeah, I guess if school is your main job, but we were in it to win it. And I realized
that whenever I worked within my strengths and Danny worked within his strengths, neither one of us felt like we were getting the raw end of the deal. He said, I do not want to sell. I can't sell. I said, I do not want to work the weed eater or the edger. I can't keep that edger in a straight line. I might we'd eat my foot off. So we were figuring it out as we went.
So want to tell you today why I think as a smart dad, side hustles matter. So many dads I know are quietly drowning. The cost of living, it's just gone through the roof. Credit card balances and the interest rates, they're way high. Stresses are up. Wages, generally, they don't keep up. Time,
Most dads I know, they don't have enough time for things they already have in their lives. And I've found that some dads feel ashamed that they're even thinking about the fact that, man, I need a side hustle. They feel like in their thirties or their forties or in their fifties, I quote unquote should have already figured this out. But here's the deal guys. We need a reframe.
The fact that you are thinking about a side hustle doesn't mean you're failing. It means you're trying and it might be the smartest smart dad move you make this year. Whether it's a little more gas money, whether it's funding your own vacation or maybe even a bridge to something more permanent like an earlier retirement.
A well designed strategically thought out side hustle might just give you more margin, more hope and more options for your life. Like I said, I've been side hustling since I was a kid and it's how I've built every business that I ever had from tutoring those pretty girls in middle school to coaching multi-million dollar companies today. Remember
I owned a cell phone telecom business and flopped, but I've also built a business that I can work from cruise ships. So it's not where you start dads, it's where you finish. And I've walked this path from the neighborhood streets to the executive suites. So today I want to share with you a handful of tips I've learned.
on how you can start your own side hustle. Now you can look this up. I'm sure it's out there somewhere, but I can just tell you, this is a little bit of what I've gathered from what I've seen. First principle, sell first, build second. Let's go back to the curb again. We didn't have a perfect system. Literally, I said, I want to cut your grass. Do you have anybody to do it?
They said no. They said yes. And then if they said yes to letting us cut the grass, boom, we'd make it happen. No website, no logo, no marketing budget. We had hustle and early on I could tell you hustle beats polish every time. Same thing. When I first started tutoring, I had no flyer.
No slogan. I didn't have a website to go to. I didn't have someone taking my phone calls. I was in sixth grade. One of the pretty neighbors said, can you help me with math? Cause I can see that you're really good at it. In fact, I think we rode the school bus together and she saw I was doing my math homework on the bus. I said, yeah, absolutely. Five bucks an hour. Can you meet after school today? No. Let me ask my mom.
Next day, boom, I was in business. High school, 15 bucks an hour. College, 20 bucks an hour. Full-time tutoring, 30 bucks an hour. That was in the 90s. A year ago, a client paid $30,000 for one full day of coaching. You don't need a logo. You don't need a dream. You don't need a design. You need a customer first. Principle two,
Solve a simple problem. If you remember the wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, sell me this pen. He said, the problem that most people do is they try to talk about the pen. Your customer wants you to ask questions about their problems. Every business solves a problem. Every great business solves a problem efficiently.
or solves more than one problem efficiently. My first tutoring gig solved the problem. My telecom company provided cell phones, landlines, solved the problem. My coaching today solves leadership problems, hiring problems, culture problems.
Guys, you don't have to cure cancer or invent something new. You just have to solve a problem that somebody's already feeling. And you're probably feeling it too. What frustrates you? What frustrates them? What wastes away and eats away at your time? What wastes away and eats away at their time?
What do you avoid? What do you procrastinate on? What do your customers avoid? What do they procrastinate on? Start there. You might be able to sit on the other side of the metaphorical table and say, you know what? If I were going through this situation, here are the questions I would want answered. I know a dad who loved welding. After years and years of being a welder, he went to school, learned a few tips and tricks.
rebranded himself. And it turns out that a lot of local businesses will hire a welder to create a sculpture in front of their office that makes their building stand out. He's taken that from a local welder, artist, creator to a global enterprise. Same lens, excuse me, same skills, new lens. Sometimes you need to just get a little bit different perspective.
If you're digital minded, could you flip items on Facebook marketplace? Could you sell cheap, quick Canva templates? Could you launch, launch some sort of YouTube channel? Just solve simple problems. That's all you got to do. Third principle I want you to focus on split roles, share wins. I did.
everything in my first first business at the age of six going door to door selling wrapping paper and I didn't have a partner but my brother and I in the lawn business and in the curb address painting business we work together okay listen I am dangerous around power tools I have no shame in admitting that nothing I do goes in a straight line even to this day
but I'm not afraid to talk to anybody. I mean, I tell you all about my life on this podcast and you don't even know me together. My brother and I made a team when I started the tutoring business. I mean, the first thing I was looking to do was offload anything that I didn't want to do or I wasn't good at the phone was ringing constantly. I had places to be people to tutor kids to raise. I gave someone my phone and said, take this answer it.
And then what would they do? They would handle calls, screen families, match students with tutors and educate everybody about billing. I didn't have to do any of that stuff. So I want you to know you can start off and hustle solo, but what would happen if you partnered wisely? Your ceiling gets higher and I can tell you it gets a lot higher. That leads me to my fourth principle. Raise your rates as
you raise your results. Here's a truth that I saw early on. It seems like every year I would go to my barber and get a haircut and every year it would be a dollar higher. Maybe it was four or $5 an hour and then six and then seven and then eight. It almost correlated to my age, but I remember every year the barber was raising prices and thinking about that in business, you know, people
might not be as price sensitive if you can deliver results and you raise your prices gradually. Consistency, confidence in you, they matter more than you think. I've raised my rates every year, every year for 40 years of tutoring, coaching, guiding, consulting.
I don't know what to tell you. Every year I get better at it. I started at five bucks an hour. I told you that when I was flying back and forth to LA, I was 500 bucks an hour last year, $30,000 a day. Same human being increased skills, better packaging, stronger results, better community, better communication. It is a revision and an upgrade.
an upgrade and a revision and just get better and better and just keep working on it. Remember you want to price your value, not your time. Nobody asked the sculptor how long did it take you to think up that design or to build that work of art? They just paid tens of thousands of dollars for a work of art in front of their office. Also, if you're in the service business, if you're in the product business,
What's a before and after look like? Document your results. If you clean garages, man, with cell phones nowadays, smartphones, take a picture. Show your before, show your after. Get your lighting just right. Have it ready. If you're coaching students, I have before and after report cards. An F in math, an F in history. In the fall semester, in the spring semester, we're talking about A pluses on math tests.
on history tests. My clients know in my space, I'm batting a thousand. If they hire me, they get results. So when money is no object and they want guaranteed results, they call me, find your niche and they will call you too. As long as you've earned where you are. Fifth point, grow by adjacency.
What I mean by that is don't pivot wildly from one extreme or one job or one role to another. Expand logically. Okay. Here's my path. Tutoring led me to test prep. Test prep led me to group coaching. Group coaching led me to parent coaching. Parent coaching led me to executive coaching.
executive coaching led me to strategy consulting for multimillion dollar companies. Every step was adjacent. I had to keep my head on a swivel, look for opportunities. I didn't necessarily stop doing what I did before. I just added to my arsenal. It was not random. Look, if you mow lawns, maybe you can offer garden box installation. If you do
web, what web designs offer email funnels. If you coach baseball, can you run a batting clinic? Yeah. Adjacent growth really means you get to reuse the skills you already have. You get to reuse the audience you already have and you get to reuse the trust you've already built. A marketing guy selling insurance might feel to
everybody like a pivot. And if that's what you're doing, then pivot. But a marketing guy offering branding workshops, that's adjacency.
seasonal add ons, complimentary services, keeping your, your mind sharp about what's possible. Those will make your, your, your hustle, your side hustle sustainable and you won't seem so scatterbrained like you're all over the place.
So I'm going to leave you with this smart dad side hustle blueprint. Let's recap. One cell first build second. Don't wait for perfect. Go get a customer.
Principle two, solve a simple problem. What do people need help with right now? What have they asked you for help with in the past? Principle three, split the roles, share the wins. Team up where you can. Principle four, it's one of my favorites, raise rates with results. Charge them for the outcome.
not the time clock, not the effort in principle five, grow by adjacency, be adjacent to and stay close to where you already are. Expand logically from your expertise, not randomly. Listen, there are all kinds of tools you can learn AI marketplaces, automation, video tools, social media tools.
I was just talking to a marketing guy today. He said to me, I've been dabbling with AI. I was actually overwhelmed and bored by it because it was a bunch of stuff. I didn't know how relevant it was. Today we are in an AI revolution and we're putting together more AI products for more clients every day. said, wow, I did not realize that. So here's some takeaways and a challenge for you.
If you need a side hustle, write down three problems that people often ask you for help with. Can you do any of those for money to somebody else? And then pitch what I call a micro offer, just a little, Hey, for 20 bucks, I will, you know, whatever power wash your trash cans. I don't know. Pitch that to one.
person this week. Give yourself a deadline. Goals are just dreams with a deadline. It doesn't matter the price, just make the offer and then tell someone your smart goal. Be specific. That's S have it measurable. Talk to this many people and measure it achievable. Yeah, I can do that based on my life. That's that's a realistic.
right? Or you really desire it. That's R and then time bound. That's T smart goals are specific, measurable, achievable, really desired and time bound. Tell someone your goal, ask for feedback, even lean on someone to lead you if you need to. Can you do that? Yes. So if you're not dreaming about a side hustle now, start to, okay.
figure something out. That's what smart dads do. We don't wait for perfect and we don't need to take giant leaps. We build a better life. One bold smart step at a time. I'm so glad you joined us for the smart dad podcast today. Let's do this together guys.
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