30 Side Hustles and an Abundance Mindset

If talking about money online makes people angry, it usually points to something deeper: a belief that wealth is fixed, opportunity is gone, and earning more is for “other people.” 

Scarcity makes us grip tighter and make decisions like there’s no way out. Abundance does the opposite. It helps us notice what’s already working and gives us the courage to create more value so we can earn more money.

I'm breaking down 30 side hustle ideas you can start in the gig economy, from content creation, tutoring, driving gigs, and social media management to Airbnb property management, house management, cleaning houses, yard maintenance, mobile car detailing, Etsy shops, reselling on Facebook Marketplace, furniture flipping, pet sitting, party planning, and even AI training for small businesses. I wrap with four simple questions to help you choose a side hustle based on what you know, what you make, what you’re good at, or what you love that others don’t.

If this sparks an idea, share it with a friend and hit subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next. 

What side hustle could you start this week?

Transcript

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Welcome And Money Mindset

Courtney 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Most Days Podcast. I'm Courtney, your host. Today I want to talk about side hustles. Um, and this is for a very specific reason. I have been talking a lot about money, and I take clips from this podcast and I put it on uh Instagram and YouTube, and they draw a mixed response. Uh definitely a lot of people that get what I'm trying to say, uh, and then a good amount of people who don't. And I I talked about this a little bit last time. The people who disagree have a mindset uh that money is unattainable, it's fixed, there's only a certain amount of it available to you, uh, and not enough available for everybody. And it's that those discussions tend to get political, and and that's not my intention whatsoever. Really don't want to talk about politics. But I do believe that there is a mentality of abundance that we can embody that allows us A to feel more rich, and then B to also become more rich. Uh when we hold on so tight, when we grasp so tightly to money and we believe that it is uh limited, that it is a limited resource and not a renewable resource, then we make decisions to that effect. We make decisions about our life and about earning money that reflect the belief that there's not enough of it and that we can't get more of it if we need to. And so as I thought through all this, and and one of the posts that um got a lot of conversation was about the fact that if you make $65,000 a year in the United States, you are within the top 10% of wealth in our globe of globally. And the argument was, well, you're not taking into account cost of living and and you're not taking into account uh how how $65,000 a year in the United States feels poor. And A, I was taking into account cost of living. Those numbers are adjusted for that, um, and adjusted for local exchange rates and and whatnot. Um and still the argument is if you make $65,000 a year in the United States, you are poor. I got that a lot. I got that comment a lot.

When 65K Feels Like Poverty

Courtney 2:35

And I actually want to tell two stories real quick because they um really inspired me to not get uh down about the comments of like, no, you're poor. If you make $65,000 a year, you're poor. So I was in Flagstaff last week uh and I was in line at Safeway talking to my husband, telling him about this. And I told I the words, if you make $65,000 a year in the United States, you're poor, came out of my mouth in front of the cashier. And but he overheard the context too. He knew I was talking about somebody else's comment. Thank God. Uh and clearly, like the cashier probably makes less than 65 grand a year, right? He probably makes 20, 25 um flag staff, maybe 25 bucks an hour. If he's working full time, that means he's making about 50 grand a year. So he laughed and said, Well, if that's the case, then I'm truly poor. And I said, I don't think that's the case. What, you know, what do you think? How's your life? And he tells me that he's in school and he just he's really excited because he just got a new apartment with four roommates or three total, four total people living there. Um, and so he's gonna save about a hundred bucks a month because they were able to take on a fourth roommate, and he's in school, putting himself through school, working at the grocery store, and he's worked full-time all summer, so he's been saving up all summer, and he's really excited about that. And it just, I saw this young man, he's probably 20, 21 years old, maybe younger, feeling excited about the abundance in his life. And you can look at that in many ways. I'm sure he has some financial help, whether it's aid, financial aid, or scholarships or parents helping with tuition or whatever. But here's this kid making hourly wage at the grocery store, and he's stoked because he they got a better house because they got a fourth roommate. And it just made me feel good because I remember thinking about like that in college. I remember working really hard in college and feeling like really excited to get my paychecks. And looking back, I remember my rent was $900 a month at one point, and that felt like so much. And so I would work a lot of hours and I worked at uh at a hotel, which was helpful because I could do my homework at work. You can't do that at the grocery store. So, anyway, that in an exchange with that young man just gave me hope that like I was kind of feeling like, oh my God, this this generation, you know how us millennials now we we have our Gen Z ears to talk crap about. But I was thinking, like, oh, this generation is just, you know, so negative about money. And this this young man was not. And so then the next day or two days later, I was at Wildflower Bread Company in Flagstaff. And uh I had been working remotely there. And so I went up to the cashier to cash register to order um another meal because I had been there like all day. And the guy behind the register was just like this light. He was just such a beautiful person. You could just tell he just brings light wherever he goes. And uh he asked me how my day was going. He asked me, You're Are you getting a lot of work done? And I said, Yeah. And he goes, God, don't we just live the best life? And like here I am thinking, I live the best life because I get to go work remote to get out of the heat for a week. My kids are taking care of the we we had our babysitter, my husband was there. Like, I'm thinking, like, this is the life. I'm and then there's this guy who's serving me my food, and he thinks so too. And I just thought that was so awesome. Like, and those two things happen in really quick succession. And to me, it was a sign to keep talking about this stuff because it's not all doom and gloom. Uh, abundance is a mindset, and it's a mindset that I've embodied. And then to have all that kind of negative feedback about it come back to me was like, ooh, you know, I don't want to. My goal here is not to piss people off. My goal here is not to like make people fight or feel feel angry about something. Uh, and so anyway, those two things just gave me hope and I hope that they maybe put a smile on your face.

Why Side Hustles Matter Now

Courtney 6:58

So all of this got me thinking about side hustles because it really feels like the negativity around money is anchored in this belief that that you cannot have more of it, that you have a fixed amount of it, you have a salary that you make, that is what you're trained to do, and you can't have any more. And I just think that's flat out wrong, especially in this economy. We live in the gig economy. There are so many opportunities available to us to make money in ways that maybe weren't available to our parents or our grandparents, and all we have to do is reach out and get it. So, and I know that might sound like an oversimplification, but it's really not. You can see the amount of entrepreneurs out there who are stay-at-home moms or who are stuck in a nine to five and they're they've got side hustles. So I told myself, I was like, I wonder if I could come up with 30 ideas for side hustles, because I feel like that would make kind of a fun podcast. 30 side hustles in 30 minutes was my goal. I'm gonna try and go faster than that though, because I've already yammered on about other things. So 30. I came up with 30. Some of them are a little out there, but hang on with me.

Creative Hustles That Sell

Courtney 8:06

One, I run small, I run medium-sized family businesses. We are constantly looking for content creation. I know that everyone and their mother is doing content creation online, but there's money in it. If you're good at it, if you're good at making videos, if you're good at making photos, if you're good at talking to the camera, you can make money. There are businesses out there willing to pay you to talk about their product for them. You're gonna have to work, but you can make money. So, content creation, just get that one off the table because that's what everybody's new side hustle is. But I believe that it is a valuable one. Um, I was making sourdough the other day. I make sourdough for our family, and I realized like the cost of goods of this bread is literally like 50 cents, maybe a dollar. It's just flour. The water comes out of my sink, and the salt is pretty cheap. Um, baking and cooking are things that some of you are really great at that other people really don't want to do. I was at a coffee shop in Pine Top the other day, and there was sourdough, a woman selling sourdough outside for like 12, 15 bucks a loaf. That's a lot of sourdough, or that's a lot of dough for sourdough. Um so baking or meal prep. I think uh there are, I have an example actually of an employee whose wife did this. Uh, she started meal prepping for her neighbor or neighbors and her neighborhood, uh, and ended up making really good money. She would, she would bust through it all on Sundays, sell meals, uh, and have, and then her neighbors would have, you know, five, seven meals prepared for the week. I would pay somebody to meal prep for me right now. If you're out there and you want a meal prep and you'll take our wild game meat and meal prep with it, I would pay you to do that. Um, so just yeah, food. What can what do you make that no one else can make? Uh tutoring. What do you know that kids need to know? If you like speak English pretty well and um actually, what am I saying? No, if you speak another language, that's even more, that's even more uh valuable, right? If you speak another language and speak English, start tutoring in that other language. If you have a skill set that kids need from ages, you know, kindergarten to high school, a college, there's parents out there who are willing to pay you to help teach their kids, to give one-on-one attention to their kids. You don't need to be a teacher, you just need to be good at that thing that you do, um, whatever that might be. Maybe you were great at math and you could tutor in math. I don't know. Uh obviously the one that everybody does right now, or a lot of people do, but I think is probably underutilized, is driving. Whether it's Uber, uh, Uber Eats, Instant Cart, there's now we use um, I think it's Uber. We use Uber for uh couriers because we courier products back and forth from like different engraving and anodizing stuff at our machine shop. And there's like Uber couriers now, where you like come pick up a box and take it somewhere else and get paid a bunch of money. Drive. Um, social media management. So this came from my realization that there are hundreds of small businesses in your small town that have no idea what they're doing. They would love to grow on social media, they would love to have help doing it, and they don't need a full-time person, nor can they afford a full-time person. If you're good at social media, if you love social media, walk around to those small businesses, introduce yourself, and offer to do their Instagram or TikTok for them. Easy, right? It'd be fun. Uh, you could you could make a whole business out of that. Like just focusing on small business, local small business. Um, like obviously bigger businesses or e-commerce businesses probably have those things more figured out. If you focus on every restaurant in your town that doesn't have a good social media presence, I bet you can make some good money. Um, property management. So here's another one that I think you do local. Obviously, you do locally. Pull up Airbnb and VRBO in your in whatever radius you want to work from, two miles, 10 miles, whatever. Find all the Airbnbs. Look for the ones that are A, not professionally managed because it's hard to get out of those contracts, and B, maybe don't have the best reviews lately. And it's clear that it's poor management. Oh, they didn't communicate well, or they, you know, the towels weren't clean when I got there, the cleaners showed up earlier, later, whatever. Um, find those because they're clearly not being managed great, but they're good properties. Reach out to the owners and offer to manage their property. It is not take a, I don't know, couple hours of time to look on YouTube and read about or listen about how to be a good property manager. If you're a good host, like if you like hosting, if you like having people over to your house, you're gonna like it. I love managing. We have one Airbnb here and then one up in Flagstaff. And uh my friend manages the one in Flag, but I manage the one down here and I love it because it feels like I'm always having friends over, but I don't really have to like hang out with them for five days. Uh, I love to do like special added touches. There's ways you can take property management to the next level, especially if you're like a boutique firm. And if you want to just start with one house, you start with just one house. If it's a neighbor, that's how that's why I say do it in your neighborhood. Because if it were me as an owner, frustrated, either managing it myself or paying a property management company that I didn't like, and somebody that lives three doors down offered me to offered to help me, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Eyes on the property is really important. And so starting it with your neighbors, and that's how you can pitch them on getting to hire you, even though you have no experience. I would hire you with no experience if you had the right personality and you lived down the street. Um okay, house management. So this is something I've talked about before because we have kind of a quasi-house manager slash house cleaner. Um, but this is another one you could bring on one at a time. If you are great at keeping a home organized, keeping lists organized, getting the groceries on time, doing the meal prep, picking up kids' rooms, organizing places, then I think I know you could become a house manager for one family at a time and do really well. It maybe it's five to ten hours a week for that family. Um, I think you charge anywhere between 30 to 50 bucks an hour, depending on where you live. You can make pretty good money. Uh, you probably make money under the table and help a mom. Help a mom get her life together. Uh, if I have a lot of help, I have a babysitter that's hanging out with us all the time. I have a house manager. And both of those people make it so that I can do all this stuff. And so if you can pitch that to a mom who's struggling, you'll win. I promise. And if it's something that you're already good at, you're just gonna enjoy it, right? Like there's women out there I know because I like I have friends this way that like really love cleaning and organizing their house. So go do that for someone else and make some money. Um, virtual assistant, kind of in the same uh realm, but you could do this virtually. You could bring on one to two. Maybe you focus on executives or you focus on, I don't know, a certain industry that maybe you have some experience in and say, hey, I'm not coming into the office, I'm working from home, but I'm available. Here are my hours and put me to work. Uh, this can be anything from booking travel to like light bookkeeping to it going through emails, answering emails, like things that people again, I I kind of came up with this list as like things that I would hire people to do. Um, if I could just call someone and be like, can you book all this travel? Like, I know I should I have people at work that can help me with that, but I always feel like their plates are too full. So uh building like a virtual assistant business, I think is uh pretty doable in this day and age, and you can use AI. They might not understand how to use AI, and that AI is down on my list here. Um, but you do, I'm guessing. And so you can use AI to help uh get stuff done a lot faster. Uh back to housework, house cleaning. I know it's hard work, believe me. And but house cleaners are making bank nowadays, and so are yard maintenance people, and that's on my list too. Uh, you can make really good money cleaning houses. I'm talking 100 grand a year cleaning houses. If you're doing it in the right neighborhood and you're willing to work hard and you're willing to be respectful and show up on time and grind, you can make a lot of money doing it. The the jobs that no one wants to do, those are the ones that always make the best money. If you love cleaning houses, it's great. Also, you stay in shape. You are not gonna get out of shape if you are cleaning houses all day long. You get to make your own hours, you get to listen to music or podcasts or books all day. I think it's I hate I don't like cleaning, but if I did, uh that to me is like an ideal job because you just kind of get to like zone out and do your own thing all day. Um along those lines, car detailing. I have seen people start these types of businesses where A, you need some equipment to start with. I tried to make most of these like very little equipment to start with, very little startup cost. This one you do need some equipment, but mobile car detailing, you will get paid a lot of money. Again, do it in the right neighborhood and be willing to work hard. Um, dog walking. This isn't such a big deal here in Arizona because like we have these big yards and everybody walks their own dogs, but in big cities, I know that that's a um a job that a lot of people do. If you're looking for extra money and you like dogs and you want to walk around, go walk dogs for a living. I'm pretty sure, not for a living, but for some extra money, maybe for a living. I think rover like is like Airbnb for dogs, right? I haven't used it, but I've heard that that's a thing. So get on Rover. Um okay, Etsy. So there's me pay there are people making so much money on Etsy doing simple crafty things that you may or may not be good at. Um, I joke that like if you were in a sorority in college, you probably are good at crafts. I was not, so I'm like horrible at crafts. Um, I don't know why I think that. It's not like sororities do a bunch of crafts, but they just seem like craftier people. Um, if you are the type of person that can make something out of nothing and people tell you that's really beautiful, you made that, it could be the littlest things. Like I follow this woman who she takes fake flowers from the dollar store and turns them into like artwork, and her cost of goods is like five or six bucks, maybe more, and she's selling things for 50 bucks, 100 bucks. Like it's pretty crazy. And if it's something you already love doing and you can make, you know, three or four of them a week, there's a lot of people making good money on Etsy. Uh, and it's a great side hustle if you're creative. Uh okay, so teaching AI and or managing

Local Services People Pay For

Courtney 18:41

AI. So if you know AI at all, you know it better than someone else. There are a lot of people out there who are terrified or just uninterested and aren't gonna learn anytime soon. I've had conversations with people like telling me about their jobs and stuff, and I'm like, wait, can't you have AI do that part? Oh, well, no, I I never really thought of that. It's like, oh my gosh, yes, you can. So taking like even at our level right now, we're pretty, we're pretty well educated. But if somebody came to us and said, like, hey, I'll spend a week with your company and like get you guys really dialed in on how to save time and money using AI, I would pay that person to do that. Um, so if you're out there, no, don't don't contact me. I'll find you. Um so teaching like on a even on a small scale. Again, back to like the social media management, those small businesses that don't have the resources to go and figure this stuff out on their own. They might be scared by it. You can teach them. I know you can make money doing that. Um, yard maintenance that goes with the house cleaning. You gotta work hard uh and you gotta love the work. I think that's that's key. But I think a lot of you do work hard and do love that work. So uh yard maintenance, they get paid a ton. Like we we just had to get our tenants' uh yard done, and it's a small yard, and it was $400. Like, that's a lot of money. And it I value him, I value the work that he does, and it took him a couple hours, but like that's a lot of money for a couple hours of work, and I'm willing to pay it because we're not gonna go do it because it would take me a lot longer, and I don't want to do it, and I want to record this podcast instead, but that's that's good money. Um, okay, this one's gross, but stay with me and don't laugh at me because I do have this person in my life. We have a guy that picks up our dog poop. Okay, so this one is the one that I'm like, no one's gonna take you up on this one, and they're probably gonna be mad at you for even saying it. But I was thinking about it, like it is such an easy business to start, literally, no cost of goods. It goes except you gotta have a car. Um, it goes along the lines of doing the work that nobody else wants to do. You get to be outside all day, and so if you like that, that's that's key. And you a lot of times get to be around dogs. So the guys that have done it for us, I it's a company here locally. We used to have three dogs, and so like, yeah, I I didn't feel bad about it back then. Now we only have one, they keep dying. Um, and we still have him come, but he only comes once a week now. He used to come twice a week. These they they they're like some of the happiest people. I don't because if I was doing that job, I'd be like, oh my god, no. But every time I see him, he's got a big smile on his face. One of them actually witnessed me going to labor with my daughter. It was kind of a funny story. And uh, and then the next week they like got me a present and said, congratulations on having your baby. Um, so just like really cool guys that pick up dog poop all day. And I know that sounds gross, but again, they seem really happy. And so that's a business you could totally start. You could like start it in your neighborhood, you could build that business. It's kind of like pool cleaning. Like every neighborhood needs it. Uh, there are people willing to pay for it. I think we pay, we used to pay like 25 bucks a week, and now we pay like 50. Because they only come once. So it, but it literally takes them like five minutes to walk our yard and clean up just Larry's poop. So anyway, don't be mad at me for telling you to pick up dog poop, dog poop for a living. I'm just saying it's a way to make money. Um, okay. Facebook marketplace buy and resell. Uh, I have I love going to thrift stores and Goodwill and finding things that are expensive and buying them for very cheap. I do not sell them. It is a way, it again goes back to my love of feeling abundant. Nothing in this world makes me feel more rich than owning something very expensive that I didn't pay that much money for. So I shouldn't brag about this. So don't come like break into my house. But I found a painting once for like 20 bucks, found it on eBay later. It's like self or it's um embellished by the artist. It's like one of a kind or one of you know 50 or something. Uh like $6,000 on eBay, uh, like multiple times has been sold for that much. And I've got it for $20. So it's obviously I didn't sell it because that makes me feel so rich to like have that in my house. However, if your job was to go find those deals at Goodwill and thrift stores and resell them, you could make a lot of money. You would have made $5900. So I'm not gonna do the full math. You would have made a lot of money. Um, I have multiple paintings around the house that are worth a couple hundred bucks that I've paid 20 bucks for. Um, I have a second edition um uh Lord of the Rings in like mint condition. I have a first edition Atlas Shrugged in okay condition, both worth a lot of money that I would never sell because I love them. But there's money to be made. And I love thrifting. I love like finding it. Uh, it is an adrenaline rush and a dopamine hit, and I'm probably gonna hit up Goodwill on my way to work today, just from talking about this. Um, but so buying and selling like thrift items is one thing. Um, buying and improving, and furniture flipping is further down on the list, but I just want to give this one example. I found a woman on Facebook Marketplace who buys old uh playhouses and flips them basically. So out outdoor playhouses for kids. She likes makes them really beautiful and cute. She probably buys them for like 25, 50 bucks or free because a lot of people just want them out of their yard. She's selling them for like five, six hundred dollars. So if you're crafty and you can improve the value of something, I think buying cheap things and reselling them for high is uh a really great way to make money. Oh, where are we? Okay. Organizing home organization, whether it's closets, playrooms, kitchens. The home edit girls built an entire brand on this. And they started out just helping people get their closet organized. If you don't know who the home edit is, look them up on Instagram. They're great. Um, but they started just by organizing closets in Nashville. I think it was Nashville. Organizing closets in your town. You can advertise for free, whether it's word of mouth or on mailboxes or on Facebook or on next door. Um, if you're really good at it, people will pay you hundreds of dollars, if not thousands of dollars, to get their life organized and to help them set up systems to keep it organized. I would pay you. Um okay, that then brought me to personal shopper. Okay. Women like me, again, I these are all people I would hire. Um women like me who aren't super into fashion but want to look nice and have and don't like shopping, don't like doing the work to get there, become a personal shopper where if you've got great style and you know how to find great pieces and help somebody build their wardrobe, people will pay you for that. And again, there's like this middle ground between, yeah, the the bajillionaires and the celebrities, that they have those people and they're paying those people a lot of money, and those people need experience to get those clients. If you're coming to someone like me and you say, Hey, I know you're a busy mom and I know you're burned out, and I want to help you redo your wardrobe for X amount of money. I don't, I don't know what I would pay for that, but I would pay. Um, you go do the shopping, you bring back the stuff, they try it on, you return the stuff they don't want. Money. There's money there. And if you love to shop and you love personal style, then like what a fun job. Um, gardening consultant. I saw one of these on Instagram. I thought this was cool. So, like everybody wants to garden now, um, or like post-2020. Everyone wants to garden, and a lot of people don't know how to do it. So again, free advertising on next door, Facebook Marketplace, mailbox, word of mouth, whatever. Teach people how to garden. Hold their hand through their first for their through their first season. Um, you could do like a setup fee where you go with them for a couple hours to like really get things started, and then maybe you come back once a month to like check up on them. Um, you could take on one client at a time. If you're good at gardening, you could help other people garden. Uh that brought me to selling courses. Like everybody and their brother online sells courses, but there's money in it. And if you have a niche skill that you can teach other people, then there's money there. I, if you heard me talk about default parenting on one of our last podcasts, when I was doing research for that podcast, I found this woman who sells a course teaching you how to teach your husband to take more off your plate. And it's like a $150 course, and this woman's making money. Um, if you have a specific niche knowledge, don't think that it's saturated. I think that's the thing everybody thinks, like, oh, every there's already a hundred courses out there. Yeah, there are. But if you have a little brand, if you have a presence on social media and you know something, you can teach something. Uh sourdough, I keep looking over at my sourdough. I I have, I haven't actually bought any because my friends have given them to me, but like I have many guides that are like 10, 15, $20 guides on sourdough. Somebody's secret method of sourdough. If you got a secret method of something, put it on a PDF. You can't just wing it. You gotta like make it good. I'm not saying it's easy necessarily, but it's definitely doable if you know something that other people want to know. Whew, okay, that was 20. So we have 10

Family Gigs And Consulting Paths

Courtney 28:12

more. Um, number 21, pet sitting and house sitting. Um, this can be a full-time job if you wanted it to be. And you could probably get to the point where you don't really have to have much of a home if you didn't want to. Um, there are people out there willing to pay you to hang out with their pets and to hang out at their house while they're gone for sometimes long periods of time. Um, I'm one of them. I am constantly looking for someone to stay home with the cat because we only want to go for two days and we don't want to take all the animals and da-da-da-da. Um if you are responsible and you are respectful and people trust you, and you're the type of person that people want in their home. Like, I had a friend recently who had a bad experience with a house sitter that like did not follow her home rules. So I think that's huge that you have to be the type of person that people trust. Um, but you can definitely build a whole business around this. You can at least make side hustle money. Um, leave their house cleaner than how you found it and leave something better than how you found it. Leave something in the fridge for them. Put a bouquet of flowers in the kitchen. Like do something nice for the family when they come home. And I guarantee word of mouth will spread. You will get more business from that family, and you will continue to get more and more business from other families that they know. I guarantee it. If you go just a little above and beyond, leave the house better than how you found it and leave them like a teeny little gift of some sort. Um, pet sitting. Okay, number 22. If you are a stay-at-home mom, I have a colleague whose wife did this. Um, she's a stay-at-home mom of four. Holy Lord. And she thought, four is not enough. I want more. So she nanny's for another family while she was a stay-at-home mom. So you could do in-home daycare, in-home nannying for another family while you're staying home with your kids. I would have done this if I had somebody like this in my life when my kids were really young. I would have preferred that to daycare. Um, and I'm not anti-daycare, but I still think like being in a home, there's something about that, especially in a home that uh I can trust, a home that I know is clean and safe. And like I know the mom. So basically, other mom would drop off kids in the morning, pick kids up at night, just like daycare. Uh, and she made money. So she's literally getting paid to do the work that she's already doing. Granted, it's more work, like it's a lot more work. But you know, too, if you're a mom, sometimes more kids is easier because they take care of themselves and they like play with themselves and like, yeah, they make a bigger mess, but they're not up your butt all day. Sorry, that's inappropriate. Um, so I think that's a great way to make extra money. And she made good money doing that. Uh, daycare's expensive, if you haven't heard. Okay. Number 23. Whew. I don't know how much time this is, but I don't have my watch on. Uh, small party planning. So I'm not saying like start planning weddings, but you can plan a toddler's birthday party. Someone will pay you to plan their toddler's birthday party. Um, I like planning events, and there's been multiple times where I realize, like, hey, I'm helping this person like plan their event, and I did not agree to this. Um, but it's like kind of my brain really likes that work, so I end up doing it. Um baby showers, birthday parties, wedding showers, engagement parties, bridal showers, bachelorette parties. Oh my gosh, I didn't even think about that. You could be a professional bachelorette party planner. That would be fun. Um, I have some ideas for you. There's I've had been to some fun ones. Um you could totally start with one. It could be a friend or family member, ask for word of mouth recommendations after that. If you know the vendors and you know the cool ideas to make a party really great, then someone is willing to pay you to help them do that. Again, I it's funny, I love planning events, but like not my own. Um, we have a Christmas party every year. I would love if someone was like, hey, can I just make 500 bucks and I'll take this off your plate, um, like this part of the party planning, or a thousand bucks, or I don't even know what what I would pay for that. I haven't really thought too far ahead. But probably at least like a percentage of whatever amount you're spending on the party, maybe. I don't know. I think there's a lot of money to be made there, or a lot of opportunity there. Maybe not like you're not gonna get rich necessarily. You would good if you build it up. Um okay, that brought me to stuff rentals. Uh, when we were traveling last summer, we went to Montana and we flew and we didn't want to carry like all of our kids' stuff with us. And we found a website called or an app called BabyQuip, and you can rent all your stuff for your kids while you're traveling. So if you have that stuff already, if you have baby equipment and maybe like your kids are growing out of it or you don't need it anymore, you have too much, you can actually rent that stuff. So you go, you set it up at the Airbnb. So we have an Airbnb down the street, and I've had people do this where I'll see them, the the rental company get there a couple hours before them. They go and set up the crib and everything, and they set up a high chair and toys. And if you love kids and you love making families happy, it made us so happy to have these this rental available to us when we were in Montana. It made us our lives so much easier. So check it out. It's called Baby Quip. Um, number 25, Handyman. This is a dying breed of people. Like if you you could be make this a full-time job and you can make a lot of money doing this. It is becoming less and less common for people to know how to do things around their house. If you know how to do things around the house, you don't need to be licensed. Don't don't mess with electrical and plumbing, right? But if you would be surprised the people that are willing to pay you to hang up shelves, to paint small areas, to fix sinks. Like I said, don't mess with plumbing, but sinks are pretty easy. Um, I'm just looking around my house at things that I've I've paid a handyman to do. Um between our rentals and our house, we have various handymen, and they're freaking awesome and they do things we don't know how to do. And if you're good at that stuff, you can make side money doing it. You can make a full business out of that though. Okay, furniture flipping. This one, again, I tried to keep things like uh low startup costs, but furniture flipping, I had to put in there because I've seen people make really good money doing this. It kind of goes back to my buy-sell uh idea from the beginning. Buy furniture at Goodwill, make it better, sell it for more. Easy. There are, and there are talk about courses. If you want to learn how to do that, there are so many people online selling a PDF on how teaching you how to do that. Um, I'll probably get some because my phone is listening to me talk about that. So Instagram will show me furniture flipping courses later. Um, the things that I've seen people make out of crappy furniture that they get at Goodwill is so inspiring, and you can make good money doing that. You there is some startup cost, there is some storage, there is like a little more logistics to go into that, but still great side hustle. Okay, that was 26. Number 27. Okay, I had to kind of start scraping the bottom of the barrel because I like was running out of ideas at number 27. Um, but if you have a trailer junk hauling, I don't know how many times I've been like, can someone just take this away, please? Whether it's you're moving or you're uh cleaning up the yard or you're having a garage stuff, whatever. When you need crap hauled away and get gone out of your life, it is hard to find people to do that. And so if you have a trailer, you can haul junk. And a lot of times you could also flip that junk because what people are willing to get rid of actually also has value and they don't care what you do with it. Um, okay, number 28. I owe this to my friend Ashley. She came up with this idea or she told me about this idea. Uh, a mom consultant. Okay, so her idea was there's like an app, and I don't think you need an app necessarily, you could just do this. I you got to find the clients, where you are like a concierge for moms. So, like taking care of it, it's the like the mental load. So if you're a mom, you know what I'm talking about. Keeping track of schedules, getting like, okay, I want my daughter to do gymnastics this year, and instead of you spending three hours deciding like which gymnastics camp to send her to or whatever, you get a report from your mom concierge that tells you, hey, here's the top three in your town. I this one has the best Google reviews, this one's the cheapest, whatever. Like, really just like mom AI, but with an actual mom on the other side. Um, if you're good at that stuff, I think you can make a little business out of that. I don't know how you advertise it. I think it'd have to be online and you'd have to be like totally virtual. Like in order to get enough clients, you'd probably have to have clients kind of all over. Um, but you could also just start with one. Um, but keeping track of their school schedule, setting up reminders for the mom, like being CC'd on school emails, like all that stuff, helping the mental load from moms and dads. I'm not saying dads don't do this stuff, but you know, a lot of times they don't. Um, and that's just the truth. And if there are moms out there who would love that help um of like offloading some of the mental aspects of raising kids and like figuring out all the stuff they do. Okay, that was number 28. Number 29, whoo, uh digital gigs. So like fiber. I should have thought I'd put this one like first because it's pretty common. If you have a digital uh skill set, you can get paid to do it. This is gonna get less and less of AI. I will give you that. It's number 29. Like I said, I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. Um, but there if you want to make extra money, if you're a graphic designer and you want to make extra money, you can make extra money. If you have a skill that has a digital delivery and you're good at it, you can make extra money on websites like Fiverr. I'm sure there's other ones. If you're I'm sure if you're in those fields, you've already tried or done it, done done that. Okay, number 30. Again, scrape at the bottom. But this is actually like kind of encompasses everything. Consult on things that you're good at. Back to the small businesses in your town that need help. You are good at something. Maybe not. I don't know. Maybe you're not good at anything. And there's people on Instagram who will be like, I'm not good at anything. Maybe not, but you are good at something that somebody else needs help with. And there are small businesses out there who cannot afford the big hoity-toity consultant consulting firms, and you could help them with one thing at a time. So I just encourage you to think about what you're good at. We I have two examples in our business, one that is now a full-time employee and one that is still a consultant. He's he listens to this podcast, so I get it. Um, he's got a full-time job and he consults for us on product development on the side. And I think they meet once a week. Um, he gets to, he is like a great product designer. And so he gets to tinker with his 3D printers and I break his prototypes. Um, but he's doing that on the side, and we pay him good money, like x, you know, extra money. It's not a full-time salary, but it's it's good. It benefits us because we can't afford to hire another full-time designer right now. And it benefits him because he gets to do something that he loves and that he's really good at. And ideally, someday he will work for us full-time. Wink wink. Um another guy who now runs our machine shop started as a consultant. He was uh running another machine shop and started off just like helping us here and there on things and talking through different projects. And eventually now he works for us full-time. So, like, there's always, especially if you're in technical fields like product design or development, or if you're like really good at solving problems, I gotta think of a better way to say that. But there is a business out there who is willing to hire you on the side to help with those things. Okay, that was 30.

Four Questions To Pick Yours

Courtney 40:06

Um The biggest lesson I learned from doing this is that all of these have the same kind of set rules about them. Like if you're looking for a side hustle, ask yourself, what do I know that other people don't know? What do I make that other people cannot make? What am I good at that other people are not good at? And what do I love that other people don't love? You can answer one of those four questions. Like one of those four, you can have you can find an answer to, and then look around you and think who needs it? There's a lot of small businesses out there who need help, who would be willing to pay you for the skill sets that you have. And I don't think you should undervalue those skill sets. Everybody has a skill of some sort. And if you want to make extra money and there's not one thing on this list that I just gave you that you couldn't pull an idea from, I just I don't believe it. I don't believe it. I think everybody has something to bring to the table. Again, money is simply an exchange of value. And if you want more money in your life, you just have to provide more value. It's as easy as that. It's it's simple, right? It might get complicated once you start doing it. I'm not saying that it's easy, but if you can bring value to the table, you can be paid money to do so. That's as simple as that. That is it for now. I

Final Takeaways And Thanks

Courtney 41:35

thank you for sticking with me through 30 side hustles and a technical difficulty. I appreciate you. Thank you for being here.