The Side Hustle Myths Keeping Smart People Broke with Nick Loper

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[0:55] Igor Kheifets:
I’m your host, Igor Kheifets, and today I’m hosting Nick Loper. It’s late, the kids are finally tucked in, and it’s way past the socially acceptable window for caffeine, and your laptop is making the sound of a jet engine. So it’s the perfect time to work on your side hustle that you started a month ago.

But after, several months of late nights and promises to yourself such as, “I’ll eventually figure this out, I know it”, you’re thinking, man, why did I even get into this?

Well, that’s exactly where every single person who ever started a side hustle found themselves at one point or another. And Nick knows a lot about that because he’s the founder of the “Side Hustle Nation”, as well as “the Side Hustle Show”, a long-running award-winning podcast that now crossed over 30 million lifetime downloads.

And so, after many, many months of chasing this guy down, I finally was able to get him on the show to talk about his experience of transitioning out of a job, starting a side hustle with a shoe comparison website -if I remember correctly- and eventually building this incredible brand. So Nick, welcome to the show.

[2:18] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

[2:21] Igor Kheifets:
All right, well, let’s dive right into this. So, when you were a kid, did you, like already have this sort of desire to go and make something of yourself or is this something that showed up later in your life?

[2:39] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah, that’s kind of an interesting one. I was very like money motivated as a kid, because it always felt very scarce where, probably like a lot of kids, trying to sell baseball cards at the end of the driveway to my, equally broke friends, that didn’t really work out well.

But like trying to sell candy at summer camp where, my mom would, front load or, she fronted me the inventory and, pay her back from the proceeds, selling at the Boy Scout camp.

But what really, kind of bit me with the entrepreneurial bug for the long term was this internship in college, where basically they assigned you a city or territory and said, well, it’s your job to go paint as many houses as you can over the course of the summer.

And that was like really the first taste of calling the shots and having to go cold call, knock on doors to get leads, estimate the jobs, find and hire painters to help do the work. And that was the first taste of like working for profits and not wages.

And some jobs were more profitable than others. And some were like nightmare jobs, like, it’s a bunch of 19 year olds with paint sprayers, kind of like everything that can go wrong, does go wrong in certain situations.

But it’s like, well, it’s on you to figure it out, fight your way through it and make it right. But that was a really formative experience for me as a college kid, as a young entrepreneur.

[4:04] Igor Kheifets:
Interesting. What would you say, were some of the lessons that you ended up sort of carrying over to your first side hustle and beyond?

[4:15] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah, the big one is like nobody’s going to do it for you. And so it’s, kind of, it’s on you to go out and get the jobs.

And I remember sitting in my truck. It’s like March in Seattle. And it’s like, it’s cold, it’s wet, it’s almost dark. And I’m trying to like psych myself up to go like knock on the first door. And, I’ve got my little spiel in my head of what I’m going to say.

And then, ring the first doorbell. I’m like, okay, nobody was home. I’ll catch you. That wasn’t too bad. Then you go on to the next house.

I would end up like kind of jogging in between the houses, because I could cover more ground. And I thought if anybody saw me through the window, it would look more interesting or exciting than somebody like trudging up the driveway with a clipboard.

But it was, I mean, it was a lot of rejection. It was a lot of persistence and trying to figure out how to get it done. How to have these conversations and how to, quickly kind of break down the barrier of like, who’s this stranger interrupting my family time, my dinner time?

And like, and at least get them open to a conversation. And I kind of come back this weekend and give you an estimate or something like that.

[5:28] Igor Kheifets:
Did you ever end up figuring out like a bulletproof opener or anything like that?

[5:35] Guest, Nick Loper:
The opener was probably something like, “Hey, I’m Nick with Collegeworks Painting. We’re going to be painting a bunch of houses in your neighborhood this summer and wondering if you’d be, if I could come back and give you a free estimate”. And it’s probably like, that’s kind of like the quick, 15 second version of the pitch.

[5:53] Igor Kheifets:
Interesting. And was it like, what was your, I guess, cold open success rate?

[6:02] Guest, Nick Loper:
You’re trying to find ways to disarm people where it’s like, if there is, a vicious, shih tzu, yapping at your ankles, you’d be like, “oh, is this, this is the guard dog. This is the attack dog”.

Or, if you see, they have a Mariners sticker on their driveway or something, or a Seahawks sticker, you could be like, “Hey, go Seahawks, go Mariners”. It was just kind of a numbers game, like a lot of businesses.

It’s like, okay, if I got to knock on, 40 doors to get two bids and you book one job, it’s kind of just, repeat because, and the weird one was, you just never know.

Some of the most surprising ones were like the houses looked fine, but the coaching was like, “no, knock on every door. You never know what the back of the house looks like. You never know who people might be in the market for this paint job, or maybe they’re a landlord”.

[6:56] Igor Kheifets:
You couldn’t tell whether they needed the product until you could go into their backyard.

[7:04] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah. And even if the front of the house looked fine, and sometimes you would get that reaction, you would get people being like, “do I look like I need a house-paint?” You’re like, ”Hey, I don’t know. I’m just, I’m doing the thing”. It’s a numbers game.

[7:18] Igor Kheifets:
Interesting. Okay. So, that was the first proper, gig. And then eventually, somehow, you ended up starting a, a shoe comparison website.

[7:32] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah. So after the painting thing, I had an internship with a Seattle based company.

It was a, started as a single location, brick and mortar shoe store, a family owned shoe store.

But they had in the early days of the internet, this idea, “well, what would happen if we put some of our inventory up online? Would anybody buy shoes on the internet?” It turns out people did buy shoes on the internet. And by the time I came on.

[7:54] Igor Kheifets:
That’s still a really curious idea to me personally, because how do I buy a shoe that I can’t like put on?

[8:00] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah. I want to try it on, right? So, it was kind of a novel idea at that time. And this was probably pre-Zappos, too. So, they were kind of on the pioneering edge of that.

But that was my first exposure as their lowly marketing intern to pay-per-click advertising, to affiliate marketing, to e-comm in general, to SEO. And it was really, really eye-opening.

And so following that, I became an affiliate of theirs and a bunch of other sites and tried to build out this comparison shopping.

[8:30] Igor Kheifets:
There were shoe affiliate programs?

[8:36] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A bunch of different retailers, probably 30 plus different stores that we would integrate the catalogs for at the peak of the site to find out, “okay, you’re interested in this specific model of shoe. Here are the 10 stores that carry it. Here are all the coupon codes that we found or the offers that we negotiated. Here’s how much shipping is. And here’s where you find your best price”.

“Click, click, click. Okay. These guys have the size that I need”. And so, it was kind of operated on an affiliate model where we would earn commission if anybody bought their shoes through the site.

[9:11] Igor Kheifets:
Wow. That’s crazy. So did you end up making any real money with that?

[9:15] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah, that was the thing that let me quit my one and only corporate job. That was the, and I kind of naively thought like, “this could be my thing. I’ll just be the dude who sells shoes on the internet”.

But like a lot of businesses, it had a finite lifespan and this is kind of on me. Like I was very much reliant on a single source of traffic and that was Google ads.

And so, over the years, those costs crept up. And over the years, the commission rates on the product kind of crept down. And so the margin got narrower and narrower and narrower. So it became challenging to keep it running.

But it was, forever grateful for that business because that’s what kind of got me into the online space and led to everything else that I’ve been working on.

[10:02] Igor Kheifets:
So once that was over, what was the next chapter?

[10:07] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah. So on the side from that, because once it was running, there was kind of some daily and, seasonal maintenance because the inventory is constantly turning over as styles change and stuff. So there was that element to it.

But it was kind of relatively predictable, and then, you have hired some help to help me do that maintenance work. So it was on the side from that where it’s like, okay, well, what’s next? What else could I start?”

And for the sake of disclosure, like most of these projects went nowhere. Like I spun off a site using kind of the same backend architecture for sandals, which was a waste, like generally lower price point, a bunch of duplicated work, spun off a site for like handbags and luggage.

Because a lot of the advertisers in the shoe space also sold handbags and luggage and accessories. And I was like, “Oh, this would be interesting”. That was a flop, for various reasons, like I didn’t do enough diligence before making that investment.

But a couple of the projects did get some traction. One, was a virtual assistant review site and like directory for different outsourcing companies, like a Yelp or a TripAdvisor for outsourcing companies, called Virtual Assistant. That did pretty well.

And then, a couple of years after that was the start of the “Site Hustle Nation” brand and the website and podcast.

[11:34] Igor Kheifets:
Interesting. Well, is there, do you mind sharing like what are some crazy side hustle ideas that you’ve come across since?

[11:44] Guest, Nick Loper:
Well, there’s a ton. We just did our annual Thanksgiving episode on 10 creative side hustles that make real money. One that led off the show was this guy selling luxury firewood. And I was like, timeout.

You’re selling premium luxury firewood, a product that your customers are literally going to light on fire. And he’s like, “hey, yeah, the market is super commoditized. You get firewood from some random person down the street or you chop it yourself and it’s moldy and it’s dirty and it’s gross”.

It’s like, “no, no. Everything is hand-selected hardwoods, It’s clean, dried, it’s beautiful. It’s about, it’s not the commodity, it’s not the wood. It’s about the crackle and the smell and who you’re around the fire with”.

And I was like, this guy was super into firewood, but he ended up getting like 30,000 customers for this luxury firewood brand. And I was like, this is fascinating!

[12:41] Igor Kheifets:
30,000 customers?

[12:43] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah. There’s been a ton of stories like that. And that’s the best part of my job is kind of like the random stuff that comes across my desk.

[12:51] Igor Kheifets:
That is absolutely crazy. 30,000 customers.

[12:55] Guest, Nick Loper:
We had a woman who was teaching video game classes for kids, like come hang out with me and we’ll try and beat Zelda together. I was like, “that’s a thing you can monetize that”. I didn’t know. We connected with a guy.

[13:10] Igor Kheifets:
But you probably want to be a woman doing that. I can’t imagine any parent allowing his child to go to some guy’s house.

[13:18] Guest, Nick Loper:
Well, it was all online, right? And so, it was through this community called out school, whereas like a kind of like a pre-vetted, instructor database. And a lot of the classes were academic, like learn English, learn math, learn whatever, learn science.

But a few of them were like, “oh, let’s build Legos together” or “let’s play video games together”.

[13:37] Igor Kheifets:
Actually the Lego, I think Lego is a market. I remember for about six months, I used to take my daughter to like extracurricular activity where they taught how to build your own creative stuff with Lego. (Yeah). Rather than following whatever the box was showing you. And I think that’s really neat. (For sure).

Now that you’ve interviewed so many people about different side hustles, what would you say are some myth, some lies, some half-truths that float around the internet about, generally about starting a side hustle or scaling one?

[14:19] Guest, Nick Loper:
There’s a lot around, where I find most of the audience gets stuck is like in this waiting period for the perfect idea.

And that’s really frustrating to see, because now there’s 700 plus episodes of the show and it’s, you just want to be like, “just pick something”. It honestly does not matter what that first idea is.

This is probably not going to be the thing that you’re still doing, three, five years from now. It’s just, there’s this importance of taking that first step and getting in the game and getting off the sidelines. So that waiting for that perfect idea is definitely one.

And then the other big myth on the internet is like, the margaritas on the beach, the passive income, the four-hour workweek lifestyle type of thing, which is like, yeah, there is some level of passive income, or maybe more accurately, like a time leveraged income where it’s like, “okay, how can I build something that has some scale and leverage?” So I’m not directly trading hours for dollars. There is something to that, but like, it takes time or money to build that thing.

[15:25] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, it takes thinking and resources to build a system that will allow you to scale what your hour is worth.

It’s funny because we just launched a program called “the 80-20 productivity system”, where I teach that, of how I went from 130,000 annual income working pretty much around the clock, like most creators and most coaches, consultants, et cetera, scaling the company to 4.3 million a year, working about five hours a day on weekdays.

And it required systems, it required hiring, it required different thinking, different system design, like just completely different. It certainly wasn’t about working harder, because that’s usually a trap.

But to be fair, when I started, I was working all the time. I mean, it was uncommon for me not to work. I would take my laptop to the bathroom with me. I would compress time in any way possible.

If I was driving, I was listening to a coaching program on how to increase sales. In the shower, I would always go and take a Dan Kennedy seminar recording with me just so I could listen to it while I dry myself. It was like I was so obsessed, you know what I mean?

[16:47] Guest, Nick Loper:
I’ve been there too. All the reading I was doing, was business books and management and marketing stuff.

And then the podcast, any drive time or any walking the dog, even taking the kid for a walk in the stroller is like pop the earbud in. And it’s kind of grateful to have relaxed that a little bit at this point.

[17:10] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, plus as I aged too, I think I lost some of that driving energy. You know, priorities shifted all of a sudden (Yeah). 

So, you mentioned that waiting for the perfect idea is one thing, which is a common mistake that people make.

[17:29] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah, definitely. That’s kind of a frustrating one. It’s like just a friend likened it to your opening move in the game of chess, where it’s like, “I’m just going to put my pawn out into the world. Let’s see what kind of reaction it gets”.

That dictates the rest of the game plan. You just have to kind of get a reaction, both from the market and from yourself to see like, is this something that I enjoy doing?

[17:52] Igor Kheifets:
So, what would you say is another mistake or two that people make?

[17:58] Guest, Nick Loper:
The other one that is kind of frustrating to see is people, kind of overinvesting, if that makes sense, where they’ll kind of put, sometimes thousands of dollars into building a product or building a website or spending months creating a course, but they don’t have any validation for it.

They don’t have an audience. They don’t have any proven product market fit. And it’s like, that makes me a little bit nervous. Where it’s like, “was there a leaner way to get to that first customer without that kind of investment?” It’s like, “you don’t know if it’s going to work”. And that kind of made me, makes me a little nervous when I hear stories like that.

[18:39] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, yeah. There’s a great book, “Ready, Fire, Aim”, where the author describes how somebody starting a business or a side hustle ends up like going to the furniture store, getting a desk, kind of like really over investing instead of just focusing on getting that first customer.

[18:58] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah, it’s almost like it feels good. It’s kind of a, it feels like a positive procrastination where it’s like, “oh, I got to set up my logo. I got to get business cards. I got to do my website”. And it’s like, “dude, go, go sell something. And then, worry about that stuff later”.

Again, I think it’s good to great. It talks about firing bullets before firing cannonballs, kind of like calibrate, calibrate, calibrate, boom. Okay, now we found it. Now we can launch the cannonball.

And that was kind of how it was for me in the shoe business was like, ”let me try and test”.

This was like direct link text ads. You know, my budget was like a dollar a day, like in the very early days of Google ads. And it’s like, “okay”.

[18:39] Igor Kheifets:
You can get away with a lot with a dollar. It’s like Bitcoin in 2008.

[19:40] Guest, Nick Loper:
Big, big spender here. And once those were working, I was like, okay, now we can probably invest in building out the website, improving this out a little bit further.

[19:52] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that, kind of starting lean and then scaling only if there’s proof of concept of some kind. (Totally). 

So, with all your vast knowledge now about all the different kinds of side hustles that most people aren’t even aware of, is there a side hustle that you respect, but probably personally would never do or could never do?

[20:19] Guest, Nick Loper:
I have been super resistant to all things short-form content for the last five years, for no particular reason other than it’s just like, it doesn’t excite me. I don’t know. I can’t get myself to overcome that inertia and prioritize making TikToks.

So, that’s definitely probably been a detriment to the growth of the site. Because there’s Chris Corner is probably a good example of this, like expert at short form and driving people back to his email list, driving people back to the podcast from that, his Corner Office podcast

It does a really good job with it. It’s like, shoot, there’s the playbook. You can just go copy his style and pivot it to my own voice. But I have not prioritized doing any of that.

[21:11] Igor Kheifets:
I’m with you, man. I’m off social media entirely anyway. Email is my jam.

[21:16] Guest, Nick Loper:
It’s hard, because it’s like, that’s kind of like starting out, it’s like, you got to go where the audience is. And so I understand the necessity of it.

But my sweet spot has historically been that 45-minute podcast episode, that 2,000-word blog post, like the eight to 10-minute YouTube videos. It’s long-form stuff.

Because this stuff is really nuanced where it’s just like, it’s hard to boil it down into a 25-second soundbite that sounds good.

[21:43] Igor Kheifets:
True, I agree. Plus, I think having so much short-form content kind of forces people to post a lot of stuff. And even if they do post anything good, usually you can’t, you don’t really deliver the true value.

It’s kind of like giving somebody a wisdom in a quote, it sounds kind of cool. But unless they have lived the experience themselves, they can’t really, I don’t think they can truly comprehend what’s being given to them.

[22:15] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah. It’s hard because you have to keep recreating, like the lifespan of that content is so brief where it’s like, I would rather spend the time creating something more evergreen that has a longer shelf life.

[22:30] Igor Kheifets:
I agree. I agree. That’s why I love webinars. There’s some webinars that I’ve created years ago, that have produced millions of dollars and just consistently continue to produce.

[22:39] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah. Yeah. Think about your hourly rate on some of that stuff. It’s incredible.

[22:44] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah. That’s right. Plus they can keep producing while I’m not working. (Yes) Yeah. Which is my favorite kind of money. It’s like, I’ll take half the money, but if I’m not working to get it, I’ll take that.

[22:59] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah. We had a guest years ago, he was like, “Why am I more excited about making $5 passively than I am about making $5,000 where I got to show up and do the work?” It’s like, “I don’t know. There’s something in your brain that flips when it’s like, oh, this is leveraged”.

[23:15] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah. Work gets old fast. (Super fast). Back in the day, it was like, “oh, you can make $300 a day”.

$300 a day would be three times more money than I used to make at my day job, which means I could quit my job. My wife would quit her job and it would be life changing.

Now, if I’m thinking about making $300 a day, I’m like, think in terms of just $300? You know what I mean? It feels like, “well, I’m not getting out of bed for $300 a day. What are you talking about?” (Could be good problems to have).

Yeah. But it’s because I’ve been spoiled, I guess, by the internet. Because of how leveraged this is.

I have a friend, he runs a deli. And, deli is a pretty complicated operation, employees, poultry and chicken and refrigerators and the FDA and whatever. So he’s got like a really tough business to run.

And he has to be there all the time to watch the place. He, like just recently he told me a story about catching an employee, stealing a lot of money for over a period of like six or 12 months or so. She ended up stealing a ton of money from him.

Like he tells me about all kinds of problems. And then at the end of it all, what he takes home is, I don’t know exactly what that is, but I know it’s less than what I take home, but he works like 10 times as hard. So for me to even imagine going to like an.

[24:54] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah, it’s kind of picking the, picking the right game to play (Yeah) where it’s going to be hard either way, especially at the beginning.

But like play something where if you can fast forward three to five years, that is like a win for you. And the term preached a lot of times, we tend to focus on when starting a new thing.

Like, well, what’s the downside risk? You know, what happens if it doesn’t work? Am I still going to have a roof over my head? Like, how can I minimize the downside?

But it’s also like, well, how can I play for the big win? How can I play, if I’m going to go through the pain and suffering of the entrepreneurship world and that roller coaster is like, I want to make sure I come out on the other end with an outcome that’s a big enough win that it’s all worth it.

[25:36] Igor Kheifets:
I think this is the kind of thing that escapes most people, especially the ones who are just starting out.

Because they think that they’ll just do whatever seems like the easiest thing to do, meaning where there’s like the barrier to entry is lowest. So they will sell at a lower price. They will aim for a lower goal.

But I agree with you. The truth is that whether you’re selling something for a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars, the effort that it takes to sell that is usually about the same. You’ll still have to work just about the same in terms of energy output, in terms of the sacrifice you’re going to make.

So, you might as well sell something for 10 times the price or aim at a goal that’s 10 times higher. (Yeah) 

We do something here on the show called “the rapid fire questions”, and this is where I ask you like a series of kind of quick, bursting questions and your job is to answer them fairly quickly with a statement, maybe two sentences, no more than that. So we can go through.

[26:45] Guest, Nick Loper:
I’ll try to be brief. You’re talking to another podcaster, though.

[26:48] Igor Kheifets:
I know, I know, I know. You’re allowed one rant, okay? In this segment. (Okay) So choose wisely. So, one tool or software you’d instantly reinstall on a brand new laptop or phone?

[27:05] Guest, Nick Loper:
Audacity. It’s the podcast software for me.

[27:11] Igor Kheifets:
Right, right. One book that genuinely punched you in the brain and changed how you operate.

[27:18] Guest, Nick Loper:
Probably “The Go Giver”. Do you know that one? (I know. Yeah). It’s basically about being of value.

I started, I don’t know if this is going to count as my rant or not, but like, I started from the position that a lot of people do like, “how to make money online?” Googling ways to make money on the internet.

And it’s like, you’ll come across the listicle after listicle. And I’ve written some of those own listicles myself and have videos about this. But like, the short answer is like: “be helpful”, like solve somebody else’s problem. And “The Go Giver” kind of solidified that thinking for me.

[27:53] Igor Kheifets:
Something you will struggle with, even after all these years teaching people how to earn more money?

[28:00] Guest, Nick Loper:
Delegation for me. It’s just like the struggle of letting go is real.

[28:06] Igor Kheifets:
Interesting. What do you think is so hard for you?

[28:11] Guest, Nick Loper:
Just all of the excuses that everybody has, like nobody’s going to do it as well as me. It comes back though.

I still have to spend all this time redoing the other person’s work. It’s going to be too expensive. They’re going to, early on, it was like, “they’re going to steal my ideas”.

Like that was a big thing. Like before hiring my first person for the shoe business, it’s like, “Ah, they’re going to screw it up. They’re going to steal my business”. Like none of that.

[28:37] Igor Kheifets:
I actually had that happen to me a couple of times. Stealing my customers. One guy stole half my customers, went to them and said, “Hey, I’ll do what Igor is doing for you”. They were paying me $300 a month. There were about 50 of them.

And he went to them, he called them up and said, “I’ll do the same thing for you, but I’ll do it for half the money”. So half of them just dropped. (Jeez. Okay) Yeah, that happens.

So people can steal your ideas, they can steal your everything. The secret though is to create processes, checklists, right? And then to have one process that you would usually do yourself, broken down to two or three different processes.

So three people do it or two people do it who get paid way less money. So this way, not one of them, not a single one of them has access to all the information.

[29:34] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah. Yeah. I was kind of curious about that because we’ve talked with people who have agency businesses online. And for that same reason, well, what happens with, has anybody ever tried to take customers out from underneath you?

But same thing offline. Like, oh, I have this cleaning business, but I don’t clean the houses.

I hire other cleaners to clean the houses. It’s like, they’re the ones in the house talking to the customer. And it’s like, how hard is it to slip a business card and be like, “hey, just call me directly next time”. And yeah, it cuts you half the deal.

But it’s like a lot of times, the people in those positions, like they’re not as entrepreneurial. They kind of want just the steady job of like, “look, tell me where to go, tell me what to do and pay me for that”.

They don’t want the headache of running the business and having to go find customers and do the marketing and do the sales and do the customer support and do the billing and do all the overhead stuff that’s required. So it’s like, I can see both sides of it.

[30:29] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah. And I agree. Most people are probably not cut out to be entrepreneurs from what I can observe in the real world, so to speak.

Most people prefer for you to think for them and for all the things to be figured out for them, because thinking is the hardest job, really.

[30:49] Guest, Nick Loper:
We had a guy who was doing Amazon arbitrage, like going out to the retail stores, scanning products, and finding profit. And then, ultimately, it’s kind of, the bottleneck is how many items can you scan or how many stores can you go to?

So, he eventually hired people to go do that for him. And I was like, “They’re the ones finding the profitable items for you. Like what’s to stop them from just putting it in their own cart and like not giving it to you?”

And he was really eye-opening. He was like, “Nick, some people just want a paycheck”. They don’t want to take that inventory risk. They don’t want to deal with all this stuff. I was like, “okay”.

But he’s like, “yeah, you and me, we’re thinking the exact same thing. Like, why wouldn’t they just do it for themselves if I’ve given you the playbook?”

[30:29] Igor Kheifets:
You’re absolutely right. That’s an experienced entrepreneur right there. A common side hustle mistake that instantly tells you this person ain’t going to make it?

[31:41] Guest, Nick Loper:
It’s probably the lack of agency. I will get emails after dropping an episode of like, “Well, how do I get in touch with your guest?” And it’s like, “We literally published all their social handles. We published their website, did you try anything?”

It was just like, instead you’re lobbing off an email to some stranger on the internet asking this question. It’s like, you got to take action. (You got to be a little bit proactive) Just a little bit. Yeah. Some of that’s kind of frustrating.

[32:13] Igor Kheifets:
The best purchase under $100?

[32:16] Guest, Nick Loper:
Lately, I was thinking about this the other day. We got this OXO olive oil pourer this year. There’s been a game-changer for cooking in the kitchen.

It is, instead of the big old bottle of olive oil that always spills and dribbles out everywhere. It’s like a nice, clean pour. That’s one that I’m excited about. It was probably like $12.

[32:42] Igor Kheifets:
Oh, I see. (Okay. Not business-related at all). Oh no, but still. One daily habit that actually made a difference for you?

[32:52] Guest, Nick Loper:
It’s the habit of itemizing out the next day’s priorities the night before. So it’s kind of this mental, shutdown routine of saying, it’s kind of a three-step thing. Like, “what did I get done today?” Like, “celebrate those wins”. Like, “what did I make progress on? What am I grateful for?”

Which I find that practice of doing that daily kind of forces you to notice like the little moments that kind of make you smile. Like, “oh, the kids did something funny” or you had an opportunity to kind of notice throughout the day.

And then the third thing is just that it’s the priorities for the next day. So you know what to tackle and usually in what order proactively before going into reactive mode and reacting to other people’s agendas.

[33:37] Igor Kheifets:
A niche market or a business idea you think is going to quietly explode in the coming years?

[33:44] Guest, Nick Loper:
Oh, an exploding niche market? One that I’m kind of excited about right now, but haven’t built myself. I guess I, you could consider the virtual assistant side, a directory. The shoe site was kind of a directory in a certain angle.

But like where, content, informational content, SEO sites, like kind of been hammered the last couple of years. There’s an opportunity in these directory sites and kind of curating information, organizing it and adding kind of a value-added layer.

I think it is a little bit more defensible in the AI world or AI answer world. So that’s kind of one that I’m looking into building or at least exploring a little further.

[34:28] Igor Kheifets:
So, going back to your roots?

[34:30] Guest, Nick Loper:
Going back to the roots, baby. What’s old is new again.

[34:35] Igor Kheifets:
First word you think about when you hear side hustle?

[34:39] Guest, Nick Loper:
Hopefully it’s Nick. Hopefully it’s sidehustledation.com And like, I want to own that keyword. To me, it’s ultimately about ownership, right? Where you, I mean, that’s kind of the wealth unlock is having ownership in something, real estate, a business, ownership in certain companies like stocks and stuff.

And so, that’s what it is. Taking ownership of your time and using it proactively to build something that you have a little more control over.

[35:08] Igor Kheifets:
Okay. Weirdest niche you’ve kind of like ever fallen down a rabbit hole researching?

[35:18] Guest, Nick Loper:
Weirdest niche! I met a guy this year whose brand is the Swiftologist, who makes a full-time living reacting to Taylor Swift news. He’s like a Taylor Swift fan.

He has his whole business. He’s got YouTube. He’s got a podcast. The podcast is Evolution of a Snake, I think. He’s got like 15,000 Patreon supporters. He’s got a co-host on this show.

But like even at six bucks a month or something, it’s like, this is potentially a $90,000 a month business, $100,000 a month business kind of piggybacking on the popularity of Taylor Swift. I was like, if you can make money doing this, you can make money doing anything. And it’s like a very cool example.

[36:02] Igor Kheifets:
Wow. I wonder why no one did that with Nicolas Cage. (Missed opportunity) Maybe Nicolas Cage should do it. (Yes) Because recently the movies haven’t been great. The best unintentional mentor you’ve ever had?

[36:22] Guest, Nick Loper:
For me, probably Pat Flynn from “Smart Passive Income”. Just years and years of the SPI podcast in my earbuds.

It was really, really formative, especially in the early days of the Side Hustle Show brand, how he does business with transparency and integrity. And it was really, really appreciated of his virtual mentorship and guidance over the years.

[36:48] Igor Kheifets:
Interesting. Wow. Okay, cool. Well, that about covers all the rapid-fire questions. Congratulations. You made it through with no rents.

[36:57] Guest, Nick Loper:
Thanks for allowing me a little breathing room on the answers there.

[37:01] Igor Kheifets:
Cool. All right. Well, before I ask you one final question, where can our listeners go to find out more about you and specifically who should listen to Side Hustle Nation, right? Basically, who is the perfect person to enter your world?

[37:26] Guest, Nick Loper:
Yeah. I mean, this is the show for aspiring and part-time entrepreneurs and people looking to layer on additional income streams to what they’re already working on.

Or people looking at that corporate life and saying, “look, there’s gotta be something more than 30 years staring at these cubicle walls. There’s gotta be a way out”.

It’s very much “choose your own adventure”. I don’t expect anybody to listen, start at episode one and go through episode 700 and whatever we’re on now.

But, pick and choose the ones that make the most sense to you that are most exciting or interesting, and take action on those. That’s the most important part is figuring out, “okay, I’m going to test that out and I’m going to be able to report back on the results”.

Cause I love, love getting those emails of, “Hey, I actually did the thing that you’re talking about a few episodes ago. And now that sparked this new idea”, or “here are the results that I got”. I think that’s really, really exciting to hear.

[37:01] Igor Kheifets:
All right. So guys go look up SideHustleNation, Nick Loper, and check out what he’s got going on. Because he’s got a lot going on and highly recommend you check out his stuff.

So, one final question before we wrap this up. If you could go back in time and spend 60 seconds with yourself, with your younger self, let’s say 10 years ago, what would you tell yourself?

[38:46] Guest, Nick Loper:
Buy more Bitcoin and buy more Nvidia. The, so 10 years ago, it kind of already turned the corner. Whereas like prior, previous to that was kind of in this, it felt almost floundering. I felt like, there’d been some really high highs. There’d been some kind of low lows.

But at that point kind of had turned things around. And it’s kind of this breathing room of, okay, you’re going to be okay. And like every year that goes by, like you’re probably not going to have to go get another real job, but like, you’re going to make it. It’s going to be okay.

But it’s kind of the being okay with like staying in your lane. I think I’m very much the victim of the to-do list is never done.

There’s always more ideas than there are hours in the day. And having to come to terms with that, like something I’m still struggling with. But like, so going back 10 years, it’d be like, that is normal. That is going to be okay, right. Like just accept it.

And you’re going to be like, you’ll sleep so much better at night. Just knowing that that is the normal state of existence and not a lot you can do about it, just live with it. Breathe in, breathe out, move on. That’s probably what I would go back and tell myself.

[40:03] Igor Kheifets:
You know what? That’s probably one of the best answers I’ve ever heard to this question because most people would be like, “yeah, buy more real estate, buy, buy more Bitcoin”, things like that.

But (that was the first thing that came to mind. And then I was like) I know, I know. But it’s such a, such a thing, like everyone, everyone says that.

And I’m, and I’m very much, I understand what you mean when you say the to-do list is never done. It’s really hard to, like for me to also settle down and not to want to jump on the next thing. There’s like a, like an urge, right? Almost like guilt. If you’re not.

[40:38] Guest, Nick Loper:
Especially felt that early on, where it was like, you could definitely see a direct impact from the hours you put into the bottom line.

And so you felt almost like you were cheating on the business. If you went to the gym or anytime you weren’t working, it was like, “oh, but this is costing me money”. And like having to come to terms with that was kind of challenging.

[41:03] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah. Well, thank you for opening up. I really appreciate it. So there you go, folks. This was Nick Loper for The ListBuilding Lifestyle.

Go check him out at the Side Hustle Nation and the Side Hustle Nation show. You can look him up on Google. This is Igor Kheifets. And until next time we’ll chat. Have a good one.

[41:45]
Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle. Get access to the previous episodes, transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also, remember to claim your free copy of my best-selling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list buildings starting from scratch, plus I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package!