91: A Side Hustle For Everyone, with Adam Keller

A Side Hustle For Everyone, with Adam Keller

(from beginning of interview – does not include “wrap-up”)

Joan: Well, clearly your involvement in side hustles extends far beyond the party rental business. What motivated you to write the book 101 Real World Side Hustles?

Adam: Basically when you do a Google search of like side hustle ideas,

you get a bunch of sell on eBay, do drop shipping.

Basically, I just think it's a bunch of crap, you get the top 50 list. I don't know why they're making them. It's got ads. They're making money somehow off of these lists but there's they're always easy and simple and to me stupid ideas and I was like, all right I have researched a lot of ideas.

I know a lot of people who do a lot of things so I was like, I'm just gonna make a book of ideas. So this is more of a book of ideas. It runs you through the idea where you can go get more information, the basics of it.

I link to various resources for it. Like each idea could be its own book.

Joan: It's more than just the idea. You know that these side hustles work. Is

Adam: correct? Yes. So I'll just run running through it. It's like, what is it? The qualifications if needed, startup costs, hitting costs, potential earnings, time involved, all the questions you're asking me, your customer, scalability, other ways to make money.

Do you need a website? How do you market? Equipment you need. You need staff required and then additional resources to go on to learn it more. So each one's about three pages long. Then if you like it, then you go on to more learning about it.

Joan: Right.

Adam: But their ideas like that, we're not on that list.

I'm just going to open to a random page.

Joan: Okay.

Adam: Let's see, mosquito control, it's actually a very, it's actually a very easy business to get into and makes a lot of money. And it's recurring revenue because you set people up on a monthly or six week schedule where you go do their lawn.

There's franchises you can buy into.

Joan: Sorry. You said their lawn. So what is involved in a mosquito control company?

Adam: You have to, you spray stuff with chemicals and you keep the mosquitoes down. So this is in wet climates. This is if you have swamps around you. This is rich people's neighborhoods they want enjoy outside and they just subscribe to the service.

And there's one off people who we're having a big event and let's make sure there's no mosquitoes. Again, another compliment for what you do.

Yeah. Yeah.

Joan: Yeah. Sounds like a, almost like a lawn maintenance business or like that,

Adam: Yeah.

Kind of. So it's like less $10,000 to start. Yeah. Yeah.

The only real hurdles are you just need to get certifications for the chemicals and then, then finding the customers.

Joan: I love the way your book is laid out like that. With all those sub subheadings the cost, the revenues, what to expect that type of thing for each of them. So a person can go through and begin to pick and choose what's a fit for them. What are a couple of your favorites besides the party rentals?

Adam: All of my favorites have to do with rental though. It's owning something

and renting it out. So whether it's like an RV, there's three apps right now that are like Airbnb, but it's the rent out your RV, whether that's a tow behind

a teardrop trailer, an actual driving camper or a conversion van. There's apps to rent that out.

So I bought a teardrop trailer just to test the market in my area, cause want to buy several like Mercedes Sprinters and turn them into converted campers.

Joan: What's a Mercedes Sprinter?

Adam: Just the big Big work van.

Joan: Okay

Adam: There's a guy I know on TikTok he has three of them and he makes $15,000 a month renting them out.

And he only rents them in the, he stops in the winter just cause he doesn't want to deal with it but he could rent them in the winter, but yeah. Anything that you can own and rent out to people is my favorite ones.

Joan: how did it go with the teardrop trailer?

Adam: It good.

Proof of concept was proven, and so I'm gonna get them and start renting them out. And use them for my own use too.

Joan: Right.

Adam: Video game trailer, you own a trailer that is all set up video games. And you go to people's houses and they pay you $300 for the hour and a half that you're there. And then you go off to the next one. This one's a simple one. It's called yard card rentals.

You ever seen someone's front yard? It says happy 50th birthday and it's all these cards and like it's just a big display.

That one's easy in populated areas. It's not like high profit. It's not like high ticket 

Joan: Right. Right.

Adam: to get started in.

Joan: What have you got on that one for potential earnings?

Adam: Potential profit for each yard card setup is about $100 to $200 as profit. You just got to make sure you price yourself accordingly.

Joan: After outlining 101 of them, would you say there's something for everyone in there?

Adam: Yeah,

there's something that everyone anywhere can do. People are just scared

and not scared like, I'm terrified kind of way. They don't know where to begin, what to think about, they just don't have the idea.

Joan: I remember when you were thinking about, or talking about the, teardrop trailer there, I saw that somebody doing that out of my self storage facility. We were next door to a really, really nice provincial campground, and one of our clients was doing that. He bought one trailer that he would drop there for the people to rent.

And then we saw him expand to a 2nd. Then a 3rd and then a 4th and then a 5th. It was really great to see that growth. That was probably about 10 years ago or so.

Adam: Now he can use the apps and it easier for himself too. There's a, there's someone near me doing Turo. Have you, you know what Turo is? It's when you can rent your own car out.

Joan: Right. Yes.

Adam: They basically turned themselves into a rental agency.

They have like 15 cars and it's all run on Turo. So they're renting, not just their cars out, they bought cars to rent out on Turo.

Joan: Specifically for that. Nice. So all these things to look in and it sounds like your book 101 is going to give people a lot of different, a lot of different ideas. And I like it too, that it is listing a lot of things that are also for those people that are more hands on versus people that, that want to be in front of the computer to generate that income.

Adam: Yeah, I have a in there that are like computer stuff like eBay and Etsy or whatever, but I try to stick to real, I call it real world businesses, like things that you do, like actually in your area.

Joan: Okay. in the case of the party rental business, ones that are very scalable.

Adam: Yeah. Oh, I think nearly everything is scalable. You just have to be willing to do it, but you have to be willing to take yourself out. You can't scale if you're involved in everything.

Joan: And not everyone who, and you've touched on this, but not everyone who reads your book is going to start a side hustle. Even if it's something that they say they want to do, what do you think it is that prevents people from actually starting from taking action from, from seeing, I don't know, number 98 in your book and saying, geez, that would be a perfect fit for me.

Adam: I think you need to change the way you think and I know there's a lot of books out there, like business books, like change your mindset.

I think in general, I don't like business books, but it is about changing your mindset. I think you need to train yourself to think like an entrepreneur.

Like since I graduated college and started this business, everywhere I go, I look at like, Hmm, how are they making money here? What are they doing poorly?

How can they do better here?

Like good example is I went to a trampoline park for a kid's birthday. I'm counting heads. I'm trying to wonder how much they're getting for the party room. I'm seeing these kids are playing arcade. Okay. They're making more money there. These guys are selling food, making money there.

Then I'm thinking like, oh, there's insurances here. How many employees they got? I wonder how much their rent is? And then after that, we go to like a restaurant and I'm thinking, my God, these people have 30 page menu.

They could cut this down to 20 items where they share, ingredients between them. So I'll pick.

Joan: Yeah.

Adam: Basically everywhere that go, I just hypothesize about how this place is money. If I have a conversation with a small business owner, I'm asking questions.

And listening. So I've trained my brain to see a situation and evaluate it quickly.

Whereas other people, they just go to the restaurant. They just go to the jumping trampoline park and don't think about it. But the second you start everywhere you are, start thinking, you don't have to talk to anyone. It's just hypothesizing in your own brain. And you start to see things and then you see something in the book and you're like, oh, I could do that here.

Oh yeah. That'd be good here. Oh, this one's not good here. Oh, I can make a lot of money. Like you're retraining your brain.

Joan: Actually, your book sounds like great way to start that training to take a look at those.

Adam: Yeah, just giving you the ideas and seeing what you have to think about.

Joan: There was a guy I had on a little while ago, Jonathan Schuit. His thing is, every Saturday, a popcorn stand at a farmer's market. And we were talking about various things like that in the profit margins and things like snow cones when people are spending 7 or 8 bucks for basically ice. And you take a look at the cost of the product.

And I think at the end of that episode, I suggested people go to a country market or farmer's market or even down down the main street and take a look and and just with that eye of the entrepreneur that you just described, like, take a look and see what their profit margins would be.

Maybe what their gross revenue is, what their costs are going to be, as part of training your brain that way.

Adam: Yeah. You have

Joan: So important,

Adam: have eye and start looking. Yeah.

Joan: So what's the best way for our listeners to connect with you and your book, Adam?

Adam: So mostly TikTok. TikTok is called real world side hustles

I do. There's an Instagram for that too and a YouTube, but like

TikTok is the main place and I make videos on, I haven't made a video on

every single idea on the book, but I like, I make tons of videos about random ideas on TikTok.

And it's just real world side hustles, the same on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, of them.

Joan: Well, I love the diversity of the 101 that you've got in there. It really does look like there's something for everyone. So congratulations on the book, and thank you so much for being today's side hustle hero.

Adam: Thanks for having me on.