Freelancing

Buy it once, get paid for it over and over again — that’s a business model I never stop loving.

Tayo Lanlehin couldn’t find kid-sized tables and chairs for her son’s first birthday. So she ordered four styles from overseas, stashed them in her basement, and started an Instagram page(opens in new tab).

Four years later, BayAreaKidsRentals.com(opens in new tab) is a $295,000 business(opens in new tab) with ball pits, bounce houses, plushie-making stations, two 16-foot trucks, and a 3,500 square foot warehouse — and she still works a full-time job.

Here’s how she built it.

I love a good rental business: buy something once and get paid for it over and over again.

It’s a cool model, and this week’s guest found a creative approach to it in the mobility scooter niche.

Getting paid to eat at restaurants, tour apartments, and run your car through the wash 20 times in an afternoon? That’s mystery shopping — a $2 billion industry most people have never heard of.

Mercedes Eckert has been doing it for 13 years and has helped over 25,000 shoppers get started through her company, iShopAGP.com.

Her personal best: $600 in a single day without getting out of the car. 

She also runs ShopQuest, a free site where you can browse mystery shopper jobs in your city.

For his side hustle, this week’s guest didn’t start from scratch. Instead, he bought a business that was already profitable, then he went out and tripled the revenue in his first year — all while working a full-time job.

Jono Santamaria from Melbourne, Australia is the proud owner of Nina’s Laundrette, a local self-service laundromat.

What if you could set up the same tents and pillows every weekend — and get paid $800 to $1,000 each time you did it?

That’s exactly what Anne McGraw has built with Firefly Slumber Parties, a luxury tent slumber party rental business based in Nashville. Anne and her husband run it as a side hustle while both working demanding full-time jobs, and last weekend alone they did five parties at $800 to $1,000 each.

The idea came from Anne’s daughter, who spotted the concept on TikTok or Instagram back in 2020. There was nobody doing it in Nashville at the time, so they decided to build it themselves.

They connected with a couple in Chattanooga who was doing something similar and got some early tips on what to buy and how to set up. A few years later, they ended up buying out that Chattanooga business when the owners decided to close.

Yes, you really can get paid to be an online friend.

I’d seen sites like RentaFriend show up in lists of ways to make money online for years, and was always curious to learn more.

What if you could earn $250-$300 an hour solving a problem most people would rather avoid? Jim Lashbaugh did exactly that, and last year, it added about $40,000 in extra income.

Jim is a retired firefighter who spent nearly three decades on the job. On the side, he flipped houses. And as part of that, he had to wrestle with one of the most annoying parts of real estate development: building permits.

He got good at it, but he never planned to do it for anyone else.

Then a friend asked for help. Then a stranger called. And SynergyPermits.com was born.

Jim joined the show to share how he turned a very specific, very unglamorous skill into a flexible side hustle without cold calling, without ads, and without any formal credentials.