Freelancing

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.

This week’s guest started his side hustle with the goal of earning an extra $1,000 a month – fast forward four summers later and it’s now a 6-figure business.

Blademir Hernandez of LitterFreeLots.nyc is a long-time listener of the Side Hustle Show who was inspired by Brian Winch’s story in episode 266 to start his business.

Brian built a $650k a year operation picking up litter and cleaning parking lots, something Blademir told me he knew he could also do.

What if the pile of laundry sitting in your spare room was actually a business idea in disguise?

That’s more or less how Susan Toft tells it. She was a new mom with a full-time corporate job, staring at a mountain of unfolded clothes and thinking: someone should offer this as a service.

So she decided to be that someone.

Susan is the founder of LaundryLady.com, Australia’s number one mobile laundry service. She started solo in 2012, doing pickups in her van with her toddler in the backseat.

Thirteen years later, she’s running a $12 million business with 450+ contractors across Australia, a presence in New Zealand, a new launch in Canada, and expansion into the UK on the way.

Along the way, she landed a $1 million investment on Shark Tank Australia.

What if the million dollar business you’re looking for is literally in your own backyard?

William Milliken went from zero to 350 recurring customers in his first three months in business, starting a pet waste removal company as a side project. Last year, his business racked up over $3 million in revenue, all from the not-so-glamorous service of cleaning up dog poop.

And if that wasn’t enough, William turned his knowledge into another side hustle, teaching others through swoopscoop.com and the Poop Scoop Millionaire community. That’s turned into another almost million dollar a year business.

While he was a full-time student, Johnny Robinson built OrangeWindowCleaning.com into a $700k a year operation.

If you want to start your own business, it doesn’t necessarily take a never-before-seen business idea to have a never-before-seen impact on your life.