Many freelancers in Side Hustle Nation eventually grow their business into an agency that no longer ties their time to their income. What that looks like in practice is often bringing in other team members to deliver the work.
The business ideas and case studies featured in these archives are generally a little “bigger” than a traditional freelance business, even if the actual work offered is the same.
What separates a service business from a freelance business is a matter of scale. No longer are your hours directly tied to your income, and you may not even be directly responsible for doing the work; that’s what your team is for.
“It’s a business with training wheels,” Timika told me.
Timika Downes is a school nurse by day but was looking for ways to add income after hours, and ended up licensing someone else’s business idea.
Chris is the founder of ThinkMaids.com, a residential house cleaning service in the Washington DC area he started on the side while still a university student.
Less than two years later, the business is doing $60k a month worth of cleaning work, all without Chris ever lifting a mop or dusting a shelf himself.
May Najafabadi of CreativeKidzCrafts.com went from paying for her son to attend afterschool enrichment classes, to holding her own classes and making $12k working 1 hour a day for 8 weeks.
May has an interesting entrepreneurial background that is mostly in e-commerce selling items on eBay and Amazon.
Corey Jeffreys turned an $800 investment into $3k in the first year and has been growing his business and adding more automated processes each year.
His entrepreneurial adventure began by exploring the world of real estate investing, when he happened upon a slightly different rental business model: inflatable bounce houses.
A couple weekends ago I finally got around to creating a website for a new side hustle of mine; non-fiction book editing.
Now I should mention that this is something I’ve been quietly doing on the side for the last year or so without a website, landing clients via word of mouth and even a few through Fiverr.
When your service business is just starting out, you absolutely don’t need a website. In fact, it can be one big giant distraction from your primary goal of winning paying clients.
Carey Green had spent the last 20 years as a pastor, before making the leap into entrepreneurship. As he studied to become a licensed mortgage broker, an idea took hold to put his study notes online.
Today Carey helps other aspiring mortgage brokers pass their certification exam, a test he says was the hardest he ever took. That business, which actually derives most of its traffic from YouTube, generates $1000 a week!
But Carey didn’t stop there.
A couple months ago, Matt Bochnak sent me a note about his motorcycle repair side hustle. As someone who is, shall we say, less-than-savvy when it comes to mechanics, I was impressed.
But Matt shared that the passive income from this service business now actually exceeds his revenue from “turning wrenches.”
I’m excited to introduce you to John Rouda, an IT manager near Charlotte, North Carolina. He’s built a variety of non-job income streams on the side, while still working full time.
In fact, we recorded this session from his office at work!
John calls his side businesses for-profit hobbies, which I think is a great attitude to take. He has a handful of books on Amazon, dozens of apps in the app store, is a part-time professor, and runs a local IT/computer maintenance service business.
Tyler Zey turned his web development side hustle into a full-time business, but not without a few twists and turns along the way. Tyler’s actually a classically trained musician (clarinet), but now runs EasyAgentPro, one of the leading marketing services for real estate agents — despite having no background in real estate.
What he lacked in real estate knowledge he made up for with hustle.
A viable startup business in 7 days … sound to good to be true?
Dan Norris is the co-founder of WP Curve, a service that offers unlimited 24/7 WordPress support for small jobs for $79 per month. He went from idea to paying customers in less than 7 days.
Based on his experience, Dan penned the bestselling book The 7 Day Startup, and stopped by The Side Hustle Show to share some of his insights.
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