The Side Hustle Show - Full Episodes - My Red Paperclip Story: From $8.65 an hour to “Retired” at 25, Plus the Next 10 Years

Side hustle show, $2.99. This is Trading Up from 8.65 an hour to retired at 25. Plus, what happened next? What's up, what's up Nick?

A loiter here, welcome to the Side Hustle Show because it's all about leveling up. Last week we heard from the flea market, Flipper Rob Stevenson, and whether or not his business model appeals to you, he touched on something I thought was really important. A challenge inside his community to level up. To start with something small and see what can become through a series of trades or flips.

It reminded me of Kyle McDonald, better known as the red paperclip guy. You might remember his story in 2005, an out of work Kyle started with a single red paperclip and traded his way up to a house in Kippling, Saskatchewan. Remarkably, this barter adventure took only 14 trades and was completed in less than a year. Kyle started out small, each time seeking out something bigger and better in exchange.

For example, his first trade was the red paperclip. That was a starting point for a pen shaped like a fish. Then he traded the fish pen for a doorknob and on and on up the ladder until he had the house. The story certainly has some feel good elements to it.

And while after a while the media attention definitely helped speed the process along. But I think it's worthwhile to revisit because we're all trying to trade up. And by trading up, I think it's important to note I'm not necessarily talking about a bigger house or a better car. But more along the lines of making bigger impacts and living better stories.

I think we all have a red paperclip story like Kyle even starting with almost nothing. You can make big things happen with a little initiative and a little help from others along the way. Plus, it might be helpful to think of certain actions in your life as trades. For example, maybe you traded four years of school and maybe a whole lot of tuition for a good job upon graduation.

Perhaps you traded the money saved up from that job for an extended vacation. Or maybe you aggressively dumped it into investment accounts to fund an early retirement. We're all making trades all day every day. This episode is about connecting the events that got you to where you are today and thinking about where you want to go tomorrow.

What's the next trade you'd like to make? This episode is also about leverage. How can you leverage what you have and what you know to trade up to the next level? Remember, choosing what's next doesn't mean choosing what's forever.

And you don't have to know all the moves in advance. Hopefully, this will get you thinking about your next move. So in the spirit of the red paperclip story, I'm going to use my own entrepreneurial journey to illustrate this. And similar to Kyle, I'll use a series of 14 key decisions or trade points.

But unlike Kyle, this took me a lot longer than a year. I'm going to unpack some common themes at the end of this episode. But one you'll definitely hear is that trading up usually involves learning some new skill, whether I liked it or not at the time. And that's where our sponsor Skillshare.com comes in on Skillshare.

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Once again, that deal for side hustle show listeners is at Skillshare.com slash side hustle. I'd also like to thank textexpander.com for sponsoring this episode. I use text expander to feel like a productivity ninja. Officially, they say it'll help you communicate smarter and faster.

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Ready? Let's do it. My red paperclip story begins with my first real job. This is trading hours for dollars at the library, shelving books for 865 an hour, a job, by the way, that I'm somewhat embarrassed to say my mom helped me get.

It's a networking and action, right? So working part time at the library, I managed to save up some money. And in my first year of college, I had the opportunity to apply for this, you know, quote, management internship with a company called college works painting. Basically, they put you in charge of a territory.

They sign you as zip code and you have the spring and summer to build up a residential painting company. Basically from scratch, it was an amazing experience. And in fact, one shared by a handful of guests on the show, but that's my starting position. So that brings me to trade number one, which is buying a truck, even though I had no idea how to paint a house.

I accepted this internship and made my first trade exchanging the book shelving money for a cheap, used pickup truck. This was a 1991 light blue Toyota pickup. It was around 3500 bucks at the time. It was a scary risk to take.

That was half of my net worth on a car, you know, to try my hand at a business that in reality had a pretty high likelihood of failure. But it was an important trade because it marked my first steps down this path of entrepreneurship. The painting business was at once the most stressful and the most rewarding work I had done up into that point for adults to entrust their biggest purchase over to inexperienced college kids with paint sprayers. Hit me with a heavy burden of responsibility not to screw it up.

And there were definitely screw ups. College Works was my first introduction to the rush of entrepreneurship, making cold calls, closing sales, and delivering concrete results. It was an eye opening and challenging experience like no other. I came into the internship with a cocky attitude, perhaps typical of college freshmen, that I was going to be number one.

And I left that summer extremely humbled having learned I was far from being the best salesperson far from being the best manager and far from being even the best painter. In a way, that truck led to probably the most important realization of my life. Look, you're not that great. You're not that smart.

You've still got a lot to figure out. I always say I wish I was half a smart now as I was when I was 16 and painting played a big role in putting my ego in check and really turning me into a lifelong learner, striving to improve every day. But in the end, thankfully the happy customers outnumbered the unhappy ones. And over the course of two summers, I sold enough paint jobs to cover the cost of the truck several times over.

It was my first taste of working for profits, not wages, and may have scarred me for life. And not just because I fell off a ladder. At the end of the summer, the company posted an article on their blog called College Works, Ruined My Life. And it went on to explain that now that you've had a taste, you're probably not going to be able to go back to working a regular job ever again.

And I think there's some truth in that. And it started with that little blue truck. Trade number two was joining a business fraternity. So for much of my freshman year college at the University of Washington was like an extension of high school.

In fact, it seemed like half our graduating class ended up enrolling there. So in part to force my introvert itself to meet new people. And in part, because I was still concerned with building a resume, I pledged the Co-head Business fraternity Alpha Capacy in the fall of my second year. Now for me, AKSI was an amazing community of like-minded individuals.

It gave everybody an opportunity to practice real life leadership skills in a safe environment. You know, how big can you screw it up? As well as to develop some lasting friendships. So I count joining the fraternity as a trade, as a pivotal moment for me, because it was stepping out of my comfort zone.

It was making meaningful connections that were valuable then, valuable later. And I'm sure are going to continue to be valuable into the future as well. Now, if college is a distant memory for you, how can you apply this one? It's really about shrinking an overwhelming environment into one that's more manageable and relevant.

It's about finding your people. I know I talk about the importance of mastermind groups a lot, even though we didn't call it that. It was a similar concept. You could do the same in your local community with meetups or events or starting on your own, finding your own people online.

Here's an opportunity to plug the SideHustle Nation Facebook group. SideHustleNation.com slash FB. We'll get you over there. But this trade was really about finding my people.

Trade number three was buying an investment property. So back at school, my roommate insisted I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, which got me interested in real estate investing. And with the majority of my painting profits sitting around in a low interest savings account, I began seeking out some investment opportunities. This was an important step too because it represented the first shift from the employee slash self-employed side of the Rich Dad cash flow quadrant over to the business owner slash investor side.

The book also solidified some really important points for me of buying or building assets instead of buying stuff or buying liabilities. And it introduced the powerful concept that financial freedom is the point at which income from investments or assets you control exceeds your monthly expenses. And of course, you can tackle that from both sides, the income side and the expense side. Now with some help from some real estate professionals, I eventually located and bought my first investment property at age 21.

And this is the glorious early bubble years where you go buy a house for just 5% down and really no income verification. So I put the painting profits into the down payment and trade it up to the next thing. Looking back, this was an incredibly risky move and probably only something that could have been done, you know, with a 21 year old foolish sense of invincibility. And lucky for me, it worked out.

It worked out okay. I was able to sell the house for a very healthy gain and got out before the market crashed. And I say lucky because honestly not a lot of business savvy went into this on either end of the deal. You know what I'm saying?

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. This was one of those times. But nevertheless, it was an important trade for me and it was a practice putting rich dad thinking even it was flawed rich dad thinking into action. Train number four for me was an e-commerce internship after a re-retyaring from painting.

My roommate pointed out an ad in the college newspaper classifies for a marketing internship. And you're right, I owe a lot to my roommate if you've been paying attention. He was actually the efficient at our wedding as well. At the time, I really wasn't looking for a job, but this one sounded interesting.

So I submitted my application and I was invited to go in for an interview. And since I wasn't necessarily in the market, I had nothing to lose. The company was an online footwear retailer and they hired me to be their part-time marketing intern. This was a really important step for me because it was my first introduction to e-commerce, to search engine optimization, to paper click management and affiliate marketing.

All of those things, of course, would become crucial skills down the road. This is as close as I ever came to Taylor Pearson's apprenticeship model. We talked about in episode 129. He argued, look, you should quit your side hustle and instead accelerate your entrepreneurial education by taking an internship directly with someone in your desired field.

And of course, I didn't know it was my desired field at the time. It was just another new and interesting opportunity. And that actually led to trade number five. Trade number five was turning down a job offer.

At the end of my internship, the company offered to keep me on board with the implication that I might have a place there after graduation. Going into my senior year, that's an important thing. But maybe with an inflated sense of self-worth, I wasn't really happy with their offer. And so I declined it.

And sometimes I think back on how life might be different if I'd stayed with them, stayed in Seattle, gone down that path. It's one of those forks in the road that looking back definitely had a profound impact on my direction. But applying what I learned at that internship, I began dabbling in affiliate marketing in my spare time while back at school, actually formed my first company. And I think it was NJL enterprises or something, probably unnecessary for the dollar volume that I was doing.

But it felt cool, it felt official. And I remember seeding the business bank account with 500 bucks from the internship, you know, trading it into that next thing or leveraging it into that next thing. And at that level of investment really was just a fun experiment, a hobby on the side to try and earn some beer money. If it didn't work out, it wasn't going to be the end of the world.

But that was the first real side hustle that a few years later became a significant source of income. The other thing I want to point out here is the practice of saying no. A lot of these trades are yes trades. Sure, I'll give that a shot.

Yeah, let me try that. But this was a no trade. And in saying no, it freed up time and energy to pursue something that I reasoned had more upside. I'm still practicing saying no more and more, you know, to try and stay in my lane and not get distracted.

And it's actually getting easier with practice. If you want more on focus, I'd encourage you to check out the book Essentialism or my episode on the topic, which is called Essentialism and finding your one thing that was episode 96 if you want to go check that out. That brings me to trade number six, which is traveling to Costa Rica. So actually ended up graduating college quarter early thanks to some AP classes from high school.

And thanks to heavy course load most quarters, I found myself more productive, like the more credits I was taking. But anyways, everybody else, you know, was still attending classes and I was a free man. So thanks to a graduation present from Mom and Dad, I had the opportunity to travel to Costa Rica and work on this habitat for humanity building project and explore the country a little bit. And this was my first time traveling by myself and it was a really, really great experience.

So I learned even though you're traveling by yourself, you're never really alone. You meet fun and interesting people everywhere you go. You figure things out. You survive.

My time in Costa Rica was pretty brief, but I really loved the lifestyle there and getting by on my gringo espanimal. And actually, this is a little bit of a side note, but I think learning Spanish was one of those things I really didn't want to do. I think a couple years of foreign language credit was like required for college admissions. And I remember thinking, again, arrogant teenager Nick, this is the dumbest thing ever.

Like who needs this? Everybody speaks English, but I ended up taking Spanish all four years in high school and practicing it in a series of jobs afterwards, including the painting business. And I credit it with opening up like this entire new section of my brain being able to travel confidently in places that don't speak English is one thing, but I found learning another language to be really rewarding and intellectually stimulating in a really fun way. Plus, I mean, there's conversations with cool people, you'd otherwise never be able to have.

Now, even though I had traveled a decent amount before this Costa Rica trip, this was the one that really hit me with the travel bug for good. And on top of that, my fledgling affiliate business was still chugging along, even though I was away from the internet for days at a time. And I remember to date myself a little bit, remember stopping by an internet cafe every few days to log in and check email and check commissions from the business. It was my first taste of that very elusive passive income.

Trade number seven is moving across the country. So through the business fraternity, I was introduced to the Seattle area regional manager for Ford. He invited, you know, several of us from the fraternity out to Detroit to interview for jobs. And for us, West Coast kids, honestly, Ford was not relevant.

It was not a consideration in any car purchase that I'd ever made, but still we figured if nothing else, we get a free trip out of the deal. And as you might have guessed, I was offered the job and accepted it. The interesting thing about Ford, at least at that time, was you didn't know where you were going to be working until right before you started. You just knew you were going to move and there would probably be far away.

The theory was, you know, if they put you far away from your friends and family, you're going to be more dedicated. You're going to be a harder worker because, you know, your Ford co-workers will be your friends and family. And sure enough, so I was assigned from Washington State to the Washington DC region all the way on the other side of the country. Part of me liked the adventure of it.

And I thought it would be worthwhile to leave Seattle and see what else was out there. I'd lived there almost my entire life. I was still dating my high school sweetheart. And it was an important step.

Again, get out of my comfort zone and see if we had staying power in this relationship, if there was 3,000 miles between us. And I'm happy to report everything went okay. We're coming up on 20 years together and we don't live across the country anymore. So that's a bonus.

Now, side note, finding a partner early in life is actually a major productivity hack. And I know that sounds super romantic, right? But I also know she won't mind me saying it because we talked about all the time and money and stress we saved by never really having to date. And maybe that's not a super actionable point, but the point of trade seven was, you know, forcing yourself out of your comfort zone.

A change of scenery can spur new ideas, new perspectives, new creativity. Trade number eight is having my first website built in DC. There were three factors that collided to kind of form the perfect entrepreneurial storm or the perfect side hustle storm. You know, first, just like Ford's plan, I didn't know anybody, aside from my co-worker.

So I had a lot of free evenings, especially on the weeknights. The second was I was looking for ways to scale my miniature affiliate marketing business. It was still a fun and profitable side hustle, but it was going to take some major rethinking to turn it into something bigger. And finally, my investment property sold leading me with a windfall of cash.

Considering it all started with a cheap pickup truck a few years ago, that was pretty cool. So I decided to use a portion of the proceeds to build a website and try to make a real run at affiliate marketing as a viable side hustle business, something scalable. You know, so a quick summary of the business at that point. I was running text ads on Google to specific models of shoes and using my affiliate link as the destination URL.

I'm not sure if this is still a thing or maybe you have to get permission from your advertiser to do it, but in any case, it was working and it was profitable, but it was tedious to maintain. Like shoes would go out of stock or the prices would update and the ones I was advertising wouldn't be competitive anymore. So a reason that one way to improve that would be to build a comparison database where the inventory and the prices would update automatically. I posted my vision for the project on the freelance site guru.com, which I think is still around.

And found a qualified developer who lived just actually half an hour away from me in northern Virginia. So I went over to his apartment. We kind of hashed out this deal. The original site was called the shoes are us.net and there's a lesson to spend more than five minutes trying to think of a domain name.

My criteria was it's got to have shoes in the URL. That was it. And this was one of the shortest ones that I came up with. It cost around $10,000 to develop, which was paid in installments after certain milestones were completed.

And like any software project took twice as long to complete as they said it would. It had a super ugly design and it was missing several critical features, but it was still like the best investment I ever made. Because if you've read good to great, you might remember concept of firing bullets before cannonballs, which is you know, testing something on a small scale before going all in. Even though the $10,000 was a big investment, I'd been firing testing bullets for almost a year.

And it was confident the cannonball the website could work. Trade number nine was quitting my job. So I worked my butt off to make shoes are us a profitable side hustle. And it wasn't an overnight success.

It took three years of nights and weekends to get to that point. The guys at the Tropical MBA podcast have a theory called the Thousand Day Principle. Basically that it'll take around a thousand days or around three years to replace your day job income. And that turned out to be pretty accurate for me.

I finally got to the point where it's basically having two full-time jobs and it didn't make sense. So I got up the nerve to quote retire from Ford and focus on the business 100%. My side hustle turned into my main hustle and I was excited and I was nervous to be a real life entrepreneur. So even with the track record of earnings from the business, it wasn't an easy decision.

I'd always hoped the one day this could be my thing, this could be my escape path, but the timing is never perfect. And I found myself questioning if I could really do it. Could I take that leap? Could I cut my own paycheck?

I remember I was out to dinner with my boss and I was probably halfway through the second beer before I got up the nerve to tell him I was quitting. But after I did it, it was like this massive weight off my shoulders. It was so freeing. At that point, I actually don't remember if the business had fully replaced my day job salary.

I was making around $50,000 a year at the time, not counting the company car. But I do know it was making enough to cover my monthly expenses at the very least. And I saw how with an extra 40 or 50 hours a week to dedicate to it, how could grow to replace that salary and beyond. And that decision to focus my energy and attention to quit the job and focus on the business, that was an important one because revenue more than doubled the year following my exit, my retirement.

Trade number 10 is hiring my first virtual assistant. So the shoe business is growing, but I find myself overwhelmed with the routine work of just maintaining the site. It was rewarding on the one hand because I could see an immediate impact on my efforts on the bottom line. But it was also very much the victim of the entrepreneur's trap like in the EMF revisited.

I was working in my business rather than on it. I knew I needed some help, but I didn't really know where to look. Like we have a community college near us. I was like, well, can I post an ad for an internship?

Like I started, you know, could I get an intern from the local college? But then you know, are they going to where are they going to work? I don't want them to work on my coffee table or my dining room table. Is I didn't really want to deal with the hassles of hiring a local employee?

And that's when I began researching virtual assistants. Eventually, I found a VA with a company in Pakistan who was great. It was a really interesting experience working with somebody from such a different culture. But it helped me learn new skills in training, in process documentation, in managing a remote employee, and probably most importantly, in just letting go.

My business had always been a one-man show. So there was definitely like this mental hurdle to overcome in opening the doors to an assistant, exposing my strategies and my quote, trade secrets. But for me and for every other entrepreneur, hiring your first employee, virtual or not, that's a big leap for the mindset of growing the business and being smarter with your time. So I was trade number 10.

Trade number 11 was starting a blog. I started blogging in 2009, mostly because it seemed like a fun creative outlet. The blog never gained the traffic or attention of a wide audience. It never really earned any money, but it was useful for a couple of reasons.

At first, I learned how to use WordPress, which is software I use today all the time. WordPress powers the site hustle-nation.com site and millions of other sites. So it's just an essential tool to understand for anybody working online. You can check out blogstartercourse.com for my free guide on starting a blog of your own.

But second, and equally important, blogging gummi in the habit of writing on a semi-routine basis and learning how to write for the web. I think it was a healthy exercise for the mind, even if very few people were ever reading that stuff. And years later, that blog became the site hustle-nation blog, and eventually the site hustle show podcast as well. Train number 12 is building other, uh, calm affiliate sites.

I'd made several attempts at branching out from the world of shoes, but most of those projects died quite a death in some dark, forgotten corner of the internet. And to be sure, there were lessons from those failures, like, you know, research a niche better before diving in or don't pick niches you don't actually care about. Give people a reason to visit your site. You know, what's your value ad, right?

The most successful of those projects from that era is still around though. It's a directory and review platform for outsourcing companies called virtual assistant assistant. It counts as a trade for the sake of this list in a couple ways. First, it was largely inspired by my own search for a virtual assistant and trying to figure out how it all works, which companies are legit.

And second, I came up with the idea for it actually while working on another affiliate site. It was during my research. I came across this other site. It was in the wine niche, and it was reviewing all these different wine clubs.

I was like, that's a cool idea. I wonder what other niches I could apply the same model to. So action breeds action. Ideas become visible once you're already in motion.

That's a perfect example of that. In any case, these other websites were important because they let me test new marketing tactics, including starting my first email list, reaching out to people on Twitter, which I'd never messed around with before. Guest blogging, you know, recording my first YouTube videos, adding this kind of custom recommendation, engine survey tool to the site, and even writing my first Kindle book. It's been a ton of fun.

I've had the opportunity to connect with some amazing people. I might otherwise have never come across. There was also an important step here for me in putting the expert enough theory into practice. That is, if you know more about a topic than the average visitor, you're an expert in their eyes.

So what could you be an expert in? Since then, I've decided I was expert enough to write several more books to take calls on clarity.fm to do freelance writing, recruiting, book editing, website audits, to offer coaching, and even to do some public speaking. Like when I found out there was a local TEDx event in town, I proactively pitched them an idea. I'd never have had the confidence to do that.

Had I not been practicing this expert enough theory, you know, for years at that point. Trade number 13 is starting this podcast. In 2013, the shoe business was still my main focus. But as I'd been doing for several years to that point, I'd always had side projects.

And by far the best side project I started was the SideHouse Social Podcast. I had no idea what I was doing. The first episodes are super embarrassing. I promise, don't go back and listen to them.

But despite that, I started to see some traction with it. And it was fun. So I stuck with it and it's been a truly life-changing trade for the ideas, for the connections with guests and with listeners. And for building a community, I think a podcast is tough to beat.

And honestly, I started the show almost out of guilt. I decided to start more of like a personal brand type of project with SideHouse Social Nation. And all of the quote experts were saying, you got to have a podcast. And I guess they were right.

Now obviously, I've learned a lot about podcasting over the years and I try to make a better show every week. But it was that act of starting. Not really knowing what it would entail or what I was committing myself to. That was the most important thing.

Now we're more than five years deep into the show. Just past six million lifetime downloads. Next week's going to be 300 episodes. And it's turned into a pretty healthy business on its own.

Again, this wasn't an overnight thing. In fact, it took me a long time to even identify myself as a podcaster and not just some dude with a podcast. But it's actually my official profession now on our youngest son's birth certificate. It asks for mom and dad's occupations.

So I filled out engineer from mom and podcaster for dad, which Brin laughed at. But I never know what to put on these things. And for some reason, podcaster felt right. I don't even remember what I put on our first sons.

And that's actually a good segue to trade number 14. Perhaps the biggest trade of all. But as you've probably gathered from this episode, I like to practice just in time learning, figuring out how to do stuff when I need it. And there's no question I picked up a ton of different skills from painting houses to running paperclip campaigns, hiring virtual assistants to podcasting.

It's not like I was born, knowing how to do this stuff. Or even that I'm the world's foremost expert today. But everything is learnable. And that's where today's sponsor skillshare.com comes in.

On skillshare, you can learn all that and more. And still practice just in time learning. The on-demand online education platform has more than 20,000 classes taught by practicing experts. It's the perfect resource for professionals who want to advance their career and for side hustlers who want to expand the skills you need to grow your business.

Skillshare is like Netflix. You get unlimited access to all these classes for a low monthly price, meaning you never have to pay per class again. And unlike Netflix, it'll actually help your business. Check out the extensive catalog for yourself at skillshare.com slash side hustle.

While you're there, you'll notice that Skillshare has put together a special offer for side hustle show listeners where you can try Skillshare for two months for just 99 cents. I think you're going to love it. Go to skillshare.com slash side hustle to get started today. That's skillshare.com slash side hustle for two months of unlimited access for just 99 cents.

And that brings me to trade number 14. And that's making babies. Man, becoming a parent is probably the biggest lifestyle and business shift. And it's not like we were out partying to all hours of the night before or anything like that.

But I don't think anything will transform your priorities as much as having kids. I think our parents were so excited for grandkids for this single moment, this moment of realization of everything they sacrificed for us, everything they gave up in an instant. There's 10 times the respect this newfound understanding and appreciation, everything they did for you. At least that's what happened for us.

That's my theory. So kids keep you young. They also age you horribly. We've decided parenthood amplifies life.

The lows are lower, but the highs are higher. And hopefully it all averages out. As I talked about in the episode with Noah Kagan, I feel like our kids are good at helping us figure out what's really important. I think I said I've become less productive, but more efficient if that makes sense.

Like give me a two hour toddler nap time and I can knock out some serious hustle. It forced me to be more efficient and more intentional with where I spend my time knowing that time is much more limited. But business has more than doubled since our first son was born. So it wasn't about working more.

It was about working smarter. The other piece of this parenting thing is a takeaway from Brian Johnson over at optimise.me. He said, your life is your lecture. These kids are sponges.

They're picking up everything we do, everything we say, how we act, how we carry ourselves. It's definitely made me want to become a better person to work toward that ideal version of myself and portray that version to my boys, rather than the stressed out or inattentive father version. Your life is your lecture. Definitely not recommending anybody have kids just for the sake of productivity or self improvement, but I think if you're a parent, you'll recognize having kids is a major trade up in life.

And that's why it's number 14 on this list. All right, so my final thoughts, themes, takeaways, that's how I got here. One small trade at a time. It's kind of fun to see how all these little decisions and connections give shape to your life and to your work.

There are a couple overarching themes, I think, are worth calling attention to. The first is about attitude. If you're listening to this, if you're actively seeking out information on how to improve your life, how to improve your business, that tells you you have the right attitude. I mean, you know, I'm not huge on this mindset stuff, but it's almost a prerequisite.

Side hustlers take the stance, the world is full of opportunities, and it's on them just to pick one and execute. It's a mindset of abundance and optimism. And the haters, the naysayers will complain that all the good ideas are already taken that come up with 100 reasons not to pursue an opportunity, ignore them. Remember the bucket of Crab's theory, like where if one crab tries to crawl out, the other is trying pulling back down, like, hey, what do you think you're going, buddy?

Don't be a crab. The second theme is about taking calculated risks and experimenting. If you want to make something happen, like the tagline at the end of the show, you're gonna have to take some risks. Now, I consider myself a pretty risk-averse person.

I don't gamble, I don't play in the stock market, I don't do any crazy high-flying stunts when I go skiing, though to be fair, I've been sky-diving a couple of times, lived to tell about it. The ability to take calculated risks has been absolutely critical. I like to think of certain business or investment risks as experiments, because it makes it feel more sciencey, the word risk sounds dangerous. An experiment, on the other hand, gives you the opportunity to learn something new, no matter what the outcome is.

So in each case above, I had to ask myself, what's the worst thing that could happen? And in every case, the downsides were never life-threatening. We tend to overstate the impact of failure, where the truth is we just dust off and move on. I've made dozens of bad bets to be sure, but I've never made a bet I couldn't afford to lose.

Even if you don't have a side hustle right now, I think your journey into entrepreneurship is already years in the making. That's what I hope to illustrate in this episode. Think of the decisions and events that brought you to today. How can you leverage those into something valuable?

Life is this accumulation of experiences, and I'm confident you can make something happen with what you've already got, with the trades you've already made. That's it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen, and I'll catch you in the next edition of The Side Hustle Show, where you'll hear from some fellow listeners who did just that.

They went out and made something happen based on what they heard on the show. It's our special 300th episode edition. You won't want to miss it. I'll see you then.

Hustle on. Thanks for listening to The Side Hustle Show at www.sidehustlenation.com. Hey, you still with me? Speaking of making something happen, you can wear a reminder of that call to action with the all new official Side Hustle Nation T-shirt.

Check it out at mshshirt.com. msh from Make Something Happen. There's actually no Side Hustle Nation branding on it. It just says, make something happen.

mshshirt.com. Cheers.