764: 17 Surprising Businesses That Can Make Millions

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Just go to Indeed.com/podcast and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed, sponsored jobs. Here are some surprising business ideas that can make millions. What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to The Science Hustle Show because your 9-5 may make you a living, but your 5-9 makes you alive. We've got some wild ones to share today. And to help me out, he's the author of The Family First Entrepreneur. He built Not 1-2, super successful side hustles before leaving his day job. The creator behind the My Wife Quitter job, website podcast and YouTube channel, Steve Chu. Welcome back to The Science Hustle Show. What's up, Nick? It's been a while. It's been a hot minute since I've been on and likewise. It has been a minute. We got to rekindle the business idea donation series that we had going a couple years ago. Yeah, they always do well on my channel, too, actually. So, yeah, we should do more of them. Very good. The first one that you actually found, you actually found most of these, and I'm inspired by all of them, is Gourmet Krab Food, which I did not know was, I don't know, people kept these as pets, but apparently there's a big enough market to support this company called Snout and Shell. That tells Gourmet, Hermit Krab Food. Yeah, so this is my buddy, Meg. I met her at my annual e-commerce conference at Sellers Summit, and she wanted to get into the pet space, but like all the mainstream pets are like super saturated, you know, like dogs, cats. And so she found Hermit Krab Food, and it's actually really lucrative, because really it's just a bunch of really inexpensive items that Hermit Krab's consumer turns out. And it's all how you frame it. Yeah, seafood critters, seaweed, and flowers. Exactly. And you know what's funny is the way she's been marketing it, and I just caught her doing a live on this one. She dresses up as a Hermit Krab. Okay, it gets people's attention. And pitches her product on TikTok, and it works. I mean, it's so niche that she owns the niche. And every pet owner wants to take care of their pets, right? Yeah, you can be a market of one, almost like how many other people are even playing in this space. I have no idea, but I know she's doing pretty well. So clearly there's room in this market. Yeah, selling through her own site. The one that I was a little bit surprised to see not like the subscribe and save on here, on the Shopify store. Obviously, you could do it through Amazon. She's selling through Amazon. She's selling through Chewy as well. Yeah, this is just straight up Add to Cart. I was surprised not to see the subscription bundle here. Since like as long as this Hermit Krab is alive, you're probably going to want to keep feeding it. So that's one area of opportunity. You are correct. She should definitely put the subscribe in there. And then Amazon. Yeah, Amazon gives you kind of a sense of sales volume. It's like you're the best seller. I mean, all these 100 plus baht last month, 400 plus baht last month. So she's moving some product. Oh, she definitely is on Amazon. Maybe Amazon's her main channel actually. But if you just look at the number of reviews that she has 500, think about like maybe 2% of people, 1% leave reviews. Yeah. So just give me an idea of how many sales is she's gotten. Yeah, that is that's wild. We had a guy who similarly like, okay, dogs and dogs and cats maybe is very saturated. Although we found a woman who was doing birthday party planning for dogs, like having over the top, a birthday party for your dog for $4,000 a piece will come and plan this epic party. So there's people play it in the dog space in a creative way. But we had a guy on who was doing, he like invented a better hamster wheel or gerbil wheel. Maybe it was and it was, oh, it's not going to get its paw caught in the little encasement. And so it's not going to break its toe off. And it was like, you know, genuinely, you know, building a better mouse trap and he was having some success with that. So finding some room to play in these niche pet markets and then trying to do some attention getting marketing there. I think probably the bigger opportunities. Well, how do we increase the size of the pot? Like, I need to educate more people that these are easy to care for pets or this is a unique pet to have. This is a conversation starter, like trying to get more people even in this market in the first place. Absolutely. I didn't mean to say that dogs and cats were saturated, but it's sometimes easier to just go after something that's very specific than to just target this like blue ocean and have to face a lot of competition. There's still space in pet products, obviously. But yeah, I like this one. Repelant of shrivel product. Probably lots of repeat customers and high gross margins on it. It's like, what's the price point on it? You know, 15 to 16 bucks a bag here, at least on the Amazon pricing and have to imagine the ingredients don't cost that much. Yeah. Next one was this viral hit from a few years ago called Ship Your Enemies Glitter. And this one, the original owner wasn't really prepared for this viral moment. Like, I can't really handle the fulfillment of this. So, we ended up selling, I think the reported sale was over $80,000. So, really, you know, a quick win, capitalizing on that viral moment, but then the company that acquired it or the new owners have continued its operation and it's still a thing. And I was surprised because when I heard about this, I thought it was pretty hilarious and ingenious, which is why it works. But I was shocked actually to see the website still up. I was looking on the way back machine. They did a couple of redesigns and it actually looks a lot better now. So, I'm pretty sure they're doing pretty well with it. I don't have any published revenue numbers as of late, but it still gets decent amount of traffic. Yeah. The number one prank website on the planet, spring loaded glitter bomb, glitter bomb letters, you know, and all pretty low price points, obviously glitter itself, very inexpensive, you know, and envelope variant expensive. As you go through the flow, you see all sorts of upsells. And really the selling point for this is, we're gonna sell this anonymously, right? I mean, that's kind of the whole thing. Ship your enemies glitter.com is we don't want it traceable back to me. So, very easy, you know, one click upsells here, double the glitter, triple the glitter, you know, you can put all this stuff on the inside of the upsell message inside of your prank. We got you for an extra three bucks. When I first encountered this site, they only had like one product and now they've got all these upsells and a whole bunch of other products as well. So, clearly it's thriving. 275,000 pranks delivered. Crazy, I know. Even if you say, okay, well, the average order is 10 bucks, right? You know, you got to be almost 3 million or something. So, you're doing pretty good. What's so funny is, it's got 4.9 stars. Just curious what some of the reviews say. Yeah, this would be just awful to receive. Some of the reviews are like, oh, it went off in my friend's car. You know, even after getting a detail, she's still finding glitter, it was like, I don't know. Don't be that guy. And if you think about the margins, it's probably like 90%, 95%, I'm guessing. It's just not below with some glitter in it, right? Yeah. I mean, the next one that we have is kind of in a similar space. It's potato parcel as seen on a shark tank, where they'll ship you a potato in a box and they can put your face on it. They can put your message on it. They can add some extra candy to it. And it's just kind of this silliness factor that stands out. It's more unique than getting a card in the mail or getting something. So, this was kind of an interesting one too. Do you remember my pet rock? I never had a pet rock, but I do. I know of the pet rocks. And it's one of those that just makes you slap your head and say, like, well, why didn't I think of that? So that my pet rock went on to make like millions of dollars. And this is the same thing. I was curious because when I was looking at revenue numbers, I couldn't find like more recent revenue numbers for this potato store here. Yeah. But it seems like on the surface based on traffic that it's still doing okay. And having been on shark tank certainly helps. Yeah. It looks like, you know, maybe 20 to 40 dollars per order and similar. As you go through the flow, there's various upsells where it's like the biggest cost is the single fulfillment. And so it's like, okay, do you want to add on a card? Do you want to add on the candy pack? Do you want to add on, you know, the special message? And it's, you know, ding, ding, ding, they get you every step of the way. I mean, all of a sudden now your average order went from the $30 sticker price to, you know, 45 or something. So they do a good job with that. And maybe the bigger opportunity here is like a B2B sales angle, like lumpy mail has always been a thing in prospecting where, you know, if I can cut through the clutter instead of sending a cold email or a cold call, like, look, I literally send a potato to your office. And it says, you know, whatever your value prop is. And imagine somebody is going to be hard to ignore. Somebody's probably going to say, well, okay, I owe it to again, at least get on a call and see what these people are about. I mean, it's definitely unique. And I've noticed since that Shark Tank appearance where they're only doing text, they can now print images onto these potatoes and whatnot also, which just goes to show like these days, I mean, we both get pitches all the time, right, for promotion and whatnot. When someone sends me an email, it tends to go in the trash. But when someone just takes an effort to just even write like a handwritten letter, I will actually open it and read it and consider it and I can only imagine sending a potato would multiply that factor also based on originality for outreach, like you said. Totally. Yeah, we came across a guy whose whole business was basically dropshipping custom cakes and I want to say I was like a hundred bucks a cake but was like a custom sales message or prospecting message on top of it and his gig was I contract with the local bakers to go out and send these cakes to your prospects and you know we just take his 30% margin or whatever it was as like they didn't even have to ship the potatoes or ship the cakes kind of an interesting one on that front. So one that I found that was making a lot of money but sounded kind of stupid was uh it's this cloth it's it's called a pea cloth it's a reusable pea cloth that does not stink and I'm not really a camper or a trail walker but and I would never win in a million years thought of this but it makes a lot of money and it's literally just a piece of fabric that absorbs pea. Yeah this is called kula cloth dot com k u l a and again this is not a product that URI would have come up with as as guys we're just go pee behind a tree and it's going to be fine but for the for the ladies out there it's always a problem for them. Is it just for women and looks like they're doing really well both through their own site and then distribution through REI they've got like hundreds of reviews uh over here on uh on REI. Yeah 275 reviews uh 4.7 stars and it comes in a ton of different designs but like it's literally a fabric square that sells for 20 bucks like this I mean you're in the the fabric business through through bumblebee linens like you know this has got to have insane margins. Yeah the margins on this are probably in pretty insane and the fact that I don't understand it makes it an even better product because that means no one's that there's very little competition in this area. Yeah I like that plus it sells into a niche market outdoors backpacking it's really passionate about what they do like they love investing in you know the latest you know gear and you know anything that's going to make that outdoor experience better. I think the metrics said I don't know where this was from but says over 400,000 units sold at you know 20 to 24 dollars each on their own website they charge seven dollars for shipping too so it's like not even having shipping uh eating into their margins and from what I could find really leaning into influencer marketing trying to find those outdoors and backpacking women influencers and and I imagine sending them free product and getting them to uh rape about it and say I always needed this in my life. I mean you don't even need influencers for this just the product idea in itself is something that would go viral because it's just so random. The other one that uh that you found kind of in uh in a similar vein maybe this is more of a gift idea was paper or stationary made out of uh animal don elephant poop and I think maybe they had cow dung paper too here somewhere where it's like dried cleaned somehow and then pressed you know all of the resulting fibers get pressed into paper and it's not something that anybody necessarily needs in their life right it's like okay 25 dollars for a set of three little notepads or scratch pads but it's like it makes a unique gift or talking point I guess. I mean in reality this company is basically a stationary company right and a lot of people still use stationary this is just stationary with a twist that it's made out of poop and that in itself makes it unique and inherently viral over regular stationary it's like a talking point and that's why it works. Yeah exactly. I just came across someone recently who was like turning shedded deer antlers into decorations and into maybe even like dog shoes but they would pay people to go out into the woods after shedding season to collect them for them because it was kind of a hard to get thing even though it's like well it's a lying for free on the ground but it's like still like uh the collection process was a little more challenging what's interesting about the poo poo paper again poo poo paper dot com was you this is a waste product so if you can take somebody else's waste product and turn it into your product somehow I think that's really really cool and bonus points if you could even get paid to take it away it's a pain point it's a problem for them like dealing with all of this elephant poop or cow poop or whatever and so you can come in and maybe you could undercut their existing service provider and maybe you can get paid to take it away and turn it into a product we'd come across this company a long time ago that was taking leftover scrap food from the grocery store from restaurants where I got tossed out or got expired and they would turn it into compost and they would sell the compost and it was like oh that's a pretty creative thing because there's like this solving a real problem and you know helping reduce waste as well so I think that's kind of a fun one. I would love to see a tour of the factory this poo paper what works a lot of times for e-commerce stores if you show the process of how the product is being made that will greatly improve the conversion rate this is probably one of those products where it'd be really interesting if they showed how all this stuff was made like a video yeah yeah maybe you can go visit and not in Chiang Mai Thailand here exactly oh man it's one of those dirty jobs yeah definitely a dirty job and it's like oh they say it's odor free by the time they get done with it but definitely a unique thing remind me my friend Rob I think he might have sold this business but he would take discarded handbags and sometimes even baseball gloves that look pretty cool and turn them into kind of these upcycled watch straps and did really well you know when the Apple Watch came out because people like didn't like the the default watch strap that it came with and so like oh I could take another piece of leather that is lying around or maybe has a cool logo on it and turn that into a watch strap some I mean there's been a few examples of stuff like this on the show there was somebody selling tumble weeds is like look they're just rolling across the road here in Utah whatever like polywood producers need them as props and I'm happy to give them to them that is hilarious we came across a guy who was like literally selling driftwood it was like look I go pick it up for free I sell it to I don't know high-end aquarium shops maybe it's all sorts of fun stuff if people were doing like fallen branches they had cool looking like in on it I don't know but don't don't overlook kind of like waste products as a as a potential niche there there's a student in my class that turns aluminum cans into like purses and wallets oh okay it's it's pretty interesting same same principle I know anytime you can turn someone else's waste into a profit that is a cool one there was somebody was doing like chain mail out of like the little pop top thing is that similar they were like selling into like a cosplay market uh yeah I never heard of that yeah no that's ingenious I don't know there's there's all these random products I can make money yeah that's kind of fun you found one it was like instant underwear or something yeah I get this one so it's it's literally like this tiny tablet and when you put it in water it expands to like emergency underwear that you can wear is this real or is it like a gag no it's real it's real yeah yeah you throw it in water and expands so it's it's like if you're packing light and you're camping and whatnot throw it in water and expands yeah it looks like an alkycelser tablet yeah it does yeah better to have damp undies than no undies at all okay disposable unisex underpants okay part gag gift part like real thing here I've got more weirdly profitable businesses with steve coming up including the hundred dollar snorkel bowl you apparently dunk your face in hats with built-in beards 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Use code side hustle at Monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core for half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at Monarch.com with code side hustle. Okay, this is one that just kind of shocked me. It's just a bowl that you fill with ice and then you soak your face in it. It's supposed to be good for your skin to reduce inflammation to just dunk your head in ice water. But the reason why this bowl went viral is because there was this whole TikTok thing where people were doing this all together and you had to have a bowl in order to participate in the low inflammation challenge. I'm probably butchering it because it's not something that I would do, but it's literally a bowl that you buy. And you couldn't just use a bowl from your kitchen, like a salad bowl or something. You can, but this bowl is a little bit special in that it's got like this little snorkel on it. Like so what you do is you put this mouth on it so you can keep your face in there for like a couple of minutes and breathe through this little snorkel. Got it. Got it. That's so funny. Our youngest actually does this like when he's overheated or when he's hot, he's like he just makes a bowl of ice water and sits in it like a weirdo. Apparently it's good for his inflammation. Well, now you can get him one with a snorkel and he can soak his head in the water for a long time. It was kind of like a ice bath or a cold blunge, but just for your face. Yes. And $150,000 a month. Wow. So it was making. What a unique trend. That's kind of crazy. And then what you do is you get the bowl and then you film yourself using it and then share it. And then people on TikTok shop were killing it because you attach an affiliate link to TikTok shop and it just blew up that way. Yeah, what an interesting one. If you could be early on one of these trends or maybe even spark the trend yourself with something that sounds scientifically plausible, sure, it's going to reduce inflammation. Okay, yeah, let's do it. I mean, I'm sure it's real, but really you just need a bowl and they were selling these bowls for a lot of money. Yeah, bowl and a snorkel. Yeah, it was I think about a hundred bucks for this snorkel bowl when you could just use a regular bowl. Yeah. When we had Stephen Keon about product licensing, this is kind of one of his creative exercises games where he's like play the the combination factor. Like what if we had a pen that was also a flashlight or a pen that was also a screwdriver? What if we had a bowl that had a snorkel attached and it's kind of like playing random combinations until you find something that wait, that actually might be feasible. So super interesting. I think this next one may fit into that category as well and it is called Cheragami, which is kind of higher end if there is such a thing cardboard furniture for looks like for events mostly like we kind of sell into the conference space if you need a temporary display area for your trade show then why not use our cardboard furniture because it's durable enough for two or three day event and it's a talking point and you don't have to deal with the waste of ordering or renting other furniture because this stuff you just folded up and recycling when you're done. And I know it's meant for events but I actually see this market for college students as well. I don't think I've ever told this story but when I first got out of college I had no money. So my whole apartment was actually furnished with cardboard. So my coffee table was a big box and I had like this made shift like stool and I remember I invited my mom over to visit and she was like you can't live like this. She ended up buying me some furniture but this furniture in this case with Cheragami it actually is functional it actually looks good like if you got white you can even print your own designs and whatnot on it and it's perfectly usable. Actually there's a picture right now it looks like someone's home right. Yeah so they do standing desks they do the stuff so it's kind of this plays in this eco-friendly space plays in kind of this conversation starter space. I do think there was something on this site about we are on pause right now because for whatever reason but we're gonna we're still doing kind of like bespoke design work for your space but I don't know if you can go and order anything right now and well a single sheet of cardboard is fairly lightweight you know once you combine several sheets of this like triple thick cardboard and enough to build a desk out of and you know it's big bulky pieces and so kind of becomes a bulky logistics challenge not just from the shipping standpoint but from the storage standpoint too. I'm sure they're very heavy but they're much lighter than like a real piece of furniture. I actually have a student that sells uh the site is called the cat is in the box and she sells these cardboard boxes decorative cardboard boxes for cats because cats like to hang out in boxes and whatnot and you're correct the shipping costs are enormous and in order for her to stay profitable she had to raise the shipping tremendously almost to the point where it's similar to the cost of the product but in this case the cheragami we're comparing it to like real wood furniture here so I'm positive it ends up being less expensive overall. Yeah I remember I was thinking oh didn't you have a student that was selling like cat cardboard cat castles and interesting looking designs out of the stuff. I mean that's a random product in itself right cat furniture and now she actually makes the bulk of her money selling a cat toy made out of wool that's been a hit for her site. Yeah it was like you know Tibetan Yak wool is something was special about it I remember seeing this. All right so here's one I actually really like this kid I think his name is Michael Satterley he's like a actually I don't know how old he is now but he always comes out with these crazy viral products and then there was this one video he made relatively recently it is literally a 3D printed can holder with a rubber grip and you have to see the video to fully understand the product but the idea is imagine like there's like a coke can in your thing you finish drinking the coke can it's got a hole in the bottom and then you slam it on top of a brand new coke can when you're done with the existing one the empty one flies out of there and then you open it and you drink it again so he had a video basically of him using it and chugging a whole bunch of I don't know if it was beer or a soft drink or whatever but he chugs one and he slams it down the can flies away and he drinks the next one he 3D printed all of these and they sold for a lot of money I think he made 300 thousand dollars in a single month selling these wow we actually come across this kid before because before that he was selling like 3D printed crock charms and that was a headline story of like oh I can make you know 10,000 bucks a month selling crock spurs or a little attachment that looks like an excavator that goes on your toes or like nasty mangled toes gym gym into the front of the crocks so this kid is he's very creative he's very creative and he always has something every single year he's in the news and whenever I see something that he's done I always want to write about it or make a video about it very creative kid yeah I have to imagine that he would make a good guess a teenager film himself using a can cooler to hold the doctor pepper the video got 50 million views on Instagram in his company now makes up to 300 thousand dollars a month this is poor per entrepreneur yeah it's a legit source what a guy 3D printing you guys have a 3D printer we do not I wanted one but my wife has objected to it because the one I want is actually the size of like a refrigerator I want to print bigger things we have the we have the bamboo labs a1 I think it's like kind of an entry level one I think it was maybe in the 400 dollar range and it is running far more than I ever thought it would like my wife studied rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing 3D printing in college and so she was like the she's the leader on this and I don't know really how it works but her and my oldest like they print stuff all the time and they make big ol like you know bling necklaces for sports teams and they have sold stuff like at our local neighborhood vendor fair and sometimes he's like I made 75 bucks or made a hundred bucks this weekend it's like that's pretty cool you know just printing up little fidget toys and stuff and selling to your friends some there's something to that all right Nick I'm gonna I'm gonna take that story I'm gonna present it to my wife because she's like you're just gonna buy this thing and it's gonna sit there and it's gonna be ugly and it's the one that I want is it's literally the size of like a mini fridge but seeing as how you and your family make it and then there's a cool entrepreneurial spin that you just put on it right you and your child sell widgets set at fairs and whatnot that's a great story I mean we probably have a ways to go to break even on it but it's hopefully sparking an interest in CAD design in talking to strangers and selling this stuff like I see some benefits of it and it has gotten way more use than than I thought it would in the neighbors like you know we'll come and print stuff and like it's helpful to be that hub so I'm happy to support that it has gotten more use than I thought it would so this next product I want to talk about I think is ingenious even though it doesn't do anything basically it was this ionic air purifier and this company made one that you hang around your neck and it acts like an air purifier and it really took off because one COVID and then two there's been a lot of wildfires here in California so the ideas it's purifying the air like right next to your face okay okay and sells for 150 bucks it was an Amazon bestseller earlier this year and it can't work you know it just can't work because in order for something to purify it would have to be like right up against your nose but this literally is like a neck that hangs down by you know your neck or your chin but I'm sure it sells because of the fear factor right you don't want to get COVID or you don't want to breathe in smoke there you go that one has 820 bucks 25 reviews yeah you're right if it just dangles down here That's no way that it's getting the air close enough to your face to to do anything yes, and but whatever I'm not a scientist. I don't know, but oh yeah, they have different models I'm not either, but you don't need to be a scientist to know that this thing doesn't work And it plays on the fear they have some really compelling videos where like they just try to scare you with Viruses and smoke and whatnot and then they show their solution pretty brilliant from marketing perspective actually Yeah, I wonder how long the battery in here can't be huge like how long does this even last that I don't know It's ionic, so it probably does not require that much energy. It's not like a fan. Oh Okay, yeah, so basically it's very low air flow trusted by healthcare workers travelers heads of states celebrities teachers young and old We are passionate about keeping you and your family healthier. I know yeah What an interesting thing lab tested. Okay. All right, they're convincing me Gotta get one Like I said the ad is so convincing, right? What what lab, you know, you can put any lab tested testing your garage Technically, that's a lab. So Interesting interesting one now is maybe that's the common theme with a lot of these is they play on to one or more Kind of emotional triggers fear being one But with the glitter bomb. It's kind of like this emotion of revenge or this emotion of like a Novelty or humor factor like the instant underwear and stuff like that Just kind of the the shock and awe of getting a potato. I mean this is kind of another example Where it's just like it's a conversation starter. It's like a wool beanie with like a beard attached to it So it's like semi-functional and like maybe it helps keep your face warm But it's more just for like the ridiculous look of it that this one is my favorite. It's crazy bushy bushy Biker beard where it's not a hugely expensive product to manufacture And it gets people talking like oh, that's that's really unique. I know these guys kill it Also, they were selling like a not this company, but a different company was selling a kids helmet with like mohawk a mohawk on it Oh, yeah to make their kids look cool. I mean, there's all these novelty sort of things that you can do very high margins I'm sure these guys have like 90% margins on what they sell with these beards or at least fake beards Yeah, I like these team kind of themed ones where we can get around We're not going to put a green bay logo on this, but it's very clearly a green and yellow type of thing It's not officially licensed, but it doesn't have to be because it still looks cool You can wear it to the games and keep yourself cold at at lambo there I think that's pretty cool. The issue here is It's kind of a commodity product, right? And so that's why they go out of their way to say we are the original beard head Except no amitations because I have to imagine this just invites knockoffs trying to copy their designs or undercut them on price Well, if you think about it Nick, I'm everything can be knocked off right everything we kind of talked about here today could be knocked off They have a brand in this case because they've been on Shark Tank and they're also constantly turning out new designs and The ones that are being sold on Amazon the knockoffs when I was looking at the reviews They're all like inferior in quality like if you're going to have this beard on your face It's got to be comfortable and not scratchy and whatnot and so I think these guys Don't have that problem. I mean they have problems with knockoffs I'm sure, but it's probably not eating too as much of their business as you might think Yeah, that's great. Keep your face warm while you're skiing multiple use cases Use it while you're tailgating use it at the football game use it while you're out in the mountains. I like it So here's another one of mine. I'm not really a pet lover I've never had a dog or whatnot, but this company sells protective sunglasses for their dogs And I didn't know that dogs had vision issues. Do you have a pet Nick sadly? We lost the side hustle shit to a couple years ago Oh, no, oh no, but anyway, I didn't realize that the market for dog sunglasses would be so large I mean these guys are killing it. It's a it's a multi-million dollar business And not only does it look cool on your dog because you want to take a photo of your dog wearing sunglasses But apparently there are some benefits to and they cite it on their site Uh from veterinarians. I think it's called doggles if you're looking for right now Oh, I feel like I've seen these at REI too They've been featured in Time magazine I believe as well. Yeah, so if you're going to go into the uh dog or cat market come up with something unique and interesting here. So goggles or sunglasses for dogs. Oh my gosh. Look at this guy. He's so cute I know the pictures are awesome and and that in itself sells it And anytime someone posts on Instagram their pet wearing these sunglasses goes viral Yeah, I'm impressed maybe more impressed that the dogs keep them on like it may It must really help kind of their eye comfort otherwise. I could imagine they was shake it off So we get this they have prescription doggles. Oh, so imagine getting like an eye exam for your dog and getting prescription glasses I again, I don't have a pet so maybe this is the case I know pets their vision does degrade over the years Yeah, gosh, that feels like the least the puppy ophthalmologist feels like the least recession proof thing but I don't know people will spend money on their pets exactly and that's why it works More with Steve in just a moment including the company selling $250 stuffed animals a backyard chicken rental service pulling in a reported $17 million a year in the retailer that turns your lost luggage Into a million dollar business all that and more coming up right after this I found there are two types of people those with more business ideas and they have time And those who find themselves kind of sitting and waiting for the perfect idea to follow their lap And I've been both in my career though lately definitely more of the former But if there's a common thread among side hustle show guests It's that they took that first step before they felt truly ready before it felt perfect So if you've been kicking around an idea let this be your permission slip to launch Our partner Shopify makes it easy to look professional and polished right out of the gate Even if you still got some doubts behind the scenes every hero needs a sidekick and for millions of businesses It's Shopify handling payments tracking inventory and helping convert up to 36% more sales with their shop pay checkout Launching before black Friday means you can take advantage of the extra online traffic If you're ready to launch your business before black Friday go to shopify.com/side hustle to start your free trial That's shopify.com/side hustle go to shopify.com/side hustle today to hear your first Isn't that really where you should be spending your time as a business owner That one line was a pretty effective sales pitch for me in bringing on some help in the topic area of my business And they were right that task wasn't where I should have been allocating my limited hours And if I had to guess you probably shouldn't be in the weeds with payroll processing payroll tax deadlines or other administrative To do's either that's where our partner gusto comes in gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses It's all in one remote friendly and incredibly easy to use so you can pay higher on board and support your team from anywhere Wouldn't it be sweet to automate this stuff payroll tax filing simple direct deposits health benefits 401k's offer letters onboarding docs gusto does it all and you don't pay a cent until you run your first payroll try gusto today at gusto.com/side hustle and get Three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/side hustle one more time It's gusto.com/side hustle You got another pet one. This was called cuddle clones where we will make a plush replica we'll turn your dog or cat or other pet into a custom Stuffie and they're really well done and for that reason they're like hundreds of dollars, but they look really really similar like check out some of these like how close they can get it It's wild. I know. I don't know how I'd feel about this, but again I'm not a pet owner, but would you want an exact clone of one of your deceased pets? I mean apparently the market says yes, but Yeah, and it's another one that sells to that emotion of grief and loss and it's like, okay, I could still cuddle this thing You know, they've been in business since 2009 Thousands and thousands of five-star reviews. So they're doing something right clearly a market for for this Wow, yeah, this one kind of looks like our Our shit, too. It's a golf club cover It's kind of amazing. Are you tempted to get one Nick or kind of want this though. That's kind of cute The I don't know like having a full-size replica like I think that might just make me sad like That around but that's not something. Yeah, yeah, I don't know if I want that constant reminder, but they do They're all really well done. This is their Instagram with over half a million followers So it seems like social is a big big channel for this cuddle clones business People are less price sensitive when they're gifting when they're grieving when they're dealing with kind of an emotional Time of their life and so the price point on these are like 250 bucks And up and so they're doing reported tens of millions of dollars in sales for these cuddle clones So it's a it's a big business. This next one I love It's personalized letters from Santa we both have kids sometimes your kids will not listen to you But they might listen to Santa and so the idea here is you pay this company and then they deliver a letter In like a sanathemed thing and it's stamped like from the north pole and you can have it right whatever you want It was doing really well There's a few companies that appear to be doing it this one has Been in business for since the 50s for 13 bucks That's very cute because the kids they're starting to get on to it They're like, "Well, that looks suspiciously like your handwriting or that looks like mommy's handwriting." That window is rapidly closing for us anyways, but this is cute. It's a cool idea. I wonder if you could pivot it to other holidays or letters from the Tooth Fairy or something. Whatever game you want to play. Yes, the Tooth Fairy, yes. That was the next one I was thinking. But then they demand money and cash, right? Why not as well as San? Yeah, Tooth Fairy, yeah, Easter Bunny or something like that. These are so fun. I love finding crazy businesses like this. This next one you had was a backyard chicken rental service, which we actually had a side hustle show listener doing this on a small scale in, I want to say Sonoma County, and it was kind of like training wheels or trial run. Like, "Do you really want to commit to the full coop and chicken lifestyle or however long these birds are going to be alive?" Maybe, but if you could do a trial run for a season first for $5 to $700 like this company charges. And that feels like less of a commitment and they say that a good chunk of the renter is more than half end up adopting the ends after their term is up. It's almost like a rental owner chicken program. It is. And I actually feel that way about like just pets in general, right? Like, my kids have always wanted a dog. If there was a dog rental service where you could just rent it for like a month and if it was just too much work, you could return it. I think it's the same principle here with the chickens. I was actually tempted for chickens. Have you ever had like an egg that was freshly laid before Nick? There's so much better. So much better than the store eggs. So much better. I came and described it if you guys have never had one, but I was tempted at that point to get a chicken. It's like a bright orange yolk instead of like a nasty, dull, yellow yolk. And it's so much more flavorful. Yeah, this is rentthechicken.com doing a reported 17 million a year, which actually feels high because average price 0.500 bucks a rental. That'd be 34,000 rentals a year or so. I don't know. It doesn't seem like they have that many look. I mean, there are a lot of locations. Well, they also sell stuff too, I think. Okay. Yeah. So there's more than just the rental fee going in here. And it's like a marketplace where if you have a lot of chickens, you can kind of claim a territory. It sounds like maybe almost a franchise situation. Nobody in the base. Steve, this is open for you and open. This is your next slide hustle. We came up across a chicken sitting service, which I think is actually probably on the menu of service offerings here too. Where if you're going out of town and you want to make sure the chickens come in and come out, like we'll come to your house. We'll let them out. We'll clean out the coop. And maybe it was like a one time coop cleaning fee. So you know, going after these maybe smaller or more niche pet markets, like that seems to be a trend here in this episode too. Yeah. Hermit crabs, chicken reptiles. Yeah, dog goggles, all sorts of stuff. Custom plushies going back to like the emotion of losing a pet. But we had years ago come across somebody selling pet headstones on Etsy custom engraved sand blasted headstones. And I was like, well, that's kind of a unique memorial for your deceased pet. There's a huge market there. I can kind of come up with a unique angle to it. I mean, people have been selling upgraded products for humans as well. Like earns jewelry with with their ashes because that market hasn't really changed that much in years. And it's it's right for destruction. Yeah. All right. You got any other ones? I don't know what the revenue numbers on this last one are, but I get it. It is a smart toilet paper dispenser. Maybe if you bring that up on Amazon, but basically it tracks like roll usage. I don't know if you have this problem with your kids, but like my daughter, she'll go through like a roll a day. Whereas like a roll asked me like a long time. And so I've always wanted to track the two kids share a bathroom, but I'm pretty sure it's my daughter. I've always wanted to track how much toilet paper they use. I do a daily dashboard of usage to your phone. You can configure it so that it only dispenses a certain amount per X number of minutes to conserve. Oh, guys, yeah, you're over your limit. You're going to have to wait. Remember during COVID when toilet paper was scarce? Yeah. I was rationing that stuff, right? And this will train your child to ration the toilet paper or your smells. Okay. It got knocked off. You have to find the original one that has sold like probably tens of thousands of units. Yeah, there's so many knockoffs now. Yeah, none of these have tons and tons of reviews, so I'm not sure. And maybe the pivot is, well, what other things would you like to kind of keep tabs on in a unique way? What that would be in your household, but pain, what are they saying? Necessity is the mother of invention or something. So I think there's something to that. This last one that you found was a really interesting find with a really unique moat around it too. It's called unclaimedbagage.com. And this is the only nation's only retailer for lost luggage. So they have these contract relationships, multi-year contracts with the airlines and with the train system and the bus system. Like if people leave their logs behind, we can't track down the owner. Well, eventually it's going to end up in the hands of unclaimedbagage.com. They have a big retail store, I think in Alabama. And then they sell online. I imagine they sell through their own website and probably through eBay as well to try and turn this stuff over. But you got to imagine acquiring inventory for very cheap and maybe even getting paid to take it away in some cases. This is not our business. We're trying to fly people from point A to point B. We don't want to deal with all this extra stuff hanging around the hangers and the warehouses. Take it off our hands and here you go. We'll clean it up and we'll get it sold. I think it's an ingenious business. And you're right, it's got a pretty big moat because it's all about relationships. And so they basically own this niche. Down at the bottom, like a medieval night's helmet. Yeah, there's some random stuff in there too. A bare-pelt camera from the space shuttle. Some of this stuff actually has real collectible value kind of bummed it didn't get back to the hands of the original owners. Funny, I was at this conference last month. I was at Fincon and I had to leave in a hurry and I left my Kindle on the nightstand. I realized my mistake like 15 minutes after I left. So I called the front desk and they're like, well, here's what you do. You got to go to I left my stuff.com and I was like, I'm sorry, what? They're like, I left my stuff.com and you fill in this number, you punch in the name of the hotel. You know, what your room number was and if we find it, we'll call you or you'll get an email from us. It's like, okay, I don't feel very confident about this. But I fill in the thing and they're like, we never found your item. And then a few days later, they're like, we found a black and white swimsuit from a room that wasn't yours with a guest name. That's not you. It's like, did somebody else get the email from my Kindle? Like, I'm happy to pay the shipping. I just want that back. But I wonder if I left my stuff.com is maybe a variation for this. And maybe they contract with the hotels for the left behind stuff and they are going to resell that on their own. Yeah, and it's convenient that they didn't find your Kindle. Yeah, I was such a bummer. I was like, my flight's about to board. Otherwise, I'd come back and get it because it's so close to the airport. But that was a bummer. According to the unclaimed baggage site, I mean, a lot of this stuff is probably not really sellable. I don't know what brand this is. Like, who's going to buy somebody else's used sweatpants or something? I don't really know. So they said, you know, a third of it does get sold. A third gets donated and a third gets, you know, quote unquote, recycled, which is probably euphemism for getting dumped in the trash. But we had a woman on juice actually out in your area, Steve. And she was the Bay Area's e-waste recycler and started out going to building partnerships, you know, first with homeowners and then with local tech companies to get their used equipment when they were upgrading laptops or something. You know, she would come in and collect that stuff, starting out for free. Like, we'll just take it off your hands, we're upgrading and then I think now she's got to pay for the inventory a little bit. But she was one of the biggest sellers on eBay. You can check it out. It's like Angie's Green Go surplus. It's like one of the biggest eBay stores on the planet in like really unique way to acquire inventory and probably ripe for replication in your area. Something like that doesn't exist. So I thought that was pretty creative. Along those same lines, like in the Bay Area, with all these offices closing, because during COVID, like people didn't want to go to the office. So they had all this furniture to liquidate and all these furniture liquidators sprung up here in the Bay Area. So there's no reason to pay for office furniture at full price. You just go to one of these surplus stores and they have relationships and they chase down all these companies that are about to close their offices. Yeah, we did this episode with Shannon Jean earlier this year and he's like the liquidation auction flipping guy. It was so eye-opening because he was just like screen share. Like here's the Costco return palette for whatever thing. And it's like, you know, it sells for $12,000. But the retail on this is $95,000. And it's like, if you could ship it, if you have a place to store it, like I have to imagine there's profit in there somewhere. And it was just like he was just going down the list of here's Costco, here's Target, here's Walmart, here's all the stuff you can get. Here's the manifest of what's included so you can kind of do your diligence and research. Like, oh, what do I think I can flip this for? It was super, super eye-opening. I'll link that up in the show notes. Steve, as always, this has been fascinating. What are you working on these days? You got the book. You got the YouTube channel. What's been a focus for you? So what I've been doing is automating everything in my businesses with AI. Specifically, Cloud Code and a little bit of Codex, it has been a game changer for everything that I do. And it has allowed me to focus even more on my lifestyle and automate a lot of the annoying tasks with my business. Do you have an example of something that was fun and easy to automate? Well, these days when I put out in content land, my YouTube scripts, I have had AI trained exactly on the way I write. And now, so what I do is I just turn on the mic and I just kind of dictate what I want the video to be about and whatnot and outcomes. script that is probably about 85% of the way there and I do the final edits and it's just really sped up content creation. Likewise for social media that post gets broken up, that transfer gets broken up into TikToks, LinkedIn posts, Facebook posts, Twitter threads, kind of all in my voice. It's been great for me. Yeah, this has been something that I've been working on over the course of the last year too. It's taking bits and pieces of the podcast production process in my case and trying to find little opportunities to automate and AIFI different pieces that. It's re-energize me for the business in a way. It's like do the thing once and maybe not have to touch it again or like you said, maybe it's like the only have to do the 15% at the end instead of the whole part and saving my team time as well. So I think it's very empowering what you can do right now. It's pretty exciting. I mean the most recent big deal that's happened is now AI is now editing my shorts. Like AI is editing the videos. It's gotten that good now. It's nuts. What tool do you use for that? Just Cloud Code. Cloud Code and hyperframes. Oh, like you built your own editor? Well, no. I mean, I built is a very strong term. I said, "Cloud, I need you to edit this video, put captions and everything and it does it." Oh, okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. You should try it, Nick. It's a game changer. Yeah, that's on my list is to start playing the short form game and the clipping game a little bit better and trying to get more mileage out of the content that we're already creating. So that may be a path forward versus I don't know. You ever mess around with like Opus or anything else for Clips? Opus doesn't do a good job in my opinion. At least not for my stuff. It might work well for other people. Yeah. I've actually trained Cloud Code to take clips now to my specifications and think about like Opus Clip where you can actually customize it the way I have it built. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, very cool. It's obviously working well. My wife quit her job is over half a million subscribers on YouTube. If you have been inspired by any of the examples that we shared, I want to invite you to hit up my wife, Quit her job. Check out the free six day mini course on how to start your own online store. Lots and lots of fun. This is Steve's fifth appearance on the show dating back to 2015. In the past few years, we've been doing some business idea donation episodes. Those are six five seven five sixty three and five thirty in your archives. Those were a lot of fun. I invite you to check those out if you like kind of the brain dump of, oh, I wish this existed in the world or somebody ought to build this or here's a pain point of mine. I think somebody could run with that. That's what we did in those episodes. Lots of fun. Maybe take one of those ideas to run with them. Big thanks to Steve for sharing his insight and all these fun examples. Once again, thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. SideHustleNation.com/deals is where to go to find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That is 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 SideHustle Show. Hustle on.