This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, what's up? This is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School, where every day there's a different story of someone who starts a hustle without quitting their job. Now, I personally really like today's story because it reminds me a lot of my own early experience in side hustling. This story is about a government analyst who goes from collecting frequent flyer miles to collecting money through a reselling side hustle.
Now, I was never a government analyst. I never really had a job, but that's a story for another day. But when I was 20 years old, I got started with side hustling when I discovered I could buy items in stores or from distributors online and then resell them in online auctions and make a profit from that. And so I learned by doing and by experimenting, which is exactly what you'll hear about today. And I'll tell you all about that in just a moment.
And now today's story. [Music]
Trevor Mountcastle's first side hustle had nothing to do with money. Or at least money wasn't the goal. Trevor is an avid frequent flyer and travel hacker who's always on the lookout for creative strategies to earn more points than miles. A few years ago, he discovered a way to buy gift cards on one website where he'd earn a big bonus, then buy clothes on another website to resell at equal value.
It may sound like a lot of work, but there was a valuable reward attached to it. The points and miles he's earned have allowed him and his wife to see more than 40 countries so far, often in first class. A funny thing happened on the way to Trevor's next airfare upgrade. He started making money. His original goal was just to break even on this little arbitrage operation, selling the items he purchased at close to the same price.
But the more items he bought to resell, the better he became at commanding a higher price. Soon, the miles and points were a nice bonus, but he was also making a nice profit. So he began experimenting, visiting retail stores to buy bulk items, then sending them to a warehouse where they'd be reshipped to end users who purchased online. The work involves lots of tracking and spreadsheets, but Trevor finds it fun. Most of his profit margins are relatively small.
He just sells a lot of items, so the money adds up. But once in a while, he hits on something that brings in a lot of income at once. By day, Trevor is a senior program analyst supporting the federal government. In the first year of this hustle, where he was still figuring things out, he earned about $5,000, which is a great start. But then each year after that, as he's refined and learned more, he's tripled that figure to where it's now bringing in as much money as many people make in a year from their jobs.
Naturally, he still travels. And when he does, he's able to keep the hustle going by focusing on items that he doesn't need to physically collect. [Music]
All right, so let's talk about what we can learn from Trevor's project. Now, the first thing to notice is that this is an all new category of hustle. During the first week, I told you, there are all kinds of different categories.
You can create a product, you can start a service, manufacturing, affiliate, the arts, coaching, et cetera. Well, this is the first time we're talking about something that is a reselling hustle. So Trevor is a reseller or an intermediary or a middleman. And the interesting thing about this project, the way for him to improve it is not through better customer service because he doesn't even know who his customers are most of the time. It's through better research and better systems.
Now, some people will be very much drawn to this kind of hustle, whereas others would absolutely hate it. So this is why your personality matters. It's not just about your skills. It's about how you see the world, how you like to interact and engage with it, what kind of stresses you out versus what actually brings you energy and excites you. So if you're a logical analytical thinker, this kind of project where you're engaging in some sort of arbitrage between prices, this is your thing.
Like this is totally something that you'd be into. Whereas if you're a more creative, right-brained person, not to say that every creative person is right-brained, but if you're not drawn to working with spreadsheets and tracking different prices and all that kind of stuff, then this is not your thing. So essentially what Trevor is trying to do is the same thing that merchants have been trying to do throughout history, which is to buy low and sell high. But he's created this kind of interesting way of going about it, using dropshipping, using a program called Fulfilled by Amazon, and I'll link that up in the show notes if you want to read more. And it's working really well.
And so the other thing that I think the story illustrates is that hustle ideas really are everywhere. And that's my goal through the show is to show you that from fish tanks to buying items solely for the purpose of reselling them, to people you never meet or even know, like there really is a hustle for everyone. There really is something for you. So if you listen to the story and think, well, that sounds kind of crazy, I don't want to do that, well, just keep listening because there might be something that is perfect for you. I hope you enjoyed today's story.
Remember, it may not happen exactly like that for you, but if you listen to these stories, you begin applying them to your own hustle. You will see results over time because inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. If you do want to learn more about the details of Trevor's Hustle, just come to sidehustleschool.com. Every day there's an original post with show notes, links to additional resources. You can find that all right there.
I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. I'll see you tomorrow.
