This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Greetings and welcome back to Side Hustle School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau, bringing you a new story every day about someone creating freedom through a side hustle. Now, in the Side Hustle book, from idea to income in 27 days, I make a distinction between starter ideas and next level ideas. And what I mean is that a starter idea is what most people tend to think of when they think about having a side hustle. If you go out and ask people like in popular culture, hey, what's a side hustle?
The number one thing that comes up is driving for Uber or Lyft or another ride share service. We actually have a lot of ride share drivers who are listening to the show. So shout out to you guys. Thanks for driving me around as well. And I totally recognize that driving for one of these services can offer a flexible schedule, like that's the main benefit, but it's also not gonna help you create an asset.
You're not really gonna make a lot of progress. Your income is essentially capped. You can only earn while you're on the clock and many of the variables are controlled by the ride share company. So that's a starter idea, not a bad idea at all. I just think in the long term, you can do better.
So what's a next level idea? Well, next level idea is an asset. It's something that can work for you even when you're not there or otherwise just something that you have ownership of and control over. Because again, starting a side hustle is about creating freedom. Even if you love your job, even if you never want to be a full-time entrepreneur, it's great to have options and it's great to have something you can look at and say, I'm proud of that, I made that.
One of my favorite examples of this principle going from starter idea to next level idea is the story you'll hear today about an engineer in Southern California who drives for Uber on the side, then begins to think bigger. He now earns a six-figure income advising ride share drivers and serving as an industry expert. So as you listen to today's story, ask yourself, how can you go from starter idea to next level idea? And what's your next level idea going to be? And I'll bring you that story in just a moment.
[Music]
Harry Campbell's side hustling life began at an early age. In fact, it started in the high school lunchroom. His mom made the best lunches and the other kids would offer him money for them. So Harry started asking his mom for two bags of chips, two snapples, and sometimes even two sandwiches. He would resell the extra items to his classmates for a hundred percent profit.
His best customer was a girl in English class who bought a bag of chips every day. Later, he became an aerospace engineer working for Boeing. The job paid well, and when Harry started driving for Uber and Lyft on the side, some of his friends and coworkers made fun of him. Why did he need to ferry people around? Well, for Harry, it wasn't so much about the money he earned for each ride.
It was the idea and the opportunity. He started driving in 2015, when the rideshare companies were desperate to sign up drivers and began awarding a lot of incentives for referrals. In fact, the incentives were much more lucrative than the actual driving. He first signed up for Lyft, but then earned $500 for joining Uber and completing a single ride. He also hit the motherload of incentives when Lyft ran a promotion offering new drivers $1,000 for doing one ride, and then paid the referring driver $1,000 as well.
In other words, they were paying $2,000 to acquire a driver who might only work for them once. Sounds like a great use of investor money, right? Well, that's a story for another show. Our story is how Harry took advantage of this. He spent three days trying to convince everyone he knew to sign up.
People told him it sounded like a scam, but it wasn't. He ended up referring 34 drivers and earning $34,000. He also noticed a lot of people were asking the same questions about Rideshare over and over in Facebook groups for drivers, but no one had the definitive answers. There was no single authority. It seemed to Harry that if he could create a resource that answered those questions, it could get people off Facebook and onto his website, making him the authority.
And that's when he started The Rideshare Guy, a website, blog, podcast, and eventually much more. Harry's startup costs to begin driving with Uber and Lyft were $0, since he already had a car and insurance, and his website costs to start The Rideshare Guy were extremely minimal, just a domain, web hosting, and a theme. Today, the site gets hundreds of thousands of visitors a month, and while they've upgraded the hosting, he still runs the same WordPress theme that he paid $50 for when he first started. He says the site badly needs a redesign, but he's also not too worried, because hey, it works. At first, The Rideshare Guy was just another side hustle.
Harry made around $25,000 from it that first year, which was a lot more than he was expecting. But traffic was growing. He was starting to get more media attention, and he figured that if he went full time on the site, the numbers would only get better. So once he was seeing around 100,000 page views a month, he quit his day job. This was before the project was making as much as he did at the job, but he had a good emergency fund saved up, and he was pretty sure he was gonna eclipse his engineering salary within a year.
That's exactly what happened. In his first year of full-time work, the business made over $100,000 in profit, and has only continued to grow. He's now expanded into consulting, advising, advertising, and several other revenue streams. There's a team of two full-time employees and around 10 freelancers who do everything from writing and making videos to virtual assistants and editing. This has all happened in a very short period of time, just a couple of years.
Now, as I said, I think Harry's story is a great example of going from starter idea to next level idea. So I'll come back to that at the end. But first, if you're thinking through this process yourself, he has some advice to you. He said, "I think finding the right side hustle is all about trying lots of different things. It's important to do your research without jumping right in, but at a certain point, you just need to start trying stuff.
That's why I try to take on projects that meet three criteria." And here are his criteria. He says, "First, it has to be something I'm passionate about or interested in, because especially when you're working online, you don't wanna blog about a topic for a year and then make $0 and feel like you wasted your time. In the worst case scenario, you at least wanna be able to look back and say, "I learned a lot and I had fun," regardless of the money. Second, it has to be something that helps other people. It feels good to get emails from people who've listened to his podcast or read an article and talk about how it's helped them in some way.
This can especially help keep you going when you're not making money, but even when you are, it still feels great. And then third, it has to be something that will make money directly or indirectly, at least at some point. He says, "I love what I do, but I wouldn't do it for free. It has to make economic sense." Harry isn't resting on his success. He has a book coming out called "The Right Share Guide." He's expanding to consult with auto manufacturers and public policy experts, and he's planning to host the first ever "Ride Share" conference.
But in non-Ride Share news, his wife is expecting their first child this month. Because of the flexibility that his new work provides, he's planning to take a few weeks off entirely and then work halftime for a couple of months. From the lunchroom where he hustled chips and Snapple to leaving his engineering job to become an expert in a new industry, Harry's willingness to follow his curiosity and experiment has led him to a life where he's fully in control. You could say he's in the driver's seat. And if you need a ride, once in a while, he still turns on his Uber or Lyft app to pick up passengers.
Well, I hope you can see the difference between a starter idea and a next-level idea. I actually got to know Harry a bit after I wrote about him in my last book. One time in Orange County, he gave me a free Uber ride. Well, technically, he dropped me off at my hotel after an event. Unfortunately, there was no referral fee involved.
And speaking of referral fees, I love this whole thing about how he earned $34,000 in three days, referring people to Lyft. You know, to me, this illustrates the side hustle principle of, if you see money lying under a rock, you should pick it up. You don't have to ask too many questions about it. You don't have to wonder if it aligns with the rest of your life and career goals. In his experience, he said some of his coworkers kind of made fun of him when he started driving for Uber and Lyft.
Well, I don't think they made fun of him after he earned $34,000 in three days. I think that's pretty amazing. And even if he never did anything else after that, if he hadn't actually built what is now a real business, employing people, earning six figures, expanding to other revenue streams, that one story still would have been a huge success of its own. And now last but not least, I want to answer the question, why him? Because there are a lot of rideshare drivers.
There already were these Facebook groups. People were asking these questions. Why didn't someone else become the rideshare guy? And I think the answer is somewhat that he was in the right place at the right time. But that's not all, because other people were in that same place at the same time as well.
So the second part of the answer is consistency. He says, since we started the site three years ago, we've posted an article every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. We never miss a day, not for Christmas, not for other holidays, nothing. There's not a single other person in the rideshare industry that has come close to that kind of volume that consistently for three years. So in other words, he was in the right place at the right time, but he also had a good idea, he was willing to experiment, and he put some effort into it.
He didn't just snap his fingers, he got to work. And now he's enjoying the freedom and security that comes from putting in that work. So whatever your situation is over there, I hope that you're looking for ideas. I hope that you're willing to experiment and put in the work. Remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.
If you'd like to learn more about Harry's work and the rideshare industry in general, just come to sidehustleschool.com/375. That is for episode 375. We too are going strong every day here on the show. If you'd like to check out our all new training program and online community, come to sidehustleschool.com/society. Registration is open for a limited time only.
And if you think it's a good fit, if you need some support for your hustle, I would love to personally welcome you to it. If it's not a good fit, well, please continue to enjoy the free show every day. It is my honor and privilege to bring you these stories. I've got another one coming up tomorrow and every day after that. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
[Music]
