This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, hello, what's up? Welcome back to Side Hustle School. Hey, my name is Chris Guillebeau, and we're gonna kick off a brand new week today, episode 436 of the show. And despite the fact that we're on episode 436, once in a while, a story comes across my desk that stands out as something I've never heard of before. And just think about that.
More than 400 episodes, yet there are still new ideas and unconventional side hustles that people like you are coming up with. Today, naturally, is one of those stories. And it just so happens that today is National Plant of Flower Day. That's right, true story. Everybody's supposed to go out and plant a flower, or at least this is supposed to celebrate those who do.
Who knows? But today we're gonna talk about planting something else. It's not vandalism, it's a $15,000 a year yard-gram hustle. What does that even mean? Well, have you ever wanted to buy a set of plastic pink flamingos and plant them in strangers' yards late at night?
Well, of course you have. That's every child's dream. And in this story, you'll hear how a Pennsylvania teacher does exactly that and actually gets paid for it. That story is coming right up. [Music]
Imagine waking up on your birthday.
You walk out of your bedroom and notice something through the window. When you look closer, you see happy birthday written in big, bold letters on your lawn, surrounded by a bunch of bright pink plastic flamingos. At first, you think, what in the world? And then you can't help but smile. This is the experience that Anthony Arno's side hustle, Yard-Grams, facilitates over a dozen times each month.
Why send a card when you can decorate the yard? The idea for Yard-Grams came from Anthony's wife. For one of her birthdays, before they had met, her friends had decorated her yard with pink flamingos and a personalized message board. Coming from the bustle of New York City, this idea of yard decorating was a new one for Anthony, but he couldn't get it out of his head. He thought it could be a fun, viable side hustle in their rural region of Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
So he set up a basic website, created a PayPal invoice template, and launched yard-grams.com a couple of weeks after having the idea. When he then received his first order just a few days later, he still didn't have his first display. He raced to the local cutout display company, which apparently that's a thing. We'll have to profile the local cutout display company in another episode. Anyway, Anthony goes there and buys 20 cow signs with lawn stakes and a large A-frame message board.
Then he writes the message, "Holy cow, look who just graduated high school," and set up the entire display late that night. He made $110 in that first two-day rental, which he thought was pretty great. So Anthony began creating more displays. On average, these displays cost about $300 to make. They all include 20 display items, a personalized message board, big two-foot letters spelling out happy birthday, or whatever the message is, delivery and pickup, and two full days of display time.
Each new display was paid off after just three rentals, and the rentals continued to come in. In less than a year, Anthony was setting up five displays a month, resulting in just over $500 a month in income. Anthony is a school teacher, and in less than a year, he was setting up five displays a month, resulting in just over $500 a month in extra income. And then winter rolled around. He began to notice that the ground was getting harder and harder as the temperature dropped in the evenings.
His stakes were no longer going on their own, and he couldn't do it earlier in the day because he was a teacher, and the whole point of the project was to be a surprise. So he eventually bought a drill to put holes in the recipient's yard. Problem solved. After being open another year, he doubled his business and began seeing an average of 10 orders a month. Anthony attributes his slow, steady success to a few things.
First of all, his displays are quite noticeable, that's the point, and they generate a lot of word-of-mouth buzz. If you see a bunch of pink flamingos on your yard or a bunch of fake cows, wouldn't you talk about it? Second, he began offering free yard grams to returning military members and anyone celebrating their 100th birthday. This brought him some local press and a lot of respect. As you might suspect, over the past three years, Anthony has had a number of interesting experiences.
At one point, his late-night visit attracted the attention of the local police department, and he had to explain why he was drilling holes in someone else's yard. Another time, the recipient thought the yard gram was from a former college stalker, and she destroyed the display. It was, in fact, just a friend who had set up the yard gram, so she eventually paid for the damages. Yard grams has also facilitated some pretty rewarding moments. Anthony welcomed home a young child adopted from China.
He helped a husband give a surprising gift to his terminally ill wife. He created a display as a memorial to a recently passed grandmother. And some of his customers have even been people in Europe ordering yard grams for their friends and loved ones in the United States. Anthony is still going strong. He's receiving a steady 10 to 15 yard gram orders a month.
That means he spends a lot of late evenings at a stranger's house, but it also means at least $1,000 a month in additional income. He knows it would be difficult to scale this kind of business, but he's not worried about that. He's also got another project in the works. He's now preparing his own ebook, podcast, and consulting business that will help others launch their own yard decoration side hustle. So hey, if you're still looking for your idea, and you wanna get into the pink flamingo rental business, look no further than the yard grams expert.
You could even say it's a sign. Maybe a sign of the times, or if you were looking for a sign, this is it. Well, in my detailed research for this episode, I realized I had to understand or at least look up what a group of flamingos is called. Maybe that's a good little pop quiz question for you out there. Do you know what a group of flamingos is called?
I think I said bunch of flamingos earlier, which is admittedly generic. Then I was thinking, okay, if I had to guess, I would say flock, right? Like flock of flamingos, nice alliteration to it. But are you ready for it? It is in fact a pat of flamingos.
Isn't that strange? Like who comes up with these things? Anyway, there is your fun fact for the day. A group of flamingos is called a pat. Also it's national plant of flower day.
Just look at all the things you're learning outside of school. And of course we should say congrats to Anthony. What a crazy, creative, unconventional little business. It's so fun. There's some great photos on his website.
We'll link that up in the show notes. I also think it's cool that now that he's been doing this for a while, he's making this natural transition to teaching the business, showing other people how to do this kind of thing. Not everything has to be scalable. It can be fun to just put pink flamingos in people's yards and get paid $1,000 a month for it. But I also like how he's thinking beyond that to the point where he might actually earn some passive income from this new business.
So we'll have to follow up on that and see how it goes. I hope you enjoyed this one. Don't forget inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. To find the flock of show notes for today's episode, or wait, is it a pat of show notes? We'll have to research that.
Just come to sidehustleschool.com/436. Thank you for listening. I will be back tomorrow. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
