All Work and No Play Inspires Nurses to Hustle

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hey you guys, what's up? It's Chris Guillebeau, really excited about today's episode. I've been having a good time reading the notes and making some edits of this one. Today we're gonna look at the booming industry of children's toy reviews on YouTube. Now YouTube reviews in general can be lucrative, at least for people who choose their topic wisely, find a unique way to connect with viewers, and then doggedly produce video after video.

Does all that sound easy? Well, it shouldn't, it's not easy. But as I said, it can be lucrative for the right person. So how about an example? I think you're gonna love this one.

When two colleagues discover the cash potential hidden in your toddler's toy chest, they trade in their scrubs for Play-Doh and Frozen figurines, bringing in six figures their first year. That's right, we're talking about two nurses who made six figures their first year making YouTube videos about children's toys. It's just incredible. Once they figured out how it works in the best formula for their success, every day more than $500 is added to their bank account. And it grew from there.

So how did they do it? What did they learn? And what do you need to know if you want to try this in your own way or in your own topic, your own field? All those answers are coming your way starting in 30 seconds. [Music]

If you're a parent, odds are you've grown accustomed to children's programming.

You know the struggles of Peppa the Pig. You've reminisced over episodes of Barney. Maybe you've even sunk into singing the clean up song and clapping your hands in time in order to encourage your kiddos to pick up their toys. But every now and then, most capable bill paying parents want to watch their own shows. Shows that don't come with sing-alongs that stick in your head for weeks.

And that's when parents do that thing they swore they never would, hand over their phone or tablet. You see, young kids may not be able to read, spell, or even locate the search bar with those sticky little fingers, but somehow they will inevitably stumble on the Baby Shark music video. And with this expansion into the vast world of YouTube, your child will likely find their way to a whole new kind of channel, specifically for kids. Those channels are about toy reviews and reveals. This is where two full-time ICU nurses in Houston, Texas unearthed a massively successful side hustle.

All this time, it was hiding in your kid's toy chest. Who knew? These two nurses are named Nat and Essie, and they met when Nat was a new graduate going through training at a local hospital. Essie was the nurse in charge of making sure that she stuck patients with the pointy end of the needle. You could say it was friendship at first stick.

They worked well together and became fast friends even after they ended up in different departments. As many of us might imagine, being a nurse is stressful. By the end of 2014, both Nat and Essie were feeling burned out, and so they started planning an escape route. Throughout the week, they were constantly coming up with ideas for a side hustle. They would take those ideas to the other for approval, but each time, the idea was shot down for one reason or another.

Maybe the logistics were too complicated. Maybe it would take too much time and energy from them, or in some cases, the idea just didn't make the cut because there was no clear path from idea to action. But persistence paid off because they finally landed on a winning idea. That idea was toy reviews. Nat had found an article about a YouTube creator who was bringing in a whopping $4 million a year unboxing and playing with toys on YouTube.

After toiling for years as ICU nurses, adding a little fun to their lives seemed like a great idea. If they were gonna do this properly, they needed the right gear, so they dipped into their savings to buy a new laptop, a whole mess of lighting equipment, and of course, some of the hottest toys on the market. All in all, Nat and Essie invested just a little over $10,000 into their channel, which they called Toys Unlimited. Then, with determination and more persistence, Nat and Essie got to working hard with kids' toys. When they weren't bedside checking vital signs, they were poring over popular toy channels.

Before long, and to the dismay of their husbands, they knew an abundance of sing-along songs by heart. They focused on what was working for channels they hoped would one day be their competition, and they used that to develop their strategy. Whenever possible, they tried to find ways to do it better. One of the things they discovered was that absolutely nothing was more popular than Play-Doh surprise eggs. So for those of us without small children, here's a quick explanation of how that works.

You can see all these videos on YouTube if you want. Channel creators were taking giant plastic eggs filling them with toys, and then covering them up with layers of Play-Doh decorated with much-loved characters. And then, on camera, they would take the Play-Doh they had just painstakingly put together, tear it all apart, and open the eggs to reveal the toys. At the time, the movie Frozen was a big, big deal. Actually, correction, it's still a big deal.

Come on, guys, can we just let it go already? And Nat and Essie were milking whatever they could from the Disney Frozen craze, including making their first video an Olaf Play-Doh surprise egg video, something that combined two huge crazes into one neat little egg-shaped package. But wow, was it time-consuming? Following the creation of that first Play-Doh egg, they decided to outsource more of their creative efforts to their husbands. And their real big break was when they tackled the insane idea of creating Paw Patrol Play-Doh eggs for all six characters.

Paw Patrol, by the way, is an animated series about six rescue dogs. Other channels were doing one big egg reveal, but nobody was taking on the gargantuan task of creating eggs for all characters of any given show. The video they made was just under 13 minutes, the perfect length for a toddler snack break, and today it has over 6.7 million views. At this point, they really started to see the fruits of their labors. Within the first six months, Nat and Essie more than made back their initial investment, and by pushing out videos consistently on a daily basis, they were making $500 a day by the end of their first year.

They're getting paid through advertisements, basically. If you ever watch YouTube videos, you know that there's a little pre-roll ad that comes up, while the content creator gets paid a cut of that money. They cleared six figures their first year, but that was still just half of what they were making at their day jobs when they divided it up between them. Still, it was encouraging enough for Essie to quit her day job and focus her efforts on their channel full-time. Six months later, Nat did the same thing, and they've since seen their channel reach some pretty amazing heights.

They finished 2018 making substantially more than they ever did as full-time nurses, and their subscriber list has soared to over 6.8 million people. Now, this is a truly incredible story. It really is fantastic, but as always, we like to look at what is challenging or what is difficult, so being a public figure on a platform like YouTube hasn't been all fun and games. They say it has its challenges just like any other project. For example, since they started, YouTube's algorithm has undergone several changes.

They meant they had to adjust the way that they present their content. Whenever that happens, it can be really stressful because they're used to getting a lot of views for each video. All of a sudden, they're not. They have to make some changes and figure out what the system likes now. They've also had concerns and problems with privacy and online harassment, so they've chosen to remain anonymous about their real identities.

Those challenges aside, it's going really, really well, and they still have a hard time believing they're making such a good living, having so much fun. [Music]

All right, so right after this episode, I'm gonna go and start my own toy review channel. I mean, I'm probably not going to, but I'm seriously tempted. Pretty amazing business that they have. Go and take a look at some of their YouTube stuff.

They actually have the Toys Unlimited channel. They also have Toys Unlimited Stories, Toys Unlimited Junior. They're just doing a fantastic job putting out videos every single day, and they're very, very successful doing so. Now, we did get some advice from them because the market has changed significantly since they first went into the toy hustling game. So the advice they have, if you really wanna start a toy channel of your own, and you could probably apply this advice to other fields, by the way, but specifically toy channels, narrow down to a very specific niche with a lot of traction.

And if you wanna start a YouTube channel in general, stay on top of growing trends before the market becomes saturated. It takes a ton of time, work, energy, but persistence can take you a long way. They also noted with YouTube's new monetizing rules, if possible, you should try to build an audience before you build a channel. So in other words, if you're doing pretty well in another social media channel, for example, Instagram or wherever else, or if you have an email list, or if you have an audience anywhere else, see if there's a way you can convert some of that audience into your YouTube channel, because that will help you get in the good graces of YouTube, get some attention, and be able to enter their monetizing programs. Okay, that's about all I have to say today, because it's just an awesome story.

We're gonna link it up in the show notes, go and check it out. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Those notes are at sidehustleschool.com/755. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back again tomorrow.

This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]