This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
All right, friends, welcome back to an edition of Weekend Workshop. This is an all-new segment we're doing for 2025. It's all about helping you learn the key steps to a new side hustle, one step or concept per week. It includes activities, examples, and more, and of course, it's all free. Today's topic is on the power of observation, and I'm calling it beg, borrow, or steal ideas.
We're going to be using the book Side Hustle from Idea to Income in 27 days. That's kind of the text for this series, but if you don't have the book, that's okay because I'm taking you through those key steps along with listener stories and examples throughout the year. All right, so as noted, the power of observation today, and our learning objective is learn to generate profitable side hustle ideas by observing problems and opportunities in everyday life. Our core idea is that side hustle ideas are everywhere. There's so many different things you could do for your first or your second or your 100th side hustle, but most people kind of walk right past these opportunities all the time.
The key is to train yourself to spot opportunities hiding in plain sight. Now, there are three main types of side hustles. This is going to help you as you develop the power of observation. First one is selling products, whether physical or digital, you're creating or sourcing something that customers can buy. Could be digital items, could be physical items like jewelry or something else, imported goods.
Your role is connecting items with buyers who want them. Second type of side hustle is providing services, some type of service using a skill or time to help others. Could be tutoring, consulting, dog walking, designing websites, any task that people pay for your expertise or availability is the product. The third category is being a middleman or a middlewoman if you prefer. Sometimes the biggest opportunities come from improving an existing process.
This includes revenue models like affiliate income. You're not creating products or directly serving customers, you're making connections or fixing inefficiencies in a way that makes money. Let's give you a couple of examples here from these categories. Dan worked as a database programmer, Dan Cadum, I believe. He noticed many professionals struggled with Microsoft Access.
This is a really specific type of Microsoft software. It's different from Word or Excel that a lot of people kind of learn how to use just on their own, Microsoft Access is more specialized and so rather than just offering generic tech support he created a specialized tutoring service that started with charging $55 an hour and then he expanded to consulting at $125 an hour. So he spotted both a specific problem, Microsoft Access is difficult and confusing and an opportunity to serve it at different price points. Next example is Trevor. Trevor started buying discounted electronics and reselling them on Amazon.
He wasn't creating anything new, he just noticed price differences between retailers and built a system to profit from them and this actually turned into a six figure business because he spotted an inefficient market and found a way to improve it. All right, so you got those three categories there. Keep them in mind. We're going to take a quick break. When we return, how can you develop this skill of observation in the real world?
We are all about the real world. How can you develop this skill and use it starting today? Let's make it as easy as possible right after the break. So the key principle here is side hustle opportunities are hiding in plain sight but finding them requires training your brain to observe in a different way. All right, so we've talked about the different categories of side hustle.
Now think of yourself as a detective looking for three types of clues. Type number one, problems people have. All right, so watch how people spend their time and money. Where do they get frustrated? What do they complain about?
Every annoyance is a potential opportunity. You can see this in person, you can see it online, you can see it all sorts of ways. When you hear someone say, "I hate how," and they go on to express a thought or "I wish there was," something else, pay attention because they're essentially handing you a business idea. Number two is gaps in the market. Just like I mentioned about Trevor the reseller, you want to look for missing solutions and inadequate services.
Sometimes the opportunity isn't in solving a problem but it's making something better or more convenient. Think about a dog walker who adds pet photography to their service. They're not really fixing a problem, they're just meeting a need or filling a gap. Then number three, inefficient processes. So a lot of successful side hustles simply make an existing process smoother or faster.
Again, you don't need to invent something new, just improve on what's already there. That electronics reselling business again succeeded because he found a way to connect buyers and sellers more efficiently. If you develop this power of observation, this skill in noticing it can serve you for years to come. It's something that you put a little bit of time and practice in and then as I said for years and years, you're going to be noticing things and you don't necessarily follow up on every opportunity. In fact, most you don't.
But just being able to see, oh, there could be something here is very valuable, especially when you start going to look for your next side hustle. So action exercise, the notes page for every weekend workshop, it's going to include an action exercise. You can find this notes page at sidehustleschool.com/workshop. And today's exercise is for the next 24 hours, carry a small notebook or just use your phone like the notes app to document a few opportunities. And your goal is to spot at least three ideas for each one of them, note the problem or need you observed, who has this problem?
Like what is the market? Who is the ideal customer? How it might be solved and whether you could feasibly help. So that kind of goes to that point I mentioned about how you don't have to pursue every opportunity. You just want to notice.
So you might notice there's some really bad websites for a particular industry. But if you're not a website designer and that's not a business you want to be in, that's not your idea necessarily, but you've just noticed it. So you want to practice the power of observation, a couple of questions that might be helpful. Did you spot at least one opportunity in your daily routine? Could any of your observations be turned into a side hustle?
Which problems align with your current skills? And then at the end of the exercise, what's the most interesting opportunity that you noticed? The goal is to train your brain to constantly spot possibilities. And then you can choose the best ones to pursue, which is what we're going to talk about in the weeks to come, along with, of course, getting up and running. I'm so excited that you're out there.
Thank you for being part of the podcast. This is year number eight. We bring you a new episode every single day. This series is once a week, but there's always a new episode every day, answering questions, sharing stories, bringing updates from archival episodes. There's so much in the whole side hustle world, so I'm grateful to make the show for you.
Subscribe or follow wherever you listen, always completely free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Thanks for listening to Side Hustle School. on the Onward Project.
