This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
A lot of side hustles start by solving a problem. Some just happen to solve two problems and make money doing it. That's what we're gonna talk about today and welcome to Side Hustle School. My name's Chris Guillebeau, your host for more than 3,100 episodes and counting. This story today comes from someone who spots a growing skills gap in trades, especially plumbing.
These days, trade work is really big. People are making great incomes, great livings from trade work because guess what, it's not getting replaced by AI. You still need a plumber, right? Unfortunately, chat GPT cannot do your plumbing for you. You might be able to diagnose problems and such, but you still need somebody to come out and do the job.
So trades are doing great. And this person noticed a bunch of young adults without degrees or clear paths into the workforce, specifically high school dropouts in some cases. And by the way, fun fact, I was a high school dropout. I would have dropped out of plumbing school as well. Fortunately, I never entered plumbing school.
But yeah, I went to one year of high school, later went on to college. It's a long story and such, but I found my way. So if anybody else out there is struggling, you can find your way too. And let's hear today from Jamie. Jamie has built this new kind of hustle, a low cost training program.
It helps people get paid apprenticeships and then he charges the placement fee to the companies who need workers. So it's kind of an interesting blend of profit slash nonprofit, it's kind of like B Corp. And I think that's great. It's a smart business with real demand on both sides. So let's hear more about how it worked.
I'm gonna pass the mic to Jamie. [Music]
This idea started when I was working the phones for a mid-sized plumbing company in my city. Every week we needed more help, entry level apprentices, runners, laborers, but we'd get zero good candidates from job boards. At the same time, I knew three guys in my building who were barely scraping by doing delivery gigs and bouncing between temp jobs. I thought, what if I could connect the dots?
So I built a test version of a program I called Plumber's Helper. It was a simple four week crash course. I covered the basics, tools, terminology, job site behavior, scheduling apps, and a few soft skills like texting your boss, tracking time, and not showing up in shorts and flip-flops. We met in a borrowed space twice a week. I used YouTube for most of the demos and paid a plumber friend $200 to teach one hands-on session.
At the end, I introduced each student to local plumbing companies. Two out of three got hired, and I realized this was pretty cool. Here's the business model. I charged companies a flat placement fee of $400 per hire, and I charged the students a $50 enrollment fee, mostly so they're invested in the process. Straight schools also started sending referrals, and in some cases paid me a per head fee to take on applicants they didn't have capacity for.
Within six months, I'd made just under $6,000 in profit, part time with minimal overhead. The next year, I ran six cohorts, placed 27 students, and brought in over $25,000. This isn't just a feel-good project. It's real, cashflow positive, and solves a very clear hiring problem. The companies are happy because they get vetted, prepped candidates.
The students win because they're walking into paid work at $20 an hour to start, and sometimes more if they stick with it. I've since built out a small website, added a lead magnet for employers, and hired one of my early grads to help me run sessions for a stipend. I'm also building out similar tracks for HVAC and electrical because the structure's the same. My goal isn't to become a giant trade school. It's to own the space between I have no experience and I'm job ready.
That window is short, and I've built a business around owning it. Most of the students don't care that I'm getting paid. They just care that they get hired. And the companies? They're happy if I save them two months of wasted training and turnover.
That's a hustle I can feel good about. And grow. [Music]
What's up, Jamie? Thanks so much for sharing the story. Indeed, we can do good and do well at the same time.
A core theme of side hustle school. You can help others and help yourself. Listeners, I hope that you're doing that today. I hope you're working on something that is going to bring you more options and bring you more freedom in the future. And what do I mean by that?
Well, I think one of the ways we can be kind to our future selves is by making choices that will give us more opportunity in the future, right? Whether it is saving money, increasing income, kind of just changing how you work so that your workflow, your work conditions are better suited to how you prefer to live and work. All kinds of things, right? There's all kinds of things we can do today to make life better for us tomorrow. So I hope you'll do at least one thing with that in mind.
And of course, let me know your feedback. If you have questions, comments, updates, sidehustleschool.com notes pages for every episode and much more is on the way. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
