This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Side hustles sometimes start with a skill you didn't even know was valuable. That's what happened to today's storyteller, our contributor, our case study. They worked as an apartment manager and noticed just how many DIY landlords, just regular folks who own like a rental property or maybe they own a small apartment duplex or something, she noticed that they were flying blind. They weren't using move-in checklists. They didn't have pet agreements, parking add-ons or any idea how to upsell services without breaking landlord tenant laws, which is important.
You might want to offer an upsell, but you have to make sure you're complying with the law, which varies depending on your region, your state, province, city, et cetera. So this person, Danielle, she built a bundle of templates, which are useful, legally cautious and ready to go. She started selling them online and realized that there's this whole ecosystem of independent landlords out there who don't want to hire a property manager or an agency, but they still need some help. So she's found a way to meet that need. That's her side hustle.
As I said, her name is Danielle. Let's pass the mic to her, hear more about her story. I'll be back at the end with a few words of wrap up. [Music]
Hello, I'm Danielle and I live in St. Louis, Missouri.
For most of my 20s, I managed an apartment building, 52 units, mostly working class tenants, always at 95% occupancy. I didn't love the job, but I was good at it. When I bought a duplex for myself a few years back, I figured managing it would be easy. And it was because I already had a system. But when I joined a Facebook group for first time landlords, I realized a lot of people didn't.
They were still sending lease agreements in Word, which could be easily edited. They didn't have pet policies, move-in checklists or anything to track recurring fees, like storage units or assigned parking. So I took a look at all the templates I'd built. It's about 25 docs in total and started selling them on Gumroad. My first product was a bundle called the lease add-on toolkit.
It included putt and parking agenda, move-in, move-out, cleaning checklists, security deposit deduction log, welcome to the unit letter, late fee reminders and payment plans. I priced the full bundle at $29 and added smaller packs at $9 and $12. I made my first 100 bucks just by answering questions in Facebook landlord groups and linking to my shop. So after that, I built a landing page and linked it in more groups. I also posted a free sample document, a move-out checklist in a landlord newsletter and used it as a lead magnet.
Now I average $1,500 a month in mostly passive income. And some months it's closer to $3,000 whenever there's a spike. My customers are mostly small landlords with one to 10 units, many of them in the Midwest or South. They don't want full blown property management software. They just want something that looks legit and saves them time.
Last year I added a $150 consulting offer. I'll review your onboarding process and recommend what to automate, template or ditch. It's usually a 45 minute zoom call. I get a few of those per month without really promoting it. Right now I'm still managing my own duplex and saving up to buy a third property.
But this template business pays for repairs, reserves and even a couple of weekend getaways. The best part? No tenants ever text me at midnight about a broken garbage disposal. And unlike real estate, this hustle didn't require $50,000 down. Just a Google Drive full of PDFs and of course a little hustle.
- Well, this is a great example of finding a need or finding a solution to a problem. Lots of DIY small landlords out there who don't work with agencies. That's basically the market. So anybody who works with an agency or any larger developer or company, that's not the market. It's always important to understand who you're not trying to serve and that helps you figure out who you are, right?
And it's better to usually start with a smaller group. So she's done that. She's obviously found a way to productize it and create an offer, which is also a good next step. You start thinking about your market, you start thinking about who you want to serve and you ask yourself, what could I do to provide for that group of people? Maybe even for that single individual loan customer, your ideal customer.
All right, that's it for today. Let me know what you think, who you'd like to see featured from our archives of thousands of episodes, almost at 3,200 now. This is 3,197. If you have a question or an update, sidehustleschool.com. You can also download or stream the complete archives of the podcast completely free.
Much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
