This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey there friends and listeners, welcome back to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Got a great story for you today, following up on yesterday's big success story of a role-playing pastor who rolls the dice on a side hustle and ends up earning him $3,000 a month. Well, today I've got another listener success story for you. I love hearing these.
It's my favorite thing about producing the show. And this is also a story of somebody who is making money and helping people. So doing good and doing well. This is a story of somebody who's making money and helping refugees at the same time. This person calls herself a modern day Robin Hood, helping people declutter their homes, earning $3,000 a month from it, just like yesterday's story with a totally different approach.
And then donating the items to an organization that serves families settling in America from places like Iraq and Afghanistan. I think this is pretty amazing. I love everything about this concept and I think you'll like it too. So I'll say a quick thank you to our sponsor that allows the show to be free to you and then we'll jump right in. [Music]
Lisa Holtby has built an entire career around side-offs.
Since 1993, she's been teaching yoga, writing books, running seminars and hosting weekend health retreats, all while being a full-time mom. Towards the end of 2016, she decided it was time for a change. Attending a Seattle taping of Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Kraft's Happier podcast, where I was also fortunate to be a guest, Lisa picked up a copy of the book Born for This. And after reading it, felt like she was born to be a home organizer. She'd always had a penchant for helping people organize their spaces and doing it never felt like work.
As she says, it's how she plays. While setting up her side hustle, Lisa began to volunteer as an English as a second language teaching assistant at her local refugee women's association called REWA. After meeting many amazing and courageous people with incredible stories, she felt the need to help these women and their families transition into America. That's when her two passions collided to form her perfect side hustle. Lisa would offer decluttering services to her clients and then donate the unwanted items to the refugees who needed them.
She dokes that she's like a modern-day Robin Hood, only she doesn't have to steal from anyone. It would be as fulfilling as it would be enjoyable, and so Lisa got straight to work. She began her home organizing business with a $2,200 investment. She spent $1,400 on two designers to help her create her website, ensure the basics of how to modify and optimize it for search engines. $300 went onto the site itself, which she hosts using WordPress and the StudioPress Genesis framework.
The remaining cost went on liability insurance, business cards, and a signature red bucket that she takes to every client's home. Lisa began promoting her services through the network of people she'd built through her previous side hustles. She was met with an enthusiastic response. They loved the idea of improving their own wellbeing and donating stuff they weren't using to people who would benefit from it. The concept itself helps Lisa create a lot of word-of-mouth marketing.
She offers each potential client a free one-hour consultation to talk through her process. After that, her services are priced at $65 an hour, and clients must pay for at least three hours of work. She's able to charge so much per hour because of the scarcity of her product and also a unique system she's developed that she calls SPACE. SPACE stands for sort, pare down, assign, contain, and establish, and it's designed to coach clients through the process of decluttering and provide clarity on the importance of each individual item. Over the past four months, Lisa has earned an average of $3,000 a month in this hustle.
If you take a look at her testimonial-filled website, it's not hard to see why. Her clients love what she does and they appreciate the quality of her work. For example, one of Lisa's latest clients, an attorney, had her organize most of her 4,000-square-foot home and all of her daily working processes. This made the client more focused and helped her feel lighter, which she credits 100% to Lisa's work. And while her clients gain clarity, the local refugees gain items and essentials they couldn't otherwise afford.
One story Lisa shared with us is from an Iraqi family. After refusing to join ISIS, the family split up and fled their homes. Somehow, they found safe passage to America, were granted refugee status, and were reunited to build a new life. Expecting a child in the coming months, they came to Lisa for help finding a crib and some baby clothes. Using donations from her side hustle, she put together a box that included a portable bassinet, baby blankets, diapers, almost new infant and toddler clothes, picture books, baby toys, and a leather diaper bag.
Because of her work, she's fortunate enough to make a donation like this to the Refugee Women's Association every weekend. Now, if you are looking to create a similar side hustle, Lisa says that research and preparation are vital. Going into someone's home to help them declutter is a deeply personal experience for people, and it should be handled with care. It's also important to get written reviews from clients you've worked with that can be shared on your own website, as well as third-party sites like Yelp, Google, and Nextdoor. These can be a big driver of web traffic, and it helps to back up your services with social proof, a powerful factor in converting someone to a client.
Looking ahead, Lisa is hoping to find volunteers to help her distribute the donations door-to-door to reach more families and better manage her own workload. She says it would also be great to deliver donations more than just once every weekend. So if you live in the Seattle area, maybe you've found a new volunteer opportunity. Well, like I said, I love everything about this. First of all, I love hearing listeners' success stories.
Great work, Lisa, $3,000 a month from this new side hustle. Obviously, she'd been doing side hustles before, so she had a lot of knowledge, but I'm personally grateful that Gretchen, Liz, and I could be a small part of starting this one. What a great way, as I said, to do good and do well. I wanted to mention two things, that space system. Space stands for sort, pare down, assign, contain, and establish.
When you're starting a service-based business, you can create something like this, some kind of system or process. In this case, it's an easy-to-remember acronym. This is a small but subtle thing that can really help you stand out. And obviously, this comes from research and preparation, as she says, so there is real value to it. I just think it's a small thing that can help to establish the value of her fees and to be able to justify a good hourly rate.
Another thing that's important, as mentioned in the story, is this testimonial-filled website. For a business like this, which is personal and intimate, like going into someone's home and helping them get rid of stuff and figuring out how to organize, it does help a ton to have those endorsements. So as you start a new service project with your first customers, you definitely want to follow up and ask them to write something if they were happy with the service. Or if you're doing free clients at first, ask them for testimonials and ask them to be specific. Like your testimonial shouldn't just say like, it was great.
It should say something like, I was feeling overburdened and Lisa came into my home and helped me make good decisions. She helped me achieve clarity that I was missing. And now I feel so much better. I feel focused every day. Like that's the ideal testimonial for a decluttering service, really focusing on the benefits and how it's gonna change somebody's life.
So that's all I have to add. Just a big thank you to everybody out there who listens to the show, who has told other people about the show, who is a part of the Side Hustle School community. As we are in the midst of the holidays, I feel so fortunate to be able to do this with you. I'm very much looking forward to next year. And as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.
If you'd like to see the show notes for today's episode, learn more about Lisa's Side Hustle, as well as the Refugee Women's Association in Seattle, just head to sidehustleschool.com/353. And also if you have a comment or question for the show, give me a call on the Hustle Hotline. That's 8 4 4 9 Hustle, 8 4 4 9 Hustle, or 8 4 4 9 4 8 7 8 5 3. I'll be back again tomorrow. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
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