London Photographer Rents Camera Gear 1,100 Times

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

We here at Side Hustle School do not feature many stories about peer-to-peer lending or crowd sharing or similar for a couple of reasons. First of all, because there's not always a lot to say about them. It's kind of a simple, self-explanatory thing. Second, they're not usually a great business model if you're trying to create an asset for yourself. And that is what I'm focused on every single day. By the way, the show is called Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and I am all about trying to help you create something that can earn money for you, not just help you work harder because you already know how to work hard and you're busy. I want you to learn to do something that's really going to help you get ahead, to move forward, make progress. So, not usually a great business model if you're trying to create an asset for yourself, but naturally, there are exceptions. These platforms and networks can be great to experiment with. And the one I'm going to talk about today is really simple and how it works. Basically,

if you have equipment or gear or tools of some kind that you're not using, or at least if you're not using them every day, you can post them on this site and other people can rent them from you. Again, not usually a lot to say about something like that because it is so simple. But once in a while, someone comes along who figures out a competitive advantage and actually does earn a lot of money from one of these sites. So, not just pocket money, but something that is substantial and significant. And today's story fits into that category. It's about a London

receptionist who's also a part-time photographer. When he begins to rent out his camera gear on the weekends, he gets really good at it. He systematizes the process to where he can do it over and over and ends up renting it more than 1,100 times, bringing in more than $30,000 so far in just about a year. So, most people who loan their stuff out don't make $30,000 a year doing it. How has this guy made it happen? That story is coming up after this quick thank you to our sponsor.

Antonio Salvani is no stranger to the world of side hustles. He works by day as a receptionist for a property management company in central London. And in 2016, he also started taking freelance photography gigs. From then on, his evenings and weekends were spent shooting weddings and other various events. It was in preparation for an upcoming wedding shoot that Antonio discovered a completely different way to make money. Despite having spent a year

collecting equipment, he still didn't feel that he had all the camera gear necessary to create the highest quality package for the bride. But he also knew that traditional camera equipment rentals can be expensive and require a hefty deposit. The usual deposit at a camera rental shop in London can put you out up to $1,500. In addition to that large deposit, the verification process necessary for renting can be inconvenient. He complained about this to a friend who was also a photographer, and they suggested Antonio use fat llama to rent the equipment he needed.

Now, if you're not familiar with it, fat llama is not an up and coming rapper, nor is it a Jimmy Buffett song from 1980. It's a peer to peer sharing platform that connects people who need to borrow something with those who could use a little extra cash. Now, the name sharing implies a no charge service. So that terminology can be confusing. There actually is a charge a cost to borrow items through this service. However, as Antonio found the rate to rent through fat llama,

I just love saying that fat llama was much more reasonable than the classic rental method. He found that he was able to rent the gear he needed for less than 50 pounds or about $60. It was a steal of a deal. That gear was available for pickup the same day and the whole process was simple. From that first rental experience, Antonio was intrigued. His next thought was,

"Why don't I rent out my own equipment?" He already owned a decent amount of gear, so that meant he had virtually no startup costs whatsoever. Antonio admits the first time he rented his $6,000 camera, he was so anxious he couldn't sleep. He was running out the most expensive item he owned to a complete stranger. All he could think about was any worst case scenario that could happen. Visions of his camera being smashed kept him tossing and turning through the night. However, the next day, he met up with the person renting his camera the day after they

returned it in perfect condition and everything was fine. In fact, after just meeting his customer, Antonio's fears were eased. It also helped that fat llama provides insurance and various protections for both parties. Now, how do they do this? Fat llama, which I also think is like a DJ name, DJ Fat Llama. Fat Llama charges a 15% rate on both sides of the transaction. That is,

both the lender and the borrower are charged a 15% commission. Included in that fee is the cost for the insurance. When Antonio first started, he was booking two to three rentals a week. This increased quickly to five to 10 rentals a day. That's right, up to five to 10 rentals a day and steadily increasing. The first question I had was, "How in the world does Antonio keep up with all

of this?" It's a lot of details. He said, "First off, about 80% of the rental pickups and drop-offs occur on the weekend." A lot of renters want to pick up equipment on Friday evening and then drop off on Sunday. Antonio spends a fair amount of time on Thursday evenings planning and messaging about various pickups and drop-offs. Also, a lot of his renters are repeat customers. He creates a profile whenever he meets with a new client. That cuts down on some of the back and forth. He gets

to know what people need. He makes recommendations. He's building legitimate relationships through this process and he's also working on systemizing it since there are so many rentals. For the moment, Antonio is managing this system well. However, in the future with his business growing, he says he'll need to get an assistant. His priority is keeping exceptional customer service in place. He wants

everything to be perfect and his customer is happy. It's good to have goals, right? Now, as mentioned, he had virtually no startup costs because he already owned the camera equipment he was renting out. He did invest another 4,000 pounds in January when he bought another camera lens. So far, Antonio has had over 1,100 rentals. He also says he's met some amazing people. He feels

like he started a community and he's learned so much about the equipment just by talking with those who use the gear day in and day out. He's also made more than 25,000 pounds, which is about $32,000. This is all within one year and is putting the money toward another side hustle, buying an apartment in his hometown of Skopje, Macedonia that he will, of course, rent out on Airbnb. In the meantime, renting his camera gear out five times a day is the trade Antonio can picture himself in for some time to come. Awesome. This episode reminds me of a story we did long

ago. I think I told this story in the side hustle book as well. A story of a guy who rents out cars, who uses the platform Turo to rent out a fleet of cars to people in the Los Angeles area. I think he has something like a dozen cars that he leased and rents out pretty much all the time. That was episode 32, make $2,000 a month renting out cars you don't own. For anything like this,

whether it's cars you don't own or camera gear that you do own, proper systems are critical with scale. There's no way that you can maintain a fleet of 10 cars or whatever it is or have up to five appointments a day in London, dropping off and then picking up equipment without good systems. If you're just doing this once in a while as a one-off kind of thing, then you don't need that. But if you're really trying to actually build a business with this, like what this guy has done, you definitely want to think a bit about the logistics and do whatever you can to kind of maximize or make that process more efficient. With logistics, for example, try to group bookings to minimize the back and forth. In the camera gear rental industry, it helps that a lot of that stuff

is focused around the weekends. Antonio can have this busy Thursday night getting ready. In Friday, he's doing lots of handoffs and Sunday he's doing lots of pickups. He also had a tip for you that I wanted to mention. He says it's really important to be very clear and specific as the lender about what you expect in the rental process. Make sure people understand like here's how it works,

you're going to take it, you're going to use the equipment for this amount of time, you're going to return it at this point, here's what you can do with it, here's what you can't, and so on. And that just makes it better for everybody. It makes it better for him. He feels safer, the customers feel informed, they feel confident, and as we can see, many of them are coming back to him time and time again. So a pretty cool story, I thought. $30,000

are running out of camera gear on, once again, DJFatLama.com. It's probably just FatLama.com, although it should be P-H-A-T-Lama, not F-A-T-Lama. That Lama is so fat, that takes us down a different direction, which we're not going to go down at the moment. It is time for me to sign off for the day, or at least it should be. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Hope you'll take what you've heard here and maybe apply it in some way. If you want to see

the show notes for today's episode, links to everything I mentioned, maybe some other resources as well, just come to sidehustleschool.com/619. That is for episode 619. Now, if you would like to know more about Side Hustle School, if you'd like to get more involved, if you've just joined us recently, or if you've been with us for a while, if you have any questions, comments, or just want to know more about why we do what we do, send an email to my sidekick, Jed. His name is Jed, J-E-D-D at sidehustleschool.com, and he can let you know a little bit more about what we're doing. We're working on some fun stuff, and we would love to involve as many people as possible.

All right, that's it. I'll be back tomorrow. Thank you for listening. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.