This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
What's up listeners? It's time for a New Year, New You. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host of Side Hustle School. If you are just joining us, or if you're rejoining for season three after a little bit of a break, or if you've been here the whole time, well you are awesome no matter what. And this is a free daily podcast with a different story every day featuring someone who starts an income generating project. This is a real person out there. The person usually has a job and lots
of other responsibilities. They don't necessarily want to be an entrepreneur, but they want to create more freedom in their life. Now the purpose of these stories is twofold, or maybe threefold, let's say. New fold added for season three. The first purpose is to show you that there are so many ways to make money in the new economy. All kinds of different crazy ways, including lots of
things that you have probably never thought about. The second purpose is to get you thinking on what your idea might be. So it's not just about listening to what other people are doing, it's also to help you think, "Hey, what could I do for myself? How could I have my own side hustle success story?" And third, that new fold, let's say, is to give you next steps and practical tips on how to best pursue your ideas. So for example, today's story is all about a PE teacher who resells concert tickets, ends up earning up to $12,000 a month doing that. After selling a few tickets to concerts
he couldn't attend, this teacher finds himself with a lucrative side hustle that goes on to change his life. So in this episode, you'll hear his story. You'll also hear a few tips on reselling tickets, like when is the best time to do it? What are the best acts to look for? And what should you be careful about? We are leveling up this year. I'm so glad you're out there. Here's a quick thank
you to our sponsor and then on with the show. It was a year of change for physical education teacher Daniel Mahoney. After first pursuing a career path into sports management, he'd seen a hectic lifestyle that people in the industry tended to lead. He then opted for a more stable career as an elementary school teacher. He'd also recently broken up with his long time girlfriend and found himself at a loose end. Thankfully, he had a good friend who was also recently single,
and they ended up hanging out a lot. One of their favorite activities was attending concerts in the Boston area. But Daniel's friend had an unpredictable work schedule. They would often buy tickets months in advance in the hopes it would work out, but then have to resell the tickets when one or both of them couldn't attend at the last minute. After a few of these experiences, Daniel noticed he was actually making a reasonable profit on the tickets he flipped. Enough, in fact, that he felt it could
be a good supplement to his income. So he decided he would intentionally buy and resell tickets for local events to see what kind of profit he could generate. He began by following local music venues on Twitter. Whenever they booked a new act, they would tweet about it. He would then pick up any tickets that his intuition told him felt right and then try to resell them. Now, it's not always good
to follow your intuition. Because of his gung-ho technique, Daniel's success was far from instant. There was a lot of trial and error. He made some bad calls where he lost money. But he enjoyed the process, and he felt like he was learning more and more each month. So he stuck with it. For several
years, Daniel managed to grow a consistent side income from the tickets of between $500 and $1,000 a month. He believes anyone could do this, and he later built a resource to help people learn the basics. But even more interestingly, it was in his fourth year that Daniel would really take the process more seriously and double down on his experiments. He realized that thanks to the online nature of what he was doing, he could easily expand his business beyond Boston and to the rest of the United States. So that's exactly what he did. He started buying tickets for big events all across
the country and then reselling them through websites like StubHub. By the end of 2017, Daniel was flipping up to 500 tickets a month. The key to being successful in this kind of business, finding and flipping tickets, comes down to thorough research. Before you invest in a ticket, it pays to understand what kind of following the act has, whether it's a band, a musical, a stage show, or a speaker, and importantly, what kind of demographics they draw. For example, Drake tickets come at a high price, with the cheap seats starting at $100.
But Drake's fans are often college age or younger, and don't have the money to pay the higher price tag which comes with a resold ticket to a sold-out concert. Drake's got a lot of energy, but not a lot of resale value, apparently. It must not be God's plan for him. On the other hand, Harry Styles appeals to the moms as much as the teenagers in the audience, and these tickets can be sold for more. Daniel once bought a ticket to one of his concerts for $100 and was then able to resell it for $700 just 15 minutes later. So what else? Well, he also recommends that anyone who wants to become
a ticket seller keep a ledger to track the performance of each ticket you buy and sell. Past performance can be an indicator of future results, and being aware of this can help minimize the risk you take when buying a ticket. Last but not least, the two hardest parts of ticket flipping are pricing and timing. Unlike many other products, the price of a ticket can fluctuate dramatically from day to day. If a show sells out and tickets are in high demand, you could see prices skyrocket higher and higher. But one tweet or press release from a band, for example to say
that they've added an extra date at a location, can set the prices plummeting. So to combat this, Daniel often takes a quit while you're ahead stance. If the market for a ticket seems too volatile, he'll often sell for the profit which is on the table right now and just be happy with it. Contrary to popular belief, holding onto a ticket until the last minute doesn't always bring the best price. Daniel's nationwide approach enabled him to earn $3,000 to $5,000 during a slow month (that's right, $3,000 to $5,000 when the time was slow) and $10,000 to $12,000 during a busy month, all for around 20 hours of work each week. He's now created a platform where he helps teach people
how to start their own ticket flipping business. It's called the Ticket Coach. And for $99 a month, students get access to 30 training videos that show you the ins and outs of the business. When he was first newly single and going to concerts with a friend, Daniel had no idea that buying and selling tickets would eventually become such a major part of his life. By following up on his interest and beginning to take small risks, he's now playing in an entirely different arena. All right, so a couple quick notes here. Usually at the end of the episode, I come back and
might pull out a tip or two or share a fun fact or just do a bit of analysis, sometimes a website critique. And for all the stories, or most of them at least, we're trying to look at a few different things. We're trying to look at the story origin. How do they get this idea? How do they make it happen? What did they learn along the way? What mistakes did they make? Because making mistakes
is part of life, certainly part of starting a new project. And then also what happened? And in the what happened part, I'm interested first in the specific outcomes of the project, like so and so makes X dollars a month. In this case, Daniel learned to make $3,000 to $5,000 a month during a slow month, and $10,000 or more during a busy month, or whatever the case may be for the story at hand. But also, it's often just as interesting to learn how that result affected the person's life. How did it change their life? Do they go on and quit their job? Maybe they never quit their
job, but they just love the fact that they were getting out of debt and accumulating savings and being able to make more decisions for themselves. So my encouragement to you out there as we're beginning this whole new season, whole new year, think about how your life would be different. If you had an extra paycheck every month, what would you be able to do? How would that make you feel? So both of those things are really important. What would you be able to do? What limitations are
in your life right now that could be rectified if you had that extra income coming in? And as I said, just as important, how would it make you feel? So one way or another, our goal, working together this year, at least if you commit to listening every day, I too commit to being here, our goal working together this year is to make that a reality. So keep listening, new story every day. Like I said, all kinds of fun stuff coming up, including the relaunch of our Sadducel Society.
If you're looking for a community to bounce ideas off of, get some specific personal advice, you can do that. So if you want to join the waiting list for that program, just go to sidehustleschool.com/society. We also have detailed show notes for every episode where you can find links to anything I mentioned throughout the story, as well as some additional resources as well. And those notes correspond with the episode number. So today is episode 732.
To find the notes, you just go to sidehustleschool.com/732. If you've got a comment or question for the show, give me a call on the Hustle hotline. That number is 844-9HUSTLE or 844-948-7853. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back again tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is Sadducelschool.
