Embracing & Scaling Side Hustles and Women's Entrepreneurship with Aviatra's Jill Morenz

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Today we are joined by the incredible Jill Morenz, President and CEO of Aviatra Accelerators, to unpack the art of crafting a unique brand story and why you should consider a side hustle. We delve into the world of monetizing online spaces and growing a business. We dissect platforms like Uber Eats, Turo and Airbnb, discussing their advantages, hurdles, and how you can extract maximum potential from your side ventures.

Thanks to the work that Jill and the team at Aviatra is doing, Covington has become an entrepreneurial hotspot for women-owned businesses. In this episode we dive into the challenges women encounter in securing capital and how side hustles can serve as stepping stones into the entrepreneurial world.

We examine problem-solving as a fundamental component of successful entrepreneurship, inspiring listeners to think bigger, transform their passion projects into their primary hustle. We also address the possible causes of gender disparity in the entrepreneurial world.

Jill has a wealth of experience in the non-profit sector and as an entrepreneur. With two businesses under her belt and a career spanning nearly 20 years, she's leading Aviatra Accelerators into its next growth phase. Through her leadership, she's helping female entrepreneurs set up for success, utilizing her experience in community building and fundraising.

Aviatra Accelerators is a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering female entrepreneurs. For 12 years, it has offered education, coaching, mentoring, networking, and access to capital, tailored to meet the needs of women entrepreneurs at all stages of the business cycle.

With a footprint in Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio, and Northern Kentucky, Aviatra Accelerators has helped over 3,000 female entrepreneurs create 15,000 jobs and secure millions in funding. Aviatra alumni have generated a cumulative total of over $1 billion in earned revenues. To learn more about Aviatra and its female entrepreneur success stories, visit https://aviatraaccelerators.org.

This isn't just an episode; it's a call to action for all the hustlers out there. Tune in and ignite your entrepreneurial spirit!

As you're inspired to embark on your own side hustle journey after listening to this episode, you might wonder where to start or how to make your vision a reality. That's where our trusted partner, Reversed Out Creative comes in.

Specializing in strategic branding and digital marketing, Reversed Out Creative is an advertising agency dedicated to helping you turn your side hustle into your main hustle. With a team of experienced professionals and a track record of helping clients achieve their dreams, they are ready to assist you in reaching your goals.

To find out more about how they can elevate your side hustle, visit www.reversedout.com today and start your journey towards success. Our blog is also full of great information that we work hard on to provide you with a leg up on the competition. We also recently launched our YouTube Channel, Marketing Pro Trends,  which summarizes all of our blog posts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started.
All right, welcome backeverybody to the Side Hustle

(00:33):
City podcast.
Kyle Stevie is probably workingor running around with his kids
on this long, long weekend.
This is probably going to comeout a little later, but this is
the 4th of July weekend and itis crazy.
In Cincinnati right now we haveTaylor Swift in town.
We got a sold out Reds game.
Everybody's taggating,everybody, yeah, everybody.
It's wild.
There was a line yesterday forTaylor Swift merchandise.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Just the merchandise, not the tickets, even.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah, it was good, wow.
But I mean, I go to crazysporting events too, so I can't
make fun of it because I, yeah,I'm kind of a fanboy for sports
too.
But anyway, yeah, jill, welcometo the show, jill Morance.
Thank you, yep, jill.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Morance.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, yeah, we're happy to have you and you're at
Aviatra.
Is it Aviatra or Aviatra?
Aviatra, aviatra, okay, aviatraAccelerators, yeah, aviatra,
accelerators.
So I know two people who wereat the accelerator.
So one of our tenants, mavisLineman, who is downtown.
She runs Delish Dish made byMavis, which is a packaged goods
company, and she's killing.
It just passed a milliondollars in revenue and she was

(01:31):
on the podcast too, of course,right.
And then my cousin, lauraBorski, formerly Laura Teague.
She sold one company twice ababysitting app that she built
with a friend of hers and theyrocked it out.
She sold that a couple of times.
Now she's off to doing biggerand better things.
She's doing mobile tanning, sothey will come to your house.

(01:55):
I love that they bring the sun.
Exactly, it's called Mobile Glow, so if anybody's out there,
check it out.
You want to get a tan.
You're in the Cincinnati area.
They got you so awesome stuff.
So, joe, huge thing.
I mean you're working with thepublic library.
We got connected through thelibrary, even though we probably
should be connected before thisanyway, but I was really

(02:16):
excited about what the libraryhad to offer.
I didn't know, and I kind ofgrew up in a library because I
went to school and over theRhine and it was like the only
thing to do down there.
So I went down there.
But it has evolved.
The Cincinnati Public Library,but then the Kent County Public
Library, I think, is the numberone public library in the state
of.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Kentucky.
It's in the top 10 in thecountry, wow.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
And it's just like I can walk there.
I can just go down the streetand just enjoy all the benefits
of being at that library.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
And this particular Kent County Library in
particular is really embracingthat.
How can we serve businesses andjob seekers so they're really
creating a niche for themselveswith a lot of innovative
programming and just tons andtons of one-on-one services, too
, to help people get jobs andhelp businesses succeed.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
So they're really I mean, they're being a corporate
partner.
They're doing some of the stuffthat the city itself probably
doesn't have the capacity to do.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
I agree, and the state, and supplementing things,
you know, and they're becauseof the way that libraries are
with offering free everything.
Well, a lot of that, you know.
All of their programs are freeand so it's very accessible.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
I think one of the biggest problems with libraries
in general is people don'tappreciate things as much when
they are free.
It's weird you give them allthis stuff and it's free, for
God's sake and then they don'tappreciate it.
Like if I gave you a free car,you wouldn't appreciate it as
much as a car you had to workand pay for.
I mean.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
I would still appreciate it, you would still
appreciate it.
Yeah, yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
But it's like it's weird the way people are and the
way psychology is.
It's true.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
But you got all those assets, yeah, and we're
fortunate, of course, to havewonderful libraries in our area.
I know there's a lot of areasin the country that just don't
have the tax dollars to supportthem as well as we do, so we're
very lucky.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
And I think we have one of the lowest illiteracy
rates in the country and wealways have us and Pittsburgh, I
think the two of us.
Yeah, Pittsburgh, I knowfootball thing, but we've always
been at the top of the listbecause we have such an
expansive library system.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
We have Reddy Cuffington too, which is helping
.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Exactly, and so the Cuffington library, which is
right down the street from me,is a big deal and being able to
offer all those things, themakerspace, I think, is one big
thing, right, Internet access,et cetera, et cetera.
But the makerspace inparticular allows people to

(04:34):
create side hustles.
Yeah, absolutely, and they alsohave classes and you actually
go down there and you teachthese classes I do, and you
teach a class side hustlewithout the hustle.
Yes, and you talk a little bitabout what made you want to
create this.
I mean because you run anaccelerator or a women's
accelerator program which hasbeen crazy successful.
Thank you, and I meanpersonally.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
I know two people who've been successful coming
out of it.
We have more than 350 alumni.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Wow, yeah, 350.
I actually know more peoplewho've become successful, too,
out of that program than anyother accelerator program in
Cincinnati.
That's wonderful, and I wasjust at an event for Alloy
yesterday.
I was there, were you there,okay?

Speaker 3 (05:13):
I was there at the time.
Yes, it was so.
Aviatra, as you said, we servewomen entrepreneurs.
We provide education andconnections and resources to
help them start and grow theirbusinesses faster and with more
confidence.
And I personally have had aside hustle for about 15 years
and I had interior designconsultation and firm, because

(05:36):
my degree is actually ininterior design.
Oh, and I had that for about 15years.
And then I had a side hustle,most recently helping people do
email marketing and website copy, and so when I took on this
role at Aviatra, which I love somuch, I felt like we had
programs for women who alreadyhad a business or who were

(05:59):
seriously thinking aboutstarting a business.
But I felt having had a lot ofsuccess and enjoyment of having
a side hustle myself.
I really wanted to talk aboutthat because it's a way for
people to dip their toe intoentrepreneurship and then
potentially grow their businessinto something that will
eventually support their family,perhaps, if that's what they

(06:20):
want, that's right.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
That's right, and it doesn't always have to be, I
think people, there's thismisconception that everybody has
to have a high tech fastgrowing startup.
And it's in as someone who wentthrough that, all the way
through a sale and all that.
It was not easy and I was moreof a.
I was the marketer, thedesigner, I did a lot of the

(06:42):
heavy work up front, but my twoco-founders ended up going full
time with it, and the amount oftime that takes and the amount
of networking you have to do andtalking to people and the
pitches like the high stakespitches, the pitches constantly
trying to raise money you'reraising, you're spending more
time trying to raise money thanyou actually building your
product I believe that, which iscrazy.
So here you are, out here doingall this work, dedicating

(07:05):
probably five to six years ofyour life, which is probably the
maximum you should do butdedicating all that time for
something that has a 75 to like90% failure rate.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
But the States love it and there's a lot of state
support in Ohio and Kentucky forthe tech accelerators and tech
businesses, because when they dohit it big then it's a lot.
It's really exciting for theStates and there's a lot of
money that comes back into theeconomy from that.
And we certainly serve womenwho have tech businesses, but
more I would say a greaterpercentage of our women that

(07:41):
come through our programs aredoing Main Street businesses, so
they have little shops, brickand mortar, they're doing
service businesses, they'redoing part-time businesses or
food businesses, and so that'san area I think that gets a
little bit overlooked by some ofthe States and some of the
other programs, because thoseare the kinds of businesses that

(08:03):
really drive the economy andthe fabulous high tech.
Yes, the fabulous high tech,amazing success stories are
wonderful, but the ones thatreally drive it are the plumbers
and the little shops and therestaurants that everybody comes
to in the dry cleaners.
And these businesses thateverybody uses and needs and it
really also makes does providesa sense of community and a sense

(08:25):
of place in wherever theyhappen to be located, the little
neighborhoods.
I mean, who doesn't have theirfavorite neighborhood with the
charming little shops and littlerestaurants that they love to
visit?

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Left bank coffee.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
There you go, perfect example.
Yes, that's a perfect example.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
But you've got those kind of places and you've got
those kind of things, those,those community I mean things
that have been in communitysince civilization was a thing.
Yes, I mean essentially right.
And now you've got these hightech startups and everything.
Everybody wants this high techstartup to be in their community
.
It's not for every community,right.
Not every community is going tohave the next Microsoft or the
next you know whatever Uber orsomething pop up here.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
That's why they call them unicorns.
Right, there's not that many ofthem.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
They're rare.
Exactly what's great about thisis that it getsass weight
facility happening.
You can put a lot of resources,money, time, city money, state
money, all that federal moneyinto trying to grow these things
.
But are we here in Covington,kentucky and in the Greater
Cincinnati area?
Are we going to be able tocompete with Silicon Valley?

(09:24):
How do we make ourselves standout from a Silicon Valley?
What kind of brand do we say,hey, why come to Covington In
Kentucky, of all places?
Well, I'm in San Jose right now.
Why would I go to Covington?

Speaker 3 (09:39):
You know, I think what they're trying to do
initially is keep the people whoare potentially the starters of
these amazing businesses whoalready live in the Midwest,
keep them here rather than losethem to the coasts, and so I
think that's our initial thing.
And then, of course, invitingand trying to entice and invite
people here from the coasts andfrom the bigger cities.

(10:00):
But, yeah, I think the betterbet is to keep our homegrown
people here, the homegrowntalent here.
It seems like gosh, they'realready here.
Why don't we just keep themhere instead of trying to get
somebody to uproot their wholelife and come here?
And I will say that theecosystem in our region is
really quite strong and they aredoing a great job of bringing

(10:25):
investors to our area andshowcasing the businesses we
have here, so that the investorsaren't just investing in things
elsewhere.
They're aware of what we'redoing here and the companies
that are being grown here, andso that is something we have
going for us and there's a lotof effort toward that, although
it might be easier if youalready live in Seattle to get a

(10:46):
tech.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Oh, 100%, I mean, that's why it's like they write
$3 million.
Yeah, there's a lot of talentthere.
They write $3 million checkslike it's nothing, and getting
some of these old tightwadGermans around here to write a
check is a pain in the butt.
But also there's this articleand I just found it today six
fast growing states in the Southare now adding more to the
national GDP than the Washington, new York Boston corridor.

(11:10):
For the first time, there is nosigns of it going back.
That's exciting.
Yeah, it's a shift.
Right, you follow the money,these kind of stats and these
kind of trends.
They interest me.
What can Cincinnati learn fromsome of this stuff?
Well, you've had a $100 billionwealth migration shifting from
US economic centers to the South.

(11:31):
$100 billion, like the amountof money that, the amount of
income tax that has moved intoMiami.
I think it was $17 billion in2021 shifted from all over,
wherever it came from, to justMiami.
That's incredible.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
So what is Miami doing?
Yeah, what are they doing toattract that?

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Weather.
The COVID restrictions, I think, were one thing that just kind
of drove people over the edge.
One thing I heard is that youhad a bunch of people who were
already going to retire and moveto the South anyway, and I
think the numbers could beskewed.
You have to look into it.
These people were going toretire in the next two to three
years.
Well, you had two to threeyears worth of people just say,

(12:17):
okay, covid, all this otherstuff, I can't walk outside
whatever.
I'm just going to move toFlorida now.
So is that trend going tocontinue?
I don't know, but they do havea very vibrant startup scene.
You've got a lot of people fromCalifornia.
You had Citadel just recently.
All the money.
How does that affect kind ofthe stuff that you do?

(12:40):
Having these people, especiallywealthy people, no state sales
tax in Florida, moving down toplaces like that, does that
create a challenge for you or isthat something where you say
there's an opportunity?

Speaker 3 (12:54):
Because we help women get started and grow their
businesses to the point wherethey can access capital.
So we don't have a ton ofinvestor pitches and that sort
of thing coming right out of ourprogram.
There's some other acceleratorsthat take them to that level
right after ours.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Like a blue north or something like that would be one
maybe.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
So blue north is a connection, is a connector, yeah
.
So, for example, one of theprograms that works really well
after ours is Goldman Sachs10,000 small businesses
accelerator, which is atCincinnati State, and so their
criteria to be in that isadvanced from ours.

(13:33):
So ours is you can be a smallerbusiness and then after you
grow a little bit and have atleast two full-time employees
and a certain level of revenue,then you can be in the Goldman
Sachs program.
So it just kind of builds.
And then there's the techaccelerators like Generator and
that sort of thing and thatreally connect people to the
investors that you're talkingabout.

(13:55):
But I think it's very possible,especially with all the
technology that we're usingtoday, to meet and connect with
the investors wherever they are.
And so StartupSensei Week is inOctober and the people at
Syntefuse are doing a reallygood job of recruiting investors
just to come for that week andmeet all the startups that we

(14:16):
have in this region.
So it's exciting and I thinkit's possible to have them.
I certainly see that it affectsthe cities and the states when
you have that much concentratedwealth, but it doesn't mean we
can't attract the investmentshere.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, and I know, like Lightchip Capital, they're
very involved.
One of them is down in Miamifull time because of Black Tech
Week and things like that thatthey brought up to Cincinnati
from Miami.
So they're still very involveddown there.
But having people from ourecosystem who are down there and
in these places kind of saying,hey look, there's stuff going

(14:52):
on in Cincinnati, there's stuffhappening up here, there's, you
know, and I've been doing thepodcast here for you know, 140
something episodes every week,you know, sometimes twice a week
.
And one thing that I'vediscovered if I run ads about
side hustles, it's almost likepeople in Cincinnati don't care
about side hustles.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
Oh, wow, I think that's.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
I can't be right I know, I don't know why they're
not like clicking on my stuff,but if I do it like I get a lot
of clicks from LA, from Seattle,from London.
Maybe it's the cost of living,I think that's what it is.
I think there's a thing whereit's like I just kind of need
one job here because it's socheap right, I don't need to do
this or I don't need to do theseother things.
We're in Miami or any of theseother cities.

(15:39):
It's like I have.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
I can't buy groceries if I don't have a second job.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
I mean, what's a one bedroom apartment in New York
cost what?
$4,000?
I mean, if you're in Manhattan,I mean even now, if you're in
Brooklyn, I mean it's, it'scrazy, it's, you know, a closet,
for $4,000 a month.
So I, and it's not getting anybetter because housing, you know
, inventories are so low, etcetera, et cetera.
There's a bunch of reasons, youknow.
Guys could look it up and findout why things aren't going to

(16:03):
get any better anytime soon.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
But I think I'm still good here in the Midwest if you
want to move here.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
It's awesome in the Midwest.
Come up to the Midwest.
We got, we got resources.
Look at this.
We do.
Indeed, what is the reason forand I could tell you why I love
side hustles, but what is thereason for your interest in side
hustles?
I mean, you guys are alreadydoing this program where you're
encouraging women to go out ontheir own and do something for

(16:27):
themselves, do something fortheir families and and be an
entrepreneur, and we need moreof that.
What?
Why the side hustle?
Why why not just stick with?
You know high growth startups,like everybody seems to want,
right.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
Well, you know, statistically women aren't the
ones who start up high growthtech businesses.
Of course there are.
So one of the things that wetalk about in the side hustle
without the hustle workshopsthat I do is you know, I love to
ask everybody there what dothey think is the difference

(17:00):
between a side hustle and thensomething like driving for Uber?
And really, what we usuallycome up with is with a side
hustle, you're buildingsomething for yourself.
It's not a second job.
It's building something foryourself that you can then grow
and develop however you want to.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Interesting.
I need to update some of theslides in my video now, because
I got some like Uber Eatsdelivery people and like yeah,
no, that really makes sense.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
But that's more of a second job, even though it's not
technically, because I guess itbecause of the structure of it.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
You're 1099.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
1099, right, but do you have your own business as an
Uber driver?
Not really.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
But yeah, I mean that actually makes the less sense
I've ever thought of that, thatthose are really.
I mean, when you boils down toit, you spend a lot of time
doing that, so that's not reallya side hustle.
I mean, I do Turo and I don'tspend much time doing Turo.
I'd consider that a side hustlebecause all I got to do is drop
a car off to them or they comehere and pick it up.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
But there's a little more ownership there, I think
because you own the car right, Imean you're yeah, you're
building something for yourself.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, what are some of.
So you know, Turo, I think, isreally what it does really well,
for me at least Airbnb.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
TaskRabbit is something else that you know.
If you are somebody who can dothings right, Like I, kind of
could start, could turn thatinto a concierge business where,
if you're running around andhelping people move, or picking
up their dry cleaning for them,or dropping off their dog to be
at the groomers or whateverwhatever you're doing on the
TaskRabbit, that could be turnedinto some sort of a concierge

(18:29):
service if you wanted to.
It's kind of that's almost likea toe dip into toe dipping into
entrepreneurship, right it'slike doing kind of finding out
where, where is the demand, howdo my skills match up with that
demand, and then perhapsstarting something of their own
to to really make it their own.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, now that makes a whole lot of sense.
I mean, even with so realestate.
For example, like I you know,I'm essentially just trying to
help people up here buy secondhomes in Florida, like I did.
Okay, that's a good niche, Imean with Airbnb's.
So it essentially pays for yourplace, so you can actually
afford it.
You don't think you can affordit, but yeah, you, you buy them
in these condo buildings thatare built for it.

(19:06):
Essentially, right, that couldbe a potential side hustle
because you own the building.
Yep, you can.
There's a valet spot so you canput a car in there.
You get turrored at the sametime.
So now you're making six, sevenhundred dollars a month, but
the building manages it for you.
They're actually doing the work.
Yes, the valet could pick itlike drop the car off for the
people or they could just walkdownstairs.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
The one thing with that is you're dependent on the
Airbnb platform.
Yes, so you know some people Iknow put it on several things
like Verbo and Airbnb andwhatever else there is out there
.
Book it maybe.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, there's Bookingscom.
Oh, there's like 10 of them now.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
I mean even Expedion, all those you can put it on,
not really.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Mm-hmm, but you are still dependent on those
platforms.
So you know, if you perhapsalso had your own vacation
website, that you could countlike that.
That you control right?
You have control over theamount of advertising that you
do and the types of services youoffer and all that I mean that

(20:02):
would.
That is a more of a challengingthing to break away from,
because Airbnb and all thoseother places are these
incredible search engines forpeople who are looking for that
specific thing and it's kind ofhard to pop up when they're
searching for a vacation stay.
But another example would belike Etsy an Etsy vendor, so
somebody who makes somethinghandmade, let's say handmade
jewelry, and they put it on Etsyand Etsy.

(20:24):
You get discovered on Etsy.
But of course, if you've everbeen on there, you'll notice if
you find, let's say, I searchfor a very specific person, like
I know what their store name ison Etsy.
I search for them and I'mlooking at their piece of
jewelry and then along thebottom of the screen are six
other vendors who sell verysimilar jewelry.
So Etsy is like hey, all wecare about is that you buy
something.

(20:44):
We don't care that you buy fromthis person.
And so the strategy for Etsy isto have your own website and
all of your traffic drives, allthe traffic that you try to
generate with your Instagramposts and your networking and
all of that you send to yourwebsite so they can buy there.
And then you also have an Etsypresence so that random people

(21:06):
who are searching for somethingon Etsy will find it and buy it
from you.
But then you're not spendingyour money and your hard work
and your social media andmarketing efforts to send people
to Etsy.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Why would you?

Speaker 3 (21:19):
spend all that money.
Plus, you're probablyadvertising on Etsy, like Etsy
has its own ads and it wants topush you up and if you pay, them
, yeah, and sometimes you don'thave a choice because there's
some typical programs where, ifyou make certain round of sales
on Etsy, they automaticallycharge you because they include
you in their advertisements.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Oh, 100%, and so now you're helping to build their
platform.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
And everybody else is business on Etsy, so it's not
bad to have that.
But then if you're buildingyour own business with your own
website, your own e-commercespace to send your marketing
efforts to you, that's thebetter bet.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
That's way better bet .
Well, we just recently did anEtsy thing, so I created some
listings.
I created a listing and my wifecreated a listing and what we
did was we went to mid-journey,we created seamless patterns.
So I did these floral, japanesewatercolor patterns and I did
eight of them.
Right, and I you know you cango into what is AI.
Oh, it's the best.
So then you create thesebecause I think you keep 93% of

(22:22):
any digital product that yousell on Etsy.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
Oh, that's exciting.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yes, when a physical product that was like 50% or
something they steal from you, Icall it stealing.
But if you make these digitalprice, you know crafters and
people will go on there andthey'll look for these patterns
that they could put on tumblersor they can put on a set of
sheets or a t-shirt or a hat orsomething like that.
So my wife yeah, so my wifemade some Disney inspired

(22:50):
because we can't do.
Disney.
Oh no.
Yeah, you don't want to go downthat road.
Yeah, don't want to upsetDisney, especially when their
stock's hurting right now.
They're definitely coming afterus looking for some money, like
the tax man almost.
But you know, you put thesedigital things up there and then
you can use a product calledUpscaler, which, instead of
going into Photoshop and likeadding pixels to something,
which is just going to make itlook even worse Upscaler I did

(23:11):
it, that's for sure.
Oh well, upscaler actually uses,you know, its own little AI
technology and it will doublethe size, quadruple the size of
the image, because what you getout of mid-journey is not
high-res.
Okay, so you have to use one ofthese things and make it better
, and then you can sell it.
You know they have to be 12 by12 at 300 dpi.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
Whatever it is, and then match up on every side
right, so that's seamless.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yep, and then you have there's a pattern maker
tool that you can.
You can upload your pattern andthen you can say I want this
six up, six up at 12 inches, 300dpi, and it will make it a big
pattern for you.
So we've got those up there.
We've had I don't know 200people or something.
Look at the store.
Nobody's bought anything yet.
But I hear the trick on Etsyalso is put as much stuff on the

(23:58):
store as possible because themore stuff you have, the higher
the likelihood somebody doing asearch is going to find your
stuff if you're using consistentkeywords.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yeah, that's about the tagging and the keywords.
For sure, yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah.
So what are some of?
I mean, I like the Etsy thing,I think it's a good idea.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
I think it's kind of a low-hanging fruit type of
thing Great If you have handmadeproduct or vintage product
absolutely.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Yeah, I agree, and you know what you're doing and I
think if you've got a process,you can get through that process
pretty quick.
Once you put it up there, it'sthere.
Yeah, especially if it'sdigital, like you did it once,
yeah certainly that.
Yeah, yeah, you did it once andnow it's.
You know I'll do it again.
Yeah, but if I want to, I cancome in on the weekend again,
like me, and my wife didn'tspend about four hours building
out these patterns, but that'sone type of side hustle.

(24:42):
You know, there's a lot ofpeople, I think nowadays too,
that want to be like influencersor whatever.
Yeah, they want to, you know,be the next TikTok star or
whatever.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
And that's boy.
That's another case of buildingsomething on somebody else's
platform, but nonetheless, yeahinfluencer is a reasonable side
hustle.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
But actually you can.
If you become an influencer ofany sort, you can then leverage
that to sell your other stuff.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Yeah, Like you're an influencer.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Yeah, I mean.
Yeah, I mean it's not, it's notsuper great, but it's, I'm not,
you know you set the leverageyet.
Yeah, yeah, I'm not TaylorSwift, but yeah, she got people
standing in line out there.
But how do you?
Yeah, you can then use one ofthose platforms to build your
credibility, whether that'sbeing an influencer on TikTok,
on Instagram, whatever, orbuilding up your store on an

(25:31):
Etsy, where then you can sendpeople back to your store to buy
new stuff, because maybe theexclusive stuff is on your store
.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yeah, that's a great way to use it when you, where
there's no other comp I said, touse the real estate term, right
, there's no other comparableproduct there.
Yeah, Although that's that's alittle challenging to create if
you're not doing somethingreally unusual like what you're
suggesting.
But I think with the sidehustle, you know, we this little
workshop that we do it's anhour and a half free workshop

(26:03):
that we do.
A lot of them at libraries andwherever I'll, I love doing them
.
I'll.
I try to do a couple of months,but right now I have them
scheduled.
There's three more scheduledthis year.
I'm sure we'll do many more.
And the concept there is sidehustle without the hustle.
So the without the hustleconcept piece of it is based on

(26:25):
being really focused.
You know, entrepreneurs, peoplewith entrepreneurial minds,
that usually have a billionideas, and when they settle on
one thing, then they have abillion ideas for that one thing
, and it's very easy to getdistracted, of course, and
prevent yourself from takingaction or taking consistent
action, because you're alwayschasing the next thing.
So I have that problem myself.

(26:45):
So I get it.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
And what is your personality type?

Speaker 3 (26:49):
Like my oh Myers-Briggs.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Okay, I was going to look that up because I remember
that you talked about that.
Oh, and every episode.
Yes, and I forgot to look it up.
Okay, so I'm an extrovert andI'm more feeling than thinking.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
ENFP maybe?
Yes.
What's the introversion?
Or it's a intuitiveness?
Oh, intuitiveness.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
I don't know what, I don't know what.
Well, people who yeah, I'm anENT.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
P and we definitely are all over the place Okay, as
you can tell on this podcast,but we are all over the place
and we, we have ideas and thenwe move on to the next idea and
next idea.
And I told my wife the otherday I said, hey look, I said,
yes, I have a lot of ideas andyou know, it seems like I don't
do, I don't get anything done,but I actually do a lot more

(27:34):
than most people.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
You know, like you've got people that are like but
you have like 20 things thatyou're doing some things with,
instead of one thing that you'redoing 20 things with.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, or or I have like 30 ideas and maybe I do
five of them right, like Iactually do five of them when
most people have one idea, butthey get so bogged down on the
minutiae of it that they nevereven do it.

Speaker 3 (27:57):
Exactly so.
That's the big part aboutwithout the hustle.
So you know, I always counselpeople just to take a notebook
and write down all their ideasseparately.
Don't lose them, because yourmind is constantly coming up
with all these amazing things.
So write down.
But then the process that I have, which helps people learn how
to start their side hustlebusiness in seven days, is every

(28:17):
day you have a specific coupleof things to focus on and you
know, a lot of times peopledon't necessarily do seven days
in a row.
They'll take like a week to doday one or something like that.
And so you there's veryspecific decisions that you have
to make in each day and thenyou make those and you keep
focusing and you build,everything, builds on everything
else, and then by the end youhave a business that is actually

(28:40):
has a chance of starting.
It's not just like, hey, I'mgoing to sell jewelry, I start
jewelry.
I mean that's an easy way to doit and there you are.
But there's, you know, more tohaving a successful business
than just having a product.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Oh 100%.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
So so that's that.
That's what what I think is isreally helpful is to have this
sort of method and process thatpeople go through so that they
can kind of reign theirimagination and all their ideas
in.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Oh yeah, and I think you know what one good thing
about a side hustle is to it canjust be you.
You don't need a tech team.
It doesn't do their job.
You don't need to start alandscaping company with five
people and three of them gotdrunk last night and didn't show
up.
Right, right.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
I mean, this is you and lawns yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
You're yeah, you're mowing yeah, You're mowing lawns
.
You're you're making candlesand selling them on Etsy.
You're doing whatever, butpeople don't understand.
I tell, like startup peoplethis all the time, like you have
no idea how much marketingcosts.
Like, if you don't, yeah youwould know.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
I know, yeah, I sell it.
That's your business.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
Exactly, but but it's like you, the amount of money
you have to spend just to buildawareness about what you've got,
which is why it's good, if youhave a high tech startup to you
know, to innovate something likeChatchapiti did, right, being a
space where there's nobody andyou're the only one.
Oh, sure, the unicorn again.
Yes, yeah, and you're theunicorn, but that you know,

(30:03):
that's not always the case, likethere's always something out
there, yeah, and then you haveto spend a bunch of time telling
people why yours is 10%different than this other thing
that they already know about.
Oh, but, but ours is Well.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
I use candles as an example fairly frequently
because it's something peoplecan imagine, right and, and it's
a sent in candle.
I can imagine making it, I canunderstand how to price it,
because it's based somewhat, youknow, to a large degree on how
much my materials cost and thenhow?
But the different, how do youdifferentiate?
Right?
That's part of your story, partof your brand story, like why

(30:34):
did you choose those specificscents?
What does each one mean?
Does it each one have a specialproperty?
How did you choose, you know,putting it in a mason jar versus
a beautiful handblown glass jar, the woodwick, a plainwick, a
beautifully designed handcalligraphy label versus one
that you just printed on yourhome printer, right and so, and

(30:54):
that's all fine, like there's amarket for all of them.
I mean, good Lord, the candlemarket is insane and you
wouldn't think we need morecandles, but apparently we do.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
There's an entire store that just sells candles,
Like I figured everybody justgoes there.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
And so, the idea being, there's plenty of ways to
differentiate yourself.
You just have to understandwhat you're doing and why you're
doing it, and then how tocommunicate that.
So, day one, we talk about whatproblem are you solving?
And because, as you I'm sureknow, and many people, many of
your listeners know, that everysuccessful business solves a

(31:28):
problem.
So, if you're talking aboutcandles, what is my problem?
Well, I mean, is it a life anddeath problem?
No, it's really not.
But you know, I would like myliving room to smell nice.
There's my problem my livingroom smells like a cat.
A cat, right.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
So that smells like vanilla cats yeah exactly.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
So what are we going to do about that?
Right, and so then you build,because it all comes down to the
problem, and you have to really, really deeply understand the
problem that you're trying tosolve.
And sometimes, for people who Iwant to somebody who came to my
side hustle class is justlearned how to do power washing,
which apparently is moredifficult, or at least to do it
well is more difficult than justholding the hose and pointing

(32:08):
it at your concrete.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah, but the equipment is.
Oh my God.
This was like one of the best Itried to tell some UC college
students.
Start a pressure washing thing,start power the next four years
.
You guys are going to buildthis pressure washing thing,
especially in the summers whenyou don't have anything going on
anyway.

Speaker 3 (32:22):
Yeah that.
Or like striping parking lots.
I mean stuff like that, pickingup trash at parking lots for
businesses.
These types of things.
They're not glamorous, they'renot sexy, but they're really
needed and people will pay.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
We need plumbers and electricians.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
The owner doesn't want to go out and pick up trash
on their own parking lot.
Nope, they have other things todo.
Make that your business, have awhole bunch of clients, right,
that's a perfect thing.
So this guy that was doing thepressure washing thing, he said
it's actually, you know, morecomplicated to do it right and
there's different products anddifferent techniques and all
that.
And so like, yes, of course youcould do it yourself.
But and we were talking aboutthat's part of his competition

(32:56):
is everybody's hose that theyhave at their house, right, they
put their thumb over it andthey're like, oh look, I'm fresh
watching.
Yeah, but if you want it doneright and better and have it
last longer and have the mill donot reoccur so quickly and all
that, you need to hire somebody.
And so part of it's thateducation and differentiating
yourself and understanding moredeeply what the problem that.

(33:17):
So for him, he's solving thisproblem of, well, I pressure
wash and then, like, two weekslater it looks pretty dirty
again and the mill has alreadystarted again.
Okay, that's a problem.
Somebody's getting out there sospending their like, precious
weekend hours pressure washingthis dumb area that keeps
getting milled dude, and thenhe's got to do it again in a

(33:38):
week.
Well, or you know a month,they're done with that.
After several times of that, Ibet they're looking for somebody
to hire.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
And so deeply understanding that it's not that
I want to just want to cleandriveway, it's that I want to
clean driveway.
So my problem is dirty driveway, but dirty driveway.
I don't want to have to haveyou come back again in a month.
I want you to do it, and it'sgoing to stay for this season.
So I'm, you know, schedulingright.
I'm busy person.
I may have more money than time, so then that would be

(34:09):
something too.
I don't have the time to do itmyself.
I don't have the equipment.
Do I want to buy a pressurewasher?
No, not really.
So then I try to rent one, butthere, every time I go to home,
do you want to rent one that'salready taken that day and you
know on and on like.
So you really understand these,the problem that you're solving
.
And then the next question iswell, who has that problem?
And those are your customers.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Well, like I didn't even know this, but you know
because I grew up in Pryce somepeople just do whatever they
want with their lawns.
But you know, when you go to aneighborhood, you go to an ugly
neighborhood, you go to a niceneighborhood you got.
Go to an ugly neighborhood.
You got brick houses with paintchipping off of them.
Right, pressure washer needs tocome in there, but they don't
have the money to spend onsomething like that.
Now, if you went to a niceneighborhood, everything looks

(34:51):
manicured, everything looks nice.
You could go to a neighborhoodthat was maybe built up in the
60s and you've got like mosspractically growing on the
siding and it looks terrible.
Well, they have no association.
They have nobody saying, hey,you have to clean your house.
But these nicer, newerneighborhoods with associations
will make it.
They're mandating it.

(35:11):
Yes, they're making you do it.
So if I was a pressure washer,I'd be looking for neighborhood
associations.

Speaker 3 (35:19):
Perfect, Then they're going to recommend you
potentially to everybody.
Or you know, you get one clientthere and then you put a yard
sign in their yard and all theirneighbors are like, oh, I
totally need that.
And they're calling you Then Ithink there's a special
assessment.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
Maybe everybody gets their yard pressure wash or gets
their house in their drivewaypressure washed every three
months.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
That reoccurring thing?
Yes, I was just talking tosomebody, you get a description.
Yeah, she was, she has.
She puts out these bids and ifsomebody for what she does, and
if somebody says, well, we'regoing to go with a cheaper
company, we'll let you know, andshe's thinking you're going to
have a terrible experiencebecause the cheaper companies
are there's a reason why they'recheap, they don't have good
employees, etc.
Etc.
And I said, well, do you callthem back in three months?
And she said I don't.

(36:00):
And so there's an area foropportunity.
Call back and say how's how?
How was that decision?
Are you happy with thatdecision?
Because I'd love to work withyou.
Let's reopen the conversation.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
We were.
Just I was talking to a guy atthe at the alloy thing last
night and he has a company where, essentially, you get paid to
send people into his ecosystemforever, like, as long as those
people in the ecosystem they buystuff or whatever, you get paid
.
Right now I can't remember thenumber you threw out there, but
you said there's so many, likebillions of trillions of dollars
of like unpaid referrals thatare out there.

(36:34):
So if you think about, likeaffiliate marketing right,
that's a system that was set upto capture sales from a specific
source, yeah, from from thefact that these people are
recommending your company,recommending your service to
somebody.
But, like what you just said,that was, how do you get paid
off of?
And some people do like lifechanging or business altering

(36:57):
ideas that the owner themselveshasn't even thought about.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
Right, right, like I mean we do it for free, but
you're doing it for free, butthat's okay because we're a
nonprofit.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
Yeah, yeah.
So you're doing it and justgiving these ideas away.
And this is like, yeah, a bellwent off in her head and she was
like wait a minute, holy.
Yeah, this has changed mybusiness.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
And it could, it really could, yeah, yeah.
And because then you knowthere's, there's, there's a
large pool of people, herpotential customers, but it's,
it's limited, it's it's limitedat some point, and so if she
went to all the trouble to get ameeting with somebody, don't
let that die, Right.
And so, and I, and it's one ofthose zig-ziggler numbers games
thing where you know it's likeevery 100 people you talk to,

(37:38):
you know one of them would besales.
So talk to 500 people and youhave five sales and you know
there is.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
There is that Well, and also across what 10 times
more money to to find a newcustomer than just keep an
existing customer.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
Exactly and in this case she already has a report
with them that just because theywent with the cheaper company,
that's okay.
Yeah, she knows what that'sgoing to result in, Especially
in Cincinnati, we got a bunch ofcheap but after you learn, you
know, after the Germans learnhey, that thing fell apart the
first 10 times.
I do like quality, yeah, soyeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
You gotta be able to sell the quality again.
Know your customer, they'recheap, but they like quality.
So hey, make up your mind.
What do you want?
You want?
You want this thing for $5?
.
You want to spend $100 andactually get it done, right?

Speaker 3 (38:20):
But they probably will.
If you put it to them like thatand you have the opportunity to
talk directly to them insteadof them just Googling prices,
you know, then you have thatopportunity to explain it Like
yes, this vacuum cleaner, like,let's say, a Dyson, it's $400.
You'll literally never have tobuy another vacuum cleaner.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
No.
So yeah, we got Dyson, it'sgreat.
Yeah, yeah, and we just get.
We need to get paid off thatreferral we just made.
By the way, dyson if you'relistening, Dyson.
Dyson.
There we see it.
We just need a couple freevacuums.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
That's all we're asking, just a couple free
vacuums.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
So I had an idea.
So I said Covington is its ownlittle place, like it's like the
Brooklyn and Cincinnati.
Everybody says Brooklyn andCincinnati, covington, and
people, you know, even peoplefrom Covington, north, Kentucky.
When somebody says, hey, whereare you from?
I'm from Cincinnati.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
Like I'm from Cincinnati area, right, it's so
much easier to say it becauseit's like this way.
It's so much easier for peopleto know where it is right.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
Well, people still don't know where it is.
The people that cause flyovercountry still don't know where
it is.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
Despite the fact, there's like 3 million people in
this metro area includingDayton, but anyway, most of
their goods come from this areaAt 100%.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Yeah, like this is why milk's cheap here and it's
$5 and it's $10 in Hawaii.
But how do we set Covingtonapart?
How do we make what you do,what Blue North's doing, what
the Covington business council'sdoing, what the library is

(39:39):
doing?
How do we brand something?
And here we are, in the town ofmarketing and branding.
How do we brand something intothe heads of people as to why
they would come to Covington inparticular, why come here?
So you know, this kind of seemslike a place where, if I'm a
craftsman, if I'm an artisan, ifI'm a like a bohemian type

(40:02):
person, this really is kind ofthe Brooklyn of you know all the
fancy life, exactly the whitecollar big business, the Procter
and Gamble and Kroger 4,500sare across the river.
They're across the river rightOver here.
This is where it starts right.
This is where the creativity isand the crazy ideas, and so I

(40:22):
was thinking I was like, whywouldn't we brand Covington the
side hustle hub?
I don't think there's a sidehustle hub anywhere in the
country.

Speaker 3 (40:31):
Okay, I love that idea and I will do everything I
can to support it.
I love it.
That's amazing.
Yeah, how many, how many ofthese workshops can I teach?
I'll teach them every night.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
Yeah, and I want it like.
So.
I want this and your place andthe library.
These are the hubs.
Right, these are thecentrifuges and people.
If you're not from Cincinnati,you don't know.
But centrifuges are essentiallythe startup hub of the
Cincinnati area.
It's where you go to findeverybody else.
But if you come here, what arethe hubs?
What Covington is the hub?

Speaker 3 (41:00):
Well, one of the things that Covington has
branded itself is you know, no,what is it All?
Character, no chains.
And so there are a couplechains, but mostly it's all you
know.
Family owned businesses,individually owned little
startups, brainwell and thosekind of places.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
They're alumni, right , yeah, and they're awesome, and
they did some of my signs inhere too.
Yeah, they're beautiful.

Speaker 3 (41:20):
So yeah, so I like I love the side hustle hub, and
one thing that that you knowyour listeners may not realize
is and this was really startlingto us we had an event, since we
are focused on womenentrepreneurs, we had an event
this spring and it's we calledit the Wobcrawl, which stands
for women owned business crawl.
So it's a Wobcrawl like a pubcrawl, but less pure pubs.
So we started listing out thewomen owned businesses in our

(41:44):
neighborhood.
So we're located in downtownCovington, in the adjacent
neighborhoods, mainstrasse, andthere are more than 40 women
owned businesses just in thattwo mile little crazy piece of
real estate.
And a big reason for that is isthat it's relatively
inexpensive to rent a place here, and there's a lot of variety

(42:05):
of places also.
So there's, you know, beautifulstorefronts and then there's
little offices, much like inyour building, where you could
have a business and have it, youknow, like incubate, so you're
incubating before you grow intoa bigger space, and the city
offers a lot of incentives forrent, rent assistance for new

(42:26):
businesses, and I think that itcould be in addition to the side
hustle hub.
It could be the women ownedbusiness hub.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
A 100% could be.
We would love that.
Well, and I think, too, womenlook at places like Covington
and they say, like men are likeI want to go out to the burbs
and that fancy new, shinybuilding with the glass and blah
, blah, blah.
Women will look at these, these, this unbelievable older
architecture, and they'll say, Imean, you're an interior
designer, right.

(42:54):
You look at that and you seethe beauty in it, the
craftsmanship in it, and you'relike the character.
The character, yes, and you'relike this will be perfect for my
business.
I will make this thing so cute.
It's going to be disgusting.

Speaker 3 (43:06):
It's the Aviature.
It's adorable.
Our office is absolutelyadorable.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yeah, are you guys still on Pike Street?
Yeah, yeah, okay.
So I know, right, we're here,but you know you'll look at it
and you'll say I can make thisawesome, right, and we need
those types of people, thosetypes of creative people that
will go in.
As a designer myself, you know,that's kind of the same thing
when we live in a house from1880, I think it's when our
house was built.
This building was 1930.

(43:29):
I think it was built.
But you look at these things,you say that needs to come back
to its original glory.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yes, and, luckily, Covington.
so I used to work for anorganization called the
Catalytic Fund which helps GeneShore and I was five years there
and they help developers bringthese buildings back in a very
high quality way rather thanjust sort of a flip, and that

(43:56):
has had a huge effect.
And all the effort that thecity is making and the county is
making has had a huge effort onthe restoration of these
beautiful buildings so that youcan put them back into full
service with residential on theground level and residential on
the upper levels and commercialon the ground level, because
that supports.
And that's just goodneighborhood design?

(44:17):
Yes, and we're exactly.
I mean, of course, originallyyou know the butcher would have
his shop on the first floor andlive upstairs with his family,
so that's how it was, and nowyou can have it rented out and
support, as you just said,support the building costs and
make it a little bit morefeasible.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
And I should come to the Catalytic Fund first before
I go doing that upstairs becausewe got a old hall.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
I know you do.
I want I just huge hall upthere, yeah.
I would love to have an eventthere.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yeah, you should have .

Speaker 3 (44:41):
You should go to the catalytic fund what in a million
?
And a half dollars to do it.
I'm going to be calling you.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Hey, gene, help me out.
I need a million and a halfdollars and I don't want to pay
these 9% interest rates orwhatever the world's going on.
But yeah, so I should.
I should totally call her.
But yeah, I mean, you got Mavisdownstairs rocking roll and
we're filled up up here, that'sgood.
You know, half the time nobodycomes in.
I don't know why they just payrent and don't come in.
So that's what, whatever.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
They just want the cash of being with Adam.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
Yeah, I guess, are being in Covington and they need
an address in Covington.
That might be it, actually, butmaybe that's something we need
to do.
So, hey, you got a.
You got a space in Covingtonbecause you needed an address.
You do business here.
We got a law firm here.
They just needed they're doingbusiness here.
They got billboards up now theyneeded a physical address here,
but nobody comes in.
So why?

Speaker 3 (45:26):
I feel like that's not right for Covington in a way
, you know, like want somepeople here coming down and like
walking to the restaurants forlunch and stopping somewhere for
a happy hour and grabbingcoffee in the morning at left
bank and yeah, going to leftbank, or so my thing is this
Okay, so who do I get in here?

Speaker 2 (45:43):
that's like that.
Who do I get in here that'sgoing to come in, do stuff?
It's side hustlers.
It's people who are, yeah,doing you know something on the
side, that's.
And then I was even thinking,like real estate wise, we lost
over 300,000 real estate agentslast year because they don't
have enough business coming inand the real estate market
essentially crashed.
So what are they doing?
They're doing nothing.

(46:04):
They quit real estate and theywent probably back and got a job
.
But what if you had sidehustles?
So say, real estate was yourcore business and it was at the
bottom of your of your careerpyramid, your side hustle
pyramid, because real estate iskind of an old side hustle, you
know.
So you have real estate at thebottom.
Real estate market's not doinggood, that's fine.
You got your Etsy store yeah,that's fine.
You're doing Turo, that's fine.

(46:25):
You got three rental properties, you know whatever it is, but
teach them to build this thingthat supports, or maybe it's, an
upside down pyramid.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
Yeah, and you can try to have it be somewhat passive
so that they can.
When the real estate market ishopping, then they can really
focus on that, because that'sthe bigger money, I'm sure.
But then flipping it when thereal estate market is not, then
the pyramid inverts and thenthey're focusing all their
efforts on the pyramid.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
See.
The pyramid could invert, See.
Look at this.
You just changed the game again.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
You just put out an axel and you spin it.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Flipped it.
Yep, yeah, so that's the thingit's like.
So let's look at the resourceswe have here.
So I really want to use thispodcast as a way to push this
out to people.
At the same time, you know, andsay, hey, look, you know,
there's side hustles.
We've got we've got a grouphere that encourages side hustle
.
They teach aside hustles.
But look at the resources.

(47:18):
I mean we've got the sidehustle podcast.
I've got the space here.
You've got your space.
The library has a great makerspace.
How do we take this andactually put it out there that
this is a thing?
It's not just these bigbusinesses that are going to
come here for an address.
It's people that want to behere.
That the artisans, the peoplethat change neighborhoods, that

(47:38):
convert neighborhoods from downin the dumps to you know what
Brooklyn is now you know, how dowe get those people here, how
do we promote it?

Speaker 3 (47:46):
Well, I think we should work with the cities.
You know, I think, I think,certainly, I think Covington
would be very open to that.
Their economic developmentdepartment is very creative and
open to new ideas.
I think the surrounding citieswould be as well.
The river cities are very cool.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Oh, they're awesome.
And Dayton, they're doing greatstuff down in Dayton, you know,
all the way up and down theriver and it's a challenge.
I think at Kentucky, becauseKentucky is, you know, what
should be.
One big city, is like fivecities, yes, you know, and it's
like three counties andeverybody has a judge executive
and he's like the king.
This person is like the king.

(48:22):
It's very complicated here.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, different fire stations,police stations, different, you
know, school districts, abillion different school
districts, which I know wascommon, but different
governments, different,everything.
So yeah, it's very challenging,but I think and that's one of
the reasons why the catalyticfund was even started was to be
kind of be the developmentdepartment for the little cities

(48:44):
that couldn't afford to haveanybody on staff to do it.
And I think we, you know, youand I could just band together
and we'll just create a sidehustle culture, we'll do some
stuff.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
I mean it has to be, it should happen, and I think
it'll do.
It'll help Covington, becausenow you'll be branded something.
I mean, don't you know, ifyou've got a big company you
want to come to Covington?
That's fine, come to Covington,right.

Speaker 3 (49:02):
Well, but you come to Covington because it's cool.
And why is it cool?
Because of all these peoplethat are doing amazing things.
If it weren't cool, nobodywould want to come down here.
I mean, they wouldn't want tolook at the businesses here.
There's been so many, like CTIdown at River Center.
You know, came here from acrossthe river because Covington is
cool, it's walkable, it'scharming.
There's really great littlerestaurants none of you know,

(49:23):
most of which aren't chains andjust really fun things to do
here, and so your employees canactually find an affordable
house or an apartment to moveinto parking is possible right,
like all these options, yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
I mean we have 45 parking spots here, so I mean I
could have side hustlers in here.
And we got $99 a month and youget 24 hour access to the space.
Wow, well, you just come in atany time and then you get our
coffee.
Drink up all of our coffee, ifyou want and that giant bag of
Cheetos?
Yeah, exactly, I got that bag ofCheetos in there.
Who would say no to this Makeup for the coffee that the other
people are drinking becausethey just locked their door and
just come in three times a year,or whatever that's right.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
All that coffee is just going to go stale if y'all
side hustlers don't come outhere and drink it.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
Yeah, so what do you want to see in this side hustle
thing?
What do you want?
What's I mean?
You're not doing this just youknow, because of whatever.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
Yeah, so you know, our whole goal is to help women
start and grow their businesses.
So if this is a way, I see thisas kind of a way for women to.
I mean, these workshops are forboth women and men, but our
paid programs are for women, andso I see it as a way kind of a
top of the funnel thing, likepeople come into the ecosystem
of entrepreneurship by attendingone of these free workshops and

(50:29):
they start their side hustleand they learn some stuff from
us and then come to some of ourevents and then maybe eventually
they'll be ready to do some ofour paid programs and then we've
fulfilled our mission byhelping women start and grow
their businesses.
So I think it's and you know,men come into this program.
We want men to be successfultoo.
That's just not our specificarea of focus.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
Yeah, and that's.
It's not really necessarily aproblematic thing for starting
businesses.
Yeah, I mean yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
So people ask me fairly frequently you know why?
What struggles do women have,you know, compared to men, for
starting businesses?
And I think the starting thebusiness isn't the thing.
It's equally difficult, slasheasy, depending on your point of
view, to start a business formen or women, but when it really
comes to the to the genderdisparity is when you try to

(51:17):
access capital.
So this is an interesting andstartling statistic.
So in 2021, out of all thesmall business loans that were
given across the country, only5% went to women, even though
women own 30% of the smallbusinesses.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
What do you mean?
And also, I think during COVIDmore businesses were started by
women.
During COVID I mean it wascrazy, it was like that's
absolutely true.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
Two or three times as many it was nuts the statistic,
probably because a lot of them,you know, worked in service
businesses, service industry,that this is where they weren't
working.
So they're like I got to dosomething and so that was an
opportunity for them to do that,and that's wonderful, and we
were still working with some ofthose businesses today and you
know, all across the all acrossthe region.
I mean, for some of them thatwas a blessing, because it got
them out of this indenturedservitude, Exactly Well yeah,

(52:05):
and then you're dependent onwhenever you have a W2 job, of
course you're dependent on thatother, on that company and, as
we saw, those service,everything that was public
facing, obviously had to closeand that's.
You know, it was what.
It was right that you had to,we had to do that, but it
affected so many people andthat's as you say, it kind of
broke them out and gave themthis opportunity like, well,

(52:27):
dream something, a dream bigger,and, you know, create something
for yourself, and so that'sthat's where the that's, so the
access to capital is reallywhere where we see the disparity
, the gender disparity, but also, I think, it depends on the
industry.
So we I was speaking with awoman who owns a cleaning
company and she said she'sactually wanting to hire a man

(52:49):
to do the bids for hercommercial jobs because oh,
interesting, because it's like aguy like people think of that
as like a guy's like work withyour hands or whatever.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Because it's commercial.
Yeah, because it's commercial.
Or it was residential, fine,yes, it'd be the women.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
Yeah, yeah, but for the, for the commercial things
and the men kind of treat herfor somewhat disrespectfully and
she thinks that that a manwouldn't have that issue.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
There's still some of us out there not acting right
Like yeah, definitely.
And I think too, you hear a lotof, I think, women also, like
we need to encourage them tothink big, to think growth,
think big, think more than justyou're.
You know a little thing.
Like we always say, turn yourside hustle into your main
hustle, right?

Speaker 3 (53:35):
Yes, although a lot of women start a side hustle
because they want to have alifestyle business which allows
them to stay home for the, withthe kids or you know, be
available to pick them up fromschool.
But the idea of thinking big isabsolutely right, Like hang in
when you're in that season andthen when you, your kids are in
school full time or whatever youknow, whatever other lifestyle
changes happened to you, whetheryou're an empty nester, then

(53:57):
you can really you'll have allthis track record and all this,
all these lessons that you'velearned and data that you've
gathered over the years of doingit as a small side hustle, and
then dream as big as you want todream, because you have your
processes honed by then.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
So, yeah, we need more women.
So, guys, we're, like, I think,programmed to think I'm going
to take over the world.
I'm going to take over theworld, I'm going to make sure my
family's good.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
Why wouldn't I take over the world?

Speaker 2 (54:24):
I mean, that's what we kind of did so.
Yeah, but that's our mentalityis like I'm going to start this
thing, I'm going to scale it,it's going to be a $10 billion
company, like that's how we'reautomatically thinking, where
you're saying kind of like hey,women are thinking I'm going to
start this lifestyle business,maybe a side hustle, and that's
actually makes them maybe evenbetter suited for a side hustle.
Are those businesses investable?

(54:46):
Right, like can I invest inthat business?
Because it's not something that, as an investor, I'm going to
look at and be like wow, this isgoing to be the next $5 billion
business.
This is a lifestyle business.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
Right, and that's exactly right.
That's it.
That's part of why you don'tsee a lot as many women owned
businesses getting those biginvestments, because they're
just not starting that kind ofbusiness and do they want that
they couldn't.
Like women are starting men,but that's not what they're
going for, and so yeah, like ifthey start if they start, though
let's say, they start acatering business in Maymus's

(55:18):
example, and she's killing it.
She's absolutely killing it.
And now that's I would.
That's investable.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
That's 100% investable, Like she could
probably scale for sure.
And she.
And the crazy thing is is thebusiness is there.
Yes, the people, the workers,the helpers, the people that
need it.
That's the problem now, andtrying to figure out how to get.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
But because she's been doing it for a while, she
really does know the kind ofperson she wants.
She's not you know when you'restarting, a lot of times your
first or second hire is notexactly who you really should
have gotten, but you justweren't clear on.
You know from yourself, in yourown head, what you were looking
for.
Not that there was anythingwrong with that person,
necessarily but it wasn't thetype of person that you really
should have hired.
Well, Maymus, for example, hasthat honed down.

(56:03):
She knows exactly the type ofperson she wants, so she doesn't
make any mistakes anymore.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Hire slow, fire fast.
That's right Exactly, and Idon't think she has a problem
doing that.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
So no, I think you're right, she's, and that's
another talent she's honed.
I'm quite sure she's rocking itout oh 100%.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
So we need more people like that that are just
grinders.
They hustle, they grind.
And she's had kids.
Yes, I know she's got two kids.
It's not like, she's just not.
You know, she's as motherless.
You know grinding.
I put my career aside, sir.
I put my family aside so Icould go do this thing.
No, she's doing it all.
Yeah, and it's possible, and I,you know, but she's grown a

(56:41):
team right.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
When she started she was cooking out of her own
kitchen in her house and she hadno team and she was doing it
full-time on top of herfull-time job, her full-time W-2
job.
And then a couple of years later, after she went through our
program, she was able to moveout of her home kitchen into a
commercial kitchen.
She had her first employee andshe had quit her day job and a
big piece of that is just well,a lot of the huge piece of it

(57:05):
was her network that shedeveloped over those with our
help through that, those firsttwo years of experts and funding
sources and customers and theresources.
And then the understanding twoof her own business, like the
business plan and her financialprojections and that sort of
thing, what types of funding shecould access, and then growing

(57:27):
that has because she had put inall that time.
Now, yeah, she's absolutelygoing to take it wherever she
wants to take it because she hasthat team and that's how she
can do it.
She started small and then whenshe had kids, it's okay.
I mean she's still working likea crazy woman, I'm sure.
But she has a team, though youknow she doesn't have to be

(57:49):
there for every single eventbecause her team is there,
whereas before she did have tobe there for every single event.
When that's what makes abusiness.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
Investable, You've got to get yourself.
You got to work yourself out ofthe business.
Work on the business, not inthe business, right, and that's
the whole thing.
And my wife's actuallystruggling with that right now
because she owns a spa and it'slike how can she try and find
people?
She got tons of applications,but it was a bunch of the people
during COVID that were kind oflike on unemployment and they
just had to fill out anapplication yeah.

(58:15):
So she had a lot of those typeof people and it's been hard for
small businesses to last two orthree years and a lot of them.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
You know, maybe the pool of employees have started
their own business.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
That's the downside of side hustles right.
It's like, oh crap.
Well, like, okay, now peopleare running Airbnb's.
There's no houses available, sothere's always a downside.
There's always a winner and aloser, essentially, and whatever
is going on.
So, yeah, now you've got, we'reencouraging people to do side
hustles, and now you know, papaJohn's or LaRose is down the
street, can't find employees,because these guys are making

(58:49):
five times as much money as theyget.
Maybe, or they're trying to,they're trying to, but they're
trying.
They're doing something forthemselves, right, they're
trying to do something, and ifthere's a market for it, then
you're filling a need in thecommunity.
You understand that problem thatyou're solving.
That's right.
I mean, do people need morepizza?

Speaker 3 (59:04):
I don't know, but apparently people need this
guy's talent, but yes, that'sright, right, yeah, so as long
as there's a need.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
So what are the outcomes Like?
What do you want to see comeout of this?
You know you're doing all thiswork.
What, ideally, would you liketo see?
What kind of wins would youlike to see?

Speaker 3 (59:22):
Just more women starting businesses, you know,
and not just starting them, butstarting them in a smart way.
So not just, like I said, it'sfine if you make necklaces and
you put them on that scene.
That's your, that's the extentof your business.
But I think you might bedisappointed with the results
that you get if you haven't goneback to the beginning and kind

(59:42):
of like I teach in my workshops,starting with what problem are
you solving?
Okay, it's a necklace, butyou're still solving a problem
Like I need something to go withthis outfit, or I need for you.
You know, you, I need a gift formy wife.
So there's various things.
You know, I need a verypersonalized thing.
I need a locket that has I canput my sweetheart's picture in.

(01:00:05):
You know, whatever it is,there's a problem that you're
solving or I need that you'refilling.
You have to really understandthat, so that all of your, so
that you know who you're talkingto.
So right, who has that problem?
And then from there, how do youtalk to them?
So I would, if I'm trying tosell you a necklace, I would
probably not say, hey, look atmy necklace, do you want to buy
it?
I would say, for your nextValentine's Day.

(01:00:27):
Here's the perfect present forthis special woman in your life
and pitch it to you.
That way, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (01:00:32):
And so the whole thing all hinges on the process
here.
That we teach in this workshopis start with the problem, then
you figure out who has thatproblem, then you figure out how
to talk to them and where theyare, and that's the marketing
right when are they and how areyou going to talk to them?

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Yep, yep.
And then you use chatGPT towrite up a marketing pitch, and
three personas that's absolutelyright.

Speaker 3 (01:00:54):
Then you use Adam's tricks for chatGPT.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Chatgpt is amazing, Dude chatGPT is made is do
inside hustles so much easier.
Like what you're talking aboutis finding your audience.
You put in what you do.
You say, hey look, chatgpt, I'mtrying to do some personas.
Anytime, like a proctor inGamble or any smart marketing
people come up with a newproduct.
They do personas.
Who am I selling this thing to?
So you generally create, say,three personas.
You've got to set it up andyou've got to create these

(01:01:19):
things, but you can use achatGPT to do a lot of the work.
That's interesting.
Yeah, you had to pay for itback in the day.

Speaker 3 (01:01:24):
Yeah, well, that's absolutely right, and what we
teach in everything that we dois this idea of especially with
a side hustle.
That's another one of thebeautiful things about a side
hustle is you can pivot soeasily.
I tell people to look at itlike pretend you're a scientist
and your heart isn't in everysingle thing that you're doing.

(01:01:46):
You're stepping back and you'relooking and evaluating and
saying, okay, where, who are mycustomers?
Maybe they're not who I thoughtthey would originally be, maybe
they're older, maybe they'reyounger, maybe whatever.
Yeah, who's actually buyingthis?
So there's a great example ofthis A woman I worked with when
I was doing the email.
I used to have a side hustledoing email marketing and when I

(01:02:07):
was helping working with her.
She's an artist and she's sotalented and she can work in any
medium.
You know how artists are.
Oh yeah, they're just amazing.
But what she had decided tofocus on was computer, like she
would do everything on computers.
They're very cool lookingdrawings of muscle cars.
So she had these fabulous,really cool images of muscle

(01:02:27):
cars and she would do like grron the license plate or like
buzz If it's a horn, it, dodgehorn it, or something you know
really cool.
She could customize them, makethem whatever color, she could
make it look like your dream car.
So she would take these thingsand print them on metal and they
were really cool and she wouldtake them to car shows and all
the guys you know there and ofcourse obviously there's women
car people too but and so allthe people that were at the car

(01:02:51):
shows were loving her work.
Oh my gosh, that's so cool.
She made very few sales.
Comes to realize, you know,when a car guy has $400 extra,
what is he going to spend that?
On?
A car?
Something for his car, not animage of his car.
Yeah.
And so her actual targetaudience was the people that buy

(01:03:12):
gifts for people that love cars, yes, but the sad part of the
story is, by the time shefigured that out, she was so
burned out and tired that sheshut the whole business down.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Oh, my father-in-law would love that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
Yeah Well, he wouldn't pay any money for it.
You'd have to buy it for it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
My wife would have to buy it for it.
Well, Jill, this has beenawesome.
I appreciate you coming on.
Hopefully you don't have tofight traffic through the Taylor
Swift concert to get back home.

Speaker 3 (01:03:40):
I mean, if I do, I have a purple cowboy hat so I
can just blend right in.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Oh, there you go.
Yeah, I got to get from here toMount Auburn somehow, so I'll
have to figure that out.
But yeah, I appreciate youcoming on, we're going to do the
side hustle thing.
We're going to figure that out.
Yes, we absolutely are.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
If anybody's interested, can I give the URL?
Oh, give all your stuff, yeah,yeah, so it will.
And AVHRI is avhraorgA-V-I-A-T-R-Aorg Everything we
have there.
And then our side hustlewithout the hustle.
We have a special URL for that.
So it's side hustle without thehustlecom.
And we have a downloadable PDFon there of our one-page

(01:04:16):
business plan, which is you know, a lot of people think a
business plan has to be this bigdocument that has all kinds of
spreadsheets attached to it andyou know a lot of.
If you're going for funding, itdoes.
But just in general, I findthat it's.
It really helps people clarifytheir thinking.
And the format is basicallywhat are you going to sell?
Who are you going to sell it to?
How much are you going tocharge?
You know that kind of thing.
Really simple, but it's adownloadable one-page business

(01:04:39):
plan that they can get on thatpage.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
So, oh, I love it, just get it down on paper.
Exactly Get it out of your headinto something physical.

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
Yes, there's a living document, but it's very helpful
to have, as you say, just getit out of your head and get on
paper, and then it's clear andyou can decide your next steps.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Yeah, and guys look in the show notes, the
description.
We'll have these links in thereas well, so you can, you can
check that out and if you're inthe Cincinnati area, definitely
come down, get with Jill, Getthis side hustle without the
hustle course.

Speaker 3 (01:05:05):
Yeah, it's free.
And it comes with a workbookHour and a half.
Yep, yeah, love to have you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
Yeah, yeah, and she's a non-profit, so I mean she's
going to give you all this stufffor nothing.
That's right.
So you know, start takingadvantage of these free things.
Exactly Not everything that'sfree is worthless.
This is great stuff, guys.
So, yeah, get down here, turnyour side hustle into your side
hustle and Jill, I appreciate it.
Thanks for being on the show,it's been awesome.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, thanks for joining uson this week's episode of Side

(01:05:30):
Hustle City.
Well, you've heard from ourguests.
Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
Thank you.