Welcome to Ghost Business 👻 Your Tuesday & Friday email, where we turn $1 into thousands building these weird but simple side hustles

Starting With $100

Sweating the details… This is BY FAR the most asked question. It’s asked every day on Reddit, multiple times a day even. The people want to know:

I have a $100, what side hustles can I start with this?

I had to break this up into 3 emails because it’s so popular. So this series is broken into the most common ones down for you and removed some of the obvious, aka drop shipping and gig work, and dove into some of the funner “fringe” ones.

I broke these down into a couple of categories;

• Part 1: Door to door

• Part 2: Work from home (Friday 7/14)

• Part 3: Online sales (Tuesday 7/18)

I’ll talk about:

1. start-up costs

2. getting your first customer

3. getting your next 100 customers

4. how much you can make on average

Enough fluff, let’s dive in

Door to Door:

This is the “get off your couch and into your car and talk to strangers” side hustle. It’s for some but not everyone. You have to be able to handle the harsh sound of a door slamming in your face and perhaps some choice words from a Grumpy Gus. But here are some great revenue generating side hustles for door to door action.

• Yard work/poop scoop

• Window washer

• Seasonal Decor Setup/Removal

Start-up Costs

• Cleaners & Gloves $15

• Used Ladder or Pressure washer $60

• Brooms/Scoopers or long cleaning attachments $25

  All in you can find these new and used under $100 💰

The MVP (Getting your first customer)

Opportunity knocking… I started with door knocking because it is physically the hardest side hustle to get into but has MUCH more up side. Getting your first customer will be surprisingly easy.

This can be done a couple of ways; door knocking (duh) and online promotion

Door knocking is straight forward. Go to your neighborhood (or an upscale neighborhood) and give them your spiel:

“Hi, my name is Ghost and I’m starting my cleaning business in the neighborhood, I’m also a neighbor 👋. Cleaning your hard to reach windows is a huge, but necessary pain. I would love to help and can offer a great discount for being one of my first customers. Sound fair? Awesome.”

Online promotion is similar, but ya know, online. Hit up your neighborhood Facebook groups. Mention you’ll do the first few jobs at cost, IF they are willing to give you feedback and a review. Here’s what I would type:

“I looked out my windows this morning to check out the sunrise and you know what I saw? DIRT! I had to do something about it. So I started Ghost Window Cleaners and wanted to offer this solution to the group.

I’ll do the first few customer’s windows at cost, in exchange for some feedback and a review. Sound fair?”

Getting Your Next 100 Customers

The 1,2 punch 🥊… Once you can get a handful of sales under your belt, really hone in on your offering. Take in the feedback given from your early customers and fine tune every process. But ultimately, ASK FOR REFERRALS and REVIEWS.

They are everything.

Reviews get you seen on sites like Google and Yelp to add trust and credibility to your flourishing new hustle.

Next find out where your customers are.

• If you’re doing seasonal setups/take downs, ask your local Home Depot/Lowe’s to set up a booth outside with a sign offering Christmas, Easter, Halloween, etc set up services.

• If you’re pressure washing, go to larger, older buildings and offer to do a small portion of it for free to see if the difference is worth it to them.

• If you’re scooping poop, go to apartment buildings and offer to scoop and fragrance their pet areas to take care of any smells

P.S I did this when operating my Belgian Waffle business. I was in one farmers market, but it was only once a week. So I thought, “where are my customers”? Cafes and breweries! I reached out to them and started operating 7 days a week at multiple locations 🍻 

Document everything, people crave before and after pics. Use these to promote online through Nextdoor and Neighborhood Facebook groups.

How much can we make doing this?

Incomes can range, here’s an average breakdown:

• Holiday Decor Setup: $5,000 and $15,000 per season

• Pressure Washing: $250 per job

• Window Washing: $35-$50 per hour

• Poop Scoop: $500 per day

Most of these will have you break even after your first job!

Note: these prices can range significantly per zip code and level of services offered.

The End Goal

Fire sale… Most side hustlers are just looking to supplement their income. Some want to build it into their full time work.

Then there’s this guy, I wrote about him in my last email, who just sold his cleaning agency!

The end goal can always change from when you started it, there’s no right or wrong answer here.

Viability:

1 [building spaceships] 🚀 to 5 [easy peasy] 😊 

The knock… Door to door side hustles can be what I call, a cheese grater on the soul. Getting doors slammed in your face and getting called every word in the foul mouth dictionary can take a toll.

But once you get through that, there’s money in every knock. Many people aren’t willing to do door knocking anymore, so go out and there and be great!

(As usual each business will have it’s own setbacks, and it’s all about the execution and consistency rather than just having the idea 😉)

It’s a great day to be great!

Love, Mike 👋