Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug show. My name’s Doug Cunnington, and today we’re going to cover some random stuff that’s on my mind. I made a list here on a legal pad with some almost legible writing. And this is some random stuff. Some things are kind of personal finance related, really credit cards and credit card points, which.
It’s something I’m starting to think about a little bit more and also a realization I had a buddy Sent me a text, maybe more of an acquaintance, sent me a text and I was like, ah, I really don’t want to deal with this. So I’ll tell you about that. And then a decision that I made that will solve many other problems and kind of one area where I like to spend my time is outside and exercising.
So I’ll talk briefly about that. And one other thing is like what side hustle I would start right now. And the thing is like this show. Started in 2019 at the time niche sites, affiliate marketing sites that were supported by organic Google traffic. They ran ads, maybe they sold their own product.
Often it was an affiliate site. I mean, that was sort of like the bread and butter after some time with like some random topics out there. I realized that the audience usually wanted to hear the success story. So I really leaned into it. I talked to students of mine, talked to other people, some adjacent business models, and then in the last year and a half with a AI, or maybe two years, AI.
And Google algorithm changes and just sort of a shift in the way people consume content where short form video is a lot more popular and people spend a lot more time doing that than they do reading blog posts, things just shifted. And I’ve been sort of unmoored and not certain like what side hustles like folks should approach and spend.
Time on, and part of it is like, I’m not trying to do a side hustle thing right now. So I’m talking to other people about it and I’m observing, and it does give me a much different perspective because like when you, you know, when I’m doing affiliate sites, creating them. And thinking about SEO and I have a course teaching people how to do it.
I mean, I’m kind of a biased person to talk about that stuff. So obviously if my business model and the shit that I’m doing relies on me believing that that is a good route, then I’m probably going to. You know, push that view. It is a good route. But now it gives me perspective cause I’m not trying to start a side hustle.
I’m not trying to do a local newsletter. I’m not trying to do social media, blah, blah, blah. I’m just kind of observing and hoping I can, you know, scrape together enough sort of ad revenue and other affiliate revenue in a very conservative way just to cover my costs, which is barely doing, but.
Anyway, the point is, I’ll talk a little bit about a side hustle that I might approach. And finally, I was looking back and old content that I’ve done and created in the past. And one concept I took from Tim Ferriss or a format of his show where it was like something I’m excited about something that I’ve changed my mind on and maybe like weird stuff that I’m thinking about or whatever.
And Tim did this a couple of times with a couple of different people. And I recorded a similar episode over on mile high five, my other show with my buddy Carl Jensen, and this was a couple of years ago, so I haven’t even. Revisited it in a while, but there’s one thing that I have changed my mind on so kind of a grab bag We’ll start off with the credit card stuff.
So credit cards. I don’t do the credit card churning. I don’t Get a new credit card every three months or every six months or whatever people do. Sometimes I I know there’s a couple friends of mine that Did this hardcore and I think they, if I remember right, it was like 40, 000 of credit card rewards that they got.
And I think they had like over 20 cards in the course of a year and a half or two. And it was a couple and they each would open cards and they wouldn’t put each other as like the co signer. So they were able to get a lot of cards, which was interesting. And they, you know, that was, they found it fun. I don’t.
Particularly find it fun overall, but I usually will get a card that has good enough rewards and move forward. And that pay too much attention that is generally going to be my approach moving forward. But I recently chatted with my friend, Kristen Knapp, and she is very much into credit card rewards and.
Basically travel hacking. So that’s the main thing. People do travel hacking. So they, they get points and they allot it, uh, redeem them for flights or hotels or something else. But usually it’s flights and hotels. And the primary card that I use is a Chase Inc. That is a business card and there are different tiers.
You’ll find this pretty often where you have a credit card. And there’s no fee. It’s free, and you earn some amount of points. And then there’s usually a middle tier that costs about 100. Typically it’s 100. And you’ll get more rewards for that. And finally, usually there’s a third tier. And typically you’ll pay Probably between like 306 or 700, depending on the card.
Often you get very good rewards with that. You do need to review your benefits to understand like what you will actually use, but typically. If you’re on that top tier and it’s going to cost you 400 or 500, you probably get like 300 or 200 worth of like travel credit. So like if you book a flight that costs three or 400 on that credit card, usually it’s credited.
So that erases a good chunk of it. Usually. More than half, but you got to review the different cards that are available to you. And some cards are, you know, dedicated to a specific airline or a specific hotel chain. So, you could be mindful of that, like if you know that you like to stay at Marriott hotels, then get the Marriott card.
And you will probably be able to use it very well. You often have sort of a leg up on the upgrades and that sort of thing. A couple of years ago, I knew I was going to be flying a little bit more and I got a United card. It’s a card that costs about a hundred bucks. I think it’s like 95. It comes with benefits, usually these kind of cards have a credit that you can use for like TSA pre check, a TSA pre check, I want to say it costs around a hundred dollars.
And again, the credit card company will credit you back if you get that. And then that TSA pre check, it will last, I think for four years, I think it’s a four year thing. So, great value. And just like I said, review the benefits. So at this point in time, I haven’t gotten a new card, I think in like three years.
I don’t, I don’t, uh, find it super fun to do this stuff. However, the best way to earn points is when you get a new card and you get the signup bonus. So fairly straightforward. Typically you have to spend three or four thousand dollars. So all you need to do is like use that card so that you’ll hit the amount that you need to hit and you have to pay on time.
That is a prerequisite. You have to pay on time. You can’t be late. If you are late, then like you lose all the points like they, it doesn’t work. Right. So you have to, you have to use credit cards properly and. You know, the way to do it is like never have a balance. You always pay it off in full every month.
So what I’m gonna do, ’cause I haven’t gotten a card in a little while, and I actually have somewhat of a large purchase coming up pretty soon I will get a new card and I’ll put the large purchase on there. I think the card that I’m looking at is probably the Chase Sapphire. I think reserve, I can’t remember.
This is one of those three tier systems and I will get the middle one that I think costs about a hundred bucks. And I think I’m going to get like 60, 000 points. Now, the good thing with chase is you’re able to take your chase points and transfer them to other point systems. So that could be airlines or.
Hotels, maybe even other stuff, but basically you could transfer your points to another area. For example, I just moved like 4, 000 points for my chase account over to Hyatt. And then I was able to get a room for free. I think I have to pay for my pet to be there, but basically I got a, I got a room and it was money that I was spending anyway.
So the way this ends up working is you, you find the card. Like I’ll get this Chase Sapphire, whatever. I’ll spend the three, four thousand dollars. It varies between card to card. So I’ll spend a few thousand dollars. I have a big purchase, so I know that I’ll be able to like hit it like that and probably not have to use it again.
And then I’ll earn those sixty thousand points, which is a few days depending on, you know, where I transfer it to for the hotel. Could be a few days stay. So it’s a few hundred dollars depending on. a variety of factors. So that’s great. I’ll be able to do that. And then the idea is if I wanted to really, you know, get into this after a few more months, I would maybe get a Hyatt credit card.
Hyatt has a good like point value for redemption. So like I get a Hyatt card, I get Whatever 50, 000 points or whatever their deal is for spending a few thousand dollars in three months and boom I end up being able to stay for free most of the time which is pretty cool so the thing is you have to keep track and you need to understand like where you need to spend from and typically what people do is like they’ll hit the spending bonus amount and then They stop using that card.
They don’t close it. And you need to keep it open for about a year or more. You just leave it open. That’s totally fine, but they put it away. They don’t need to use it anymore. And they switch over to the new card. It can get a little confusing. There’s some websites that help you keep track of it. You can keep a spreadsheet if you don’t do it too often.
Like I was thinking, you know, I typically don’t like the song and dance of having to do this opening a card and closing a card and like, just all that kind of stuff. So I was like, you know what? I can maybe do this like every six months or so. And strategically get cards and go from there. Now, there’s a whole lot of other information that you might need to know if you want to go down this route, because it can start as simple as what I just said.
I’m like, I know I have an upcoming purchase. I can get a card where I get a pretty good amount of chase points. Chase points are very universal. So I could transform to other places, very versatile. And. Then I just have that one. And once I get the bonus, I’m good to go. The thing is it can get complicated and that’s why I want to kind of go slow.
Then in a few months, then maybe I could do it again. So I will link up cause I recorded actually two episodes with my friend Kristen Knapp, and we will, we’ll link to it. She goes. Super in depth and I ask a lot of questions that like the knowledge that I’m telling you It’s what I learned from Kristen and a couple other sources that I have listened to in the past And I just wasn’t very driven to do all this credit card churning and travel hacking stuff But it can pay off if you if you have a plan on how you’re gonna approach it now one thing I’m gonna have to do Is I’m going to have to unlock my credit.
So one thing you can do, none of this is financial advice, by the way, it’s just some stories I’m telling and some things that I’m going to do. Something that I did a few months back was locked my credit with all of the credit card you know, reporting companies that are out there. While I hate these credit card reporting companies, cause they’re playing by their own rules and everything, and there’s all these data breaches, you know, and that’s why you probably want to lock up your credit.
So. When your credit’s locked, you can’t open a card, like no one can. They can’t illegally open a card or do something bad out there. Knock on wood, I have not been impacted in that way. I’ve never had any issues. I think my wife maybe has a couple times. And I know people, they’re like, Ah, you know, someone’s opened a card under my account and blah, blah, blah.
So if you lock up your credit, then They can’t do that. Check the fine print and all that. But here’s the thing. You these days can get your credit report for free. I think like once a week or like it’s pretty often used to be once a year. But now I think you can get it all the time. So you, you can go to those credit card reporting companies and put a credit freeze on.
So you lock up, you freeze your credit, you freeze things so no one can change it. What you have to look out for. Cause like I said, Fucking hate those credit card reporting companies. The thing you have to look out for is they create services that sound very close to like freezing your credit. So they charge for that, but you should not have to pay anything to freeze your credit.
So make sure if you’re doing this. You don’t pay anything and you’re actually doing like the free like freeze your credit situation. So do some research on this. You’ll be able to find other websites with more information or whatever, but essentially you freeze, you lock up your credit, whatever it’s called exactly.
Don’t pay for it. But when you need to open a line of credit or you’re getting a mortgage or you’re opening a credit card, like we’re talking about here, I’m going to have to go and unlock my, my credit and then apply. And then I’ll, I’ll lock them back up again. And if I remember, right. I think it’s very quick to unlock it.
Like within an hour, you got to look at the fine print, but I think like. You know, you can lock your credit quickly. You can unlock it quickly. So I could do what I need to do and then shut it down once I’m done doing what I’m doing. Um, so anyway, I’m, I’m a little bit excited about the credit card stuff.
In the past I did what Kristen, my, my friend, Kristen Knapp told me is like the worst thing you could do, where I just, I got whatever I. Earned like nine ninety thousand points or whatever over the course of a few years, and then I just redeem it for credit on my Statement and that’s nine hundred dollars that like that’s the exchange rate nine hundred dollars.
Not bad The thing is she was like you should be getting like a few cents Per point if you use it properly like on an airline Or for hotel points or whatever. And I’m like, Oh, so I should have been able to get like 1, 800 or 2, 000 worth of like hotel stays or something. And she’s like, yeah. So, you know, I haven’t been doing it in an optimal way.
It has been carefree and I’m not paying too much attention, but with the hotel stays, I’m going to try and do a better job moving forward. Okay, moving on to the next topic here I’m going to talk about, I guess the text that I got earlier today. So someone texted me and they were like, Hey, I don’t know if you’re looking for guests for your show.
Again, this is an acquaintance. I know him personally. I’ve chatted with him. We’re not like, we’re not like best buddies or really great friends or anything. I have no issue with him, but basically it was like, Hey, if you’re looking for guests for the show, then I have a friend who just released a book. You can check it out.
And then he was like, I could also be on the show and I could talk about my profession and blah, blah, blah. And. I immediately was just like, uh, why, why’d you send me this email? I lose respect for you, man. So number one, you, if you’re a listener of the show, you may have heard me talk about not liking interviews with authors that are launching their book.
So the week that I’m recording this. Someone’s launching a book and I see in my feed, he’s on like five or six of the podcast and I am distinctly uninterested. I don’t like that at all and I get bored of those interviews. Like I will sometimes listen to one of them and then move on because once you heard one.
You kind of heard of all, and a lot of times the authors, they’re directed by their publishing company to like be on as many podcasts as they can, and they go into autopilot, and you know, they just, they just give the stories from the book, the interviewers, they’re like, They read the chapter title, and they’re like, what’d you mean by that?
Those are the most boring interviews, and I fucking hate them. In fact, I really like Seth Godin, and I like Tim Ferriss, too. And a few weeks ago, I saw, oh, Seth is back on the show. They like each other, they know each other pretty well. And Seth has a new book coming out. And I think I only made it like 20 minutes in.
It was I found it. Very boring. Tim sounded uninterested. I was uninterested. While I really like Seth Godin, I think sometimes it’s just, I feel like it might be the same book he’s writing over and over again. That’s pretty hard. She’s done so many books, but I don’t know. Am I crazy? Can someone send me an email on this?
Leave a comment and YouTube or whatever feedback at Doug show. But yeah, yeah, like is Seth Godin Just like rewriting the same book over and over again. I don’t know To be fair. I haven’t read the last few. I got a stack of them back there. But anyway, I Don’t like those interviews. I wish they would just talk.
I mean, I would rather just like overhear their conversation about something unrelated to the book because the thing is like the way these interviews go They give away the punchline of the book. I don’t need to read the book anymore. And if I listened to multiple interviews, then I really don’t need to like check it out at all.
There’s a few authors where I really liked them and I will listen to the interview and I will buy the book. I support them as a creator and author and all that stuff. But you know, I just don’t like doing it. So anyway, this dude texted me and I was like, man, I don’t want to talk to the author and I also don’t want to interview that guy.
Cause like. It’s totally self serving for him, right? So it’s like, it’s to help him get clients. And it’s different if I go to someone and I’m like, I think you have an interesting story to tell and I want to see how it goes and it’ll help promote your stuff. That’s totally cool. But when they come to me, I feel like I’m being used.
So one thing that I have learned since the beginning of me working for myself, like 10 years ago, when I have a gut feeling, like, I don’t know if I want to work with that client. And then I did. It is confirmed that I am, whenever I have that gut feeling, it’s always, it’s always right. A hundred percent of the time, which is funny.
I told my wife this before I started recording and she was like, so you think you’re right? A hundred percent of the time. And I’m like, you know, it’s um, when I get that gut feeling. So I’ve had that feeling with interviewees as well. Sometimes, sometimes they do have a book or sometimes their pitch.
Aligns with something I was thinking about already, very rare. I think it’s only happened like 1 percent of the time, but basically, even though I had a little bit of a gut feeling that it wasn’t going to be a great interview, their pitch lined up with a conversation in my brain that I was already having with myself.
And I was like, we’ll give it a shot. They never turn out. I am right when I have that gut feeling. So I was like, you know what? I shouldn’t be offended. He’s just asking. He took a shot, but also I don’t need to make an excuse for, or give a reason on why I do or do not want to do something, especially if someone’s asking me for a favor.
So I just said, no, I am not looking for guests, which is true. I get at this point, I’m getting like five or eight emails a day, someone trying to be on some shows and. I guess it’s cool that I’m like people are trying to get on shows, but it’s just like I hope that whole podcast guest marketing Industry like fucking falls on his face.
So They’re just polluting the internet. I mean, I hate these automation tools. I just want to sign them up for each other’s Email list, so they’re just emailing each other and not me. So anyway, I declined I said, hey, I’m not looking for a guest I Don’t interview authors that are launching their book.
That’s a new rule that I have I’m not gonna interview authors that are launching their book except on the rare occasion. This will be ultra rare where They’re such a big author that I really liked them and they’re so big that they shouldn’t even really be on my show But for some reason they made they had a lapse in judgment and they were like sure I’ll talk to you Doug Which may happen and I think I’m gonna apply this rule to my friends, too So earlier this year on bio hi fi a couple people I know they were like, hey lunch in a book We’re doing a push blah blah blah And I was like, all right, I’ll do it.
But the thing like those interviews were better but The only like rare exception that I think I will make is if it is a personal friend and we basically do not talk about the book. I’ll, I’ll tell them, Hey, I’ll let you, I’ll give you whatever, 45 seconds. I’ll link it. I’ll let you talk about the book for like 30 seconds, but I don’t want to interview you about your book.
I for some reason, it’s weird, a lot, a lot of things don’t really set me off, but I think it’s the persistence that I am asked or receive emails or whatever. And I just, I’m like, you know what, it’s easier for me to just make a rule. If you have a book that’s launching, not interested. That said, I got a stack, stack of books.
Back there, several of them. And there’s some people that I would love to talk to. Probably their book has been out for several years. So that’s something I may do. I mean, they’re not doing the push. Maybe sometimes people are like, ah, I’m moving on to my next project. And they’re like, I don’t want to talk about the old thing.
But if they’re, well, depending on what they want to do, like some people are like, yeah, I’ll continue promoting my, my other work because I would sure love that to continue selling in the future. So anyway, really weird that that set me off, but what it, what it helped me realize today is if I have that gut feeling, it’s probably right.
And I can just say no, and I don’t have to justify it to other people why I don’t want to talk to them. Now typically when I get these cold emails, very easy, I either delete them or more often I mark them as spam, probably 70 to 80%. I mark them as spam, I block the sender so I don’t get their follow ups anymore.
If I am charitable, I might reply back and say, Hey, I don’t take pitches. Remove me from your list. That is probably like 1 percent of the time. I don’t have time to do that. Nor do I care. And I would, I mean, I hope enough people mark these as spam that those folks. Have trouble sending emails because they’re just polluting my inbox here.
So related to this is You know another thing where people ask me to do stuff now You know what? I’m in a great position where people are asking me to do things and one thing that comes up is like software or tools or something or It’s kind of half baked. It’s not battle tested. It is not like a production level piece of software.
And people are like, Hey, do you want to check out this tool? I’ll give you free access. And some, you know, in the past, I was like, Oh yeah, I will check it out. But now, unless it solves a pain point for me, I’m not going to do it. I used to say, yeah, you know what, uh, go ahead and give me access. I’ll take a quick look, but.
When I reviewed some of the main points from a book called 4, 000 weeks, I was like, why am I wasting time on something that’s half baked? I don’t even give a shit about it. It’s not solving anything for me. And if I look at my limited time on earth, 4, 000 weeks is like how Long like the average lifespan is.
I’m like, do I want to spend any time doing something that I literally don’t give a shit about? Clearly the answer is no. And I, you know, I still, just this past week, I realized that I sent an email and I was like, yeah, I’ll check out the tool. And when I got the email back, I was like, you know what? I don’t give a fuck.
I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. So I have to protect my time. No one else will protect my time. Surely you’ve heard, I mean, it’s a cliche now, but it’s like, you know, your inbox is like a to do list for other people, like assigning stuff to you. Like I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it anymore.
Pretty feisty today, huh? I just, I don’t know, I don’t know why I was like, yeah, I’ll, I’ll actually, I will spend my precious time doing that. Now that the fact is I was chatting, had a coffee with someone today and they were like, yeah, you must. Are you, are you pretty busy and blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, I’m not busy.
I’m not busy at all. And it is because I. I, I’m very selective on what I’m spending my time on, but I’m gonna be even more stringent for this kind of stuff. ’cause like I caught myself in the last week, I think I was chatting with my wife on on a podcast she joined me on, and basically I was like, you know, I get so many emails and one thing I should batch them a little bit better instead of checking through the day, which I, oh, I do that.
It’s a dumb habit. I often will batch the replies. So I see them coming in and it’s unfortunately taking up the bandwidth. Basically. I was just like, you know what, if I’m complaining about it, like solve the fucking problem, like, don’t complain about it anymore. So I appreciate you listening. Cause it’s me whining about people trying to get me to do stuff.
But I mean, at the end of the day, like. That’s a luxurious place to be in where people are like, valuing my opinion. They want me to test stuff. They want to be on the show. Of course, those pitches are, are bananas. Like really, they have no idea who I am. They’re fucking scraping a list of podcasts and they’re like, we are just going to spray out emails and pray that some unsuspecting people talk to my asshole author that is paying me like thousands of dollars to automate these fucking emails.
So anyway, all right, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll shut that down. The overall point is I’ll be selective on the things that I’m spending time on, and I’ll feel confident in saying no, and I’ll just keep it short. I don’t need to tell anybody why I need to say no. It’s great. Now, what do I like to do? The reason why I don’t want to spend time doing things that I don’t enjoy is because I want to spend more time outside.
I really enjoy Just exercising and working out. Even if it’s not outside, I see some friends. I work out at the rec center, which is like a walkable distance for me. I see friends maybe like every other time that I go there and like. People that I hang out with and have dinner and travel with and stuff like that.
So that’s cool You know, we don’t have like long conversations but it’s like those sort of like quick interactions like wave kind of shoot the shit and Yeah, I saw a couple friends yesterday and ended up having dinner with them later. And Yeah, yeah, it’s just it’s a it’s an enjoyable thing and then being outside.
I mean, that’s fantastic We’re trying to do a lot more of that in January we went on a couple weekend trips I did several days of either snowshoeing or, you know, just being out where there’s packs now and you don’t actually need a snowshoes, but you still need like spikes and traction control. And it’s great.
You often don’t get a cell phone signal, so you’re not distracted by stuff and it’s really been awesome. Now, one thing that I’ve changed my mind on, which kind of, I mean, it’s not, it’s not surprising, but I’ve been really focusing on sleep and sleeping better. And I thought I had it like really dialed in like over the last couple of years.
One huge thing is a chili pad. I sleep hot. I’m hot all the time and my buddy Jake he got a new chili pad. So he gave me his old one and within a couple nights, like it absolutely helped me start sleeping better. So I’ve been testing other supplements and stuff. I listened to Dr. Huberman Huberman lab for a couple of years.
He gets a little too in depth and a little over optimized. So I, I’ve relaxed and I don’t actually listen as much. But He gave some great tips on supplements that you might be able to take to improve your sleep. So I have actually like gone down that route and I take a few things including Magnesium 3 and 8.
We’ll link up to the sort of sleep stack that I’m, I’m using now. Magnesium 3 and 8 uh, Theanine, Apigenin, and the one thing I’ve added recently. It’s Ashwagandha, I take 600 or 1200 milligrams of Ashwagandha between like 6 and 7 p. m. And it’s actually helped me sleep through the night much, much better.
And the thing, I didn’t change my mind on sleep, but one thing that I’ve switched up this winter. And I’ve been a little antisocial in fact is, uh, you know, it gets dark earlier no matter where in the world you you are latitude wise, but you know, it gets dark earlier if you’re way up north, you know, if you’re in like New England or Seattle or Canada or something like it gets dark pretty early, like four or three 30 or whatever.
So anyway, in the winter, yeah. This winter, particularly, I’ve been putting on my PJs at like four, kind of start wrapping up. It gets dark. Ideally, I start reading in bed at like 7. 30. And, I mean, I’m passing out at like 8. 30. It’s been awesome to go to bed earlier and sleep in a little bit more. So the two main things that I’ve changed here recently, I got a better eye mask.
And I got that at the end of the summer. because the sun rises really early in the summer and it was waking me up and I’d wake up at like four and I’m like, God damn, I actually would love to sleep a little longer. So that mask has helped a lot. I upgraded my mask to something a little more comfy, something that will stay on my bald head a little better.
And it’s been pretty awesome. So that, that was good. And then I heard I think it was a recent study, but I don’t know, but ashwagandha 600 milligrams having it in the evening and then. It helps manage your cortisol levels through the night. Thus, you don’t wake up through the night as much, which was amazing.
Cause I thought I was waking up to pee all the time, but it turns out, I think I was waking up. And then realizing, hey, I may just may as well pee. It wasn’t that I was like waking up because I had to pee. I was just waking up naturally, but now I’m sleeping through the night much, much more, which is absolutely amazing.
Really, really surprising. And then finally, the other thing that I’ve added. It’s taping my mouth shut. You may have heard ads or heard about hostage tape, which is good branding. And I actually looked at the hostage tape and I want to say it was like 30 or 40 per month or more. I don’t know, but as I was looking, I was like, it’s not like this is fucking magic tape or anything.
Like, why does it cost so much? And of course it’s because they have like big marketing behind it and they’re. paying podcasters or YouTubers or whoever to talk about the hostage tape that costs money. Anyway, I read, did some research and I was like, can’t you just use like. Medical tape or whatever? The answer is yes.
So I started using 3M like, what is it called? Micropore, just surgical tape. And basically they, they use it to like tape on bandages and stuff, but it’s like the sensitive skin type, so it doesn’t like. Mess up your skin too much. And, uh, it’s been fine. I’ve been wearing it, you know, for the people on YouTube, you can see my face isn’t red, it’s not ripping the skin off, blah, blah, blah.
I do need to keep my facial hair trimmed a little bit more, which is not a huge deal. If you have a beard, you may have to whatever, take some other action or some of the tape you see. They’re like, Oh yeah, it’ll stick on beards and stuff. But you know, that’s a, that’s a tough one. You’ll have to experiment with your own beard and.
Tape and whatever. Anyway, it’s made a major, huge difference. Like me just taping my mouth shut. So I don’t know if that’s an issue for any of y’all out there, but we were up in the mountains, we were up at a pretty high elevation you know, 9, 000 feet and in the winter, the heat’s running, the air is super dry and my mouth was drying out like severely and I was like, I got to do something.
So started taping up. Breathing through your nose is healthier. It’s been pretty cool. So a lot of optimization, like I thought I had my sleep at a really good state. But I improved a couple ways, like being able to sleep through the night, being able to sleep later because of the eye mask and then taping my mouth shut and breathing through my nose.
And that makes, you know. It’s more, it’s more comfortable than having a dry mouth, but at the same time, like having your mouth tape shut, my wife, she has a great laugh and all of that. So the first couple, like the week or two when I started doing this, I would tape up. And then she would try to get me to laugh, to like, get it to displace, but luckily I, I was able to hold it in and keep that tape on there.
This episode reminds me of like the, the old school episodes, probably like the first 150 episodes or something back in 2019. Or just random stuff. I took great inspiration from Bill Burr, the Monday morning podcast, where, I mean, he’s a comedian, so he just talks about stuff, talks to himself for like an hour, and then it’s just what he’s been up to, where he’s been traveling to occasionally a topic as a show got bigger, which I think he started like 2005, like as soon as.
Podcasting was a thing. Like he was on there. I didn’t start listening until I don’t know, like 2015 or 16. So he already had like about 10 years of stuff, but as time went on and, you know, he’s a very famous standup he’s. Very prolific these days, but then he started answering questions at the end, but all the random stuff, it does remind me of the old days where I would just talk to myself, have a couple of bullet points and just, well, talk to myself.
So as we wrap up, I teased you earlier, I’m going to talk about what side hustle I would work on. And I was going to just give one, but I’m going to give you two. So number one, if I was starting right now, like we’re coming up pretty close to me doing this stuff for 10 years. I got laid off in 2015, so we’re coming up on 10 years here in the summer.
And I mean, I can’t imagine I can’t imagine starting over. If I started over and I didn’t have the network that I have, and that’s probably one of the more valuable things that I’ve developed. So if I didn’t have the network two things. So one, I would probably look at the gift lab course that I mentioned a few weeks back with Emily that’s Emily Odio Sutton and that was episode five 50 and she is doing print on demand over on Etsy.
And I should have like investigated a little bit more because I actually have a print on demand. And it was, you know, whatever company, I don’t know why I ended up on red bubble. I think someone told me about it and then maybe a couple other people did. And so I was like, Oh, red bubble must be good quality, but.
Who the fuck’s heard of Redbubble, right? I mean, I did not hear about it until someone was like, Oh yeah, I’m doing my products over there. So Emily was like, yeah, there I use I think it’s Printify and it links up seamlessly to Etsy. The reason why that’s a superior idea is there’s a marketplace at Etsy.
There’s people there. Looking to buy stuff and I actually have a handful of things that I don’t know if people are searching for it or even give a shit, but it’s like some of my photography. I love taking pictures. I have since I was in high school. I. Love the gear too. So I don’t actually think I’m, I have like a, a good sort of eye for composition or anything like that.
I’m a bit of a hack at it, but you know, I enjoy it a lot. I like the gear. I like you know, the things that I’m taking photos of, you know, I’m usually out in the wilderness and stuff and, you know, landscapes, wildlife, some stuff like that, anyway, the point is I do have. Some things on my shop out there, but like no one goes to red bubble.
So I’ve sold a handful of things. I probably made like 10 bucks or something like that. But the thing is like. Someone’s searching for it and they’re finding it and buying it like I don’t think people are heading over there very often so anyway, I would do I Would do printables sold on Etsy and I have a ton of ideas and I was telling my wife I was like I need to I need to move this stuff that I have on Redbubble over to Printify and Etsy and like have that rolling because I think I mean some of us Some of it’s legit.
I mean, some of it’s okay. So I will do that. That would be the side hustle. I would start now. It is absolutely recency bias because Emily is the last person that I talked to about sort of a newer side hustle. That sounds like it has like a relatively low bar. For entry. And I am often concerned with that as far as like a defensible business.
And she was like, well, if you, if you do have a lot of products, you, you obviously gain experience doing that, but it is a easy way to get started. She didn’t have graphic design experience. She. You know, looked at the data that she could look up, but she develops an intuition and she’s done really well. So I will actually link up to her.
Course and she has a free workshop over there. She’s actually working with Friends of mine Julie and Cody from gold city ventures but basically the free workshop it gives you enough information to get started and I mean if you are listening to this you probably have a Handful of the skills already so you could probably just kind of get up and running like she lays out the blue print overall Blueprint, so anyway, print on demand shit, Etsy, check it out. The other thing that I would do is a little more boots on the ground. And I have thought about doing this. In the past, because it does tie in photography. I’m pointing my lenses right over there and I have a handful of lenses, a couple of camera bodies. I have, you know, one up there, there’s one back here.
I have a few pieces of gear that I could use in an area that I see. I think I saw some YouTube videos on this real estate photography. Now, Real estate’s up and down and you know, it’s, it’s cyclical and blah, blah, blah. But the thing is I have the gear and I have the know how to take photos for say Airbnb owners, right?
So I would probably focus in on a specific area where I’m like, okay, I can help you get great photos for your Airbnb and charge, you know, few hundred dollars for that. And the thing is like, it would be, Totally you know, up to me, like how much I wanted to do. So if you just want to do a few hours per week, that would be fine.
If I wanted to try and do it like full time, which I wouldn’t do by the way, but I could, you know, do as good of a job as I can network and being around real estate agents, which I mean, it would be a bit of a push push. I’m not a super fan of the real estate industry, but I do like photos. And I think once you get the text.
techniques down is not super difficult. So, I watched a handful of videos, took some pictures here in my own home. And I was like, Oh, I kind of see, you know, they do some exposure bracketing. They essentially they’re putting together like an HDR type image. So you have like a range of exposures, which I’ve played around with.
It’s fairly straightforward. Some of the folks that I watch their YouTube videos on, they’re like, yep. This is how you do it. And basically you could hire someone to do the image editing. So I could just take the photos, kind of have like a very templated kind of system where it’s like, take these pictures, you do the editing, and then I could double check, make sure everything’s good to go and get it back to.
The Airbnb owner, you know, I could focus on other stuff, but it seems like there’s a lot of Airbnbs. There’s probably a reasonable way to, uh, get in touch with, uh, you know, property owners, property managers and say like, Hey, I see your images are horrible or they’re old. And maybe you want some updated images that look a little better.
And. Obviously pretty easy to like see who has the poor images and I think, you know, when you’re like scrolling through you know, Airbnb, like you can see the horrible images. So those are the two that I would take a look at. Obviously the real estate photography could. Be a very big business, but that is again, boots on the ground.
That is a, in real life situation gift lab that is more on the digital side and obviously like kind of up to you, like the crazy thing, talking to Emily, I think she said she’s developed about created 2000 different products. Now, many of them are iterations on, you know, something that she’s created. So maybe she has like.
Whatever, like a coffee mug kind of thing. And then she has like many different designs catering to, you know, different niches and that sort of thing. And I mean, that’s a lot. She, she did 2000 in like two years. So I was like, so you’re doing like three of these a day. Like, am I doing the math right? And she was like, yeah, I I’ve done a lot of these.
So I think. It’s certainly viable. She has several like hundred products. I want to say if I remember the interview right, she’s developed like 2, 000. I think there might only be like, um, 200 that are actually active. So she will like try stuff and, you know, 40 percent of them are not exactly working. And she’s like, Oh, you know what?
I’ll take that down. It could also be like when she got started. The quality wasn’t as high. So anyway, if you haven’t heard that episode, definitely check that one out. So I’ll link up to, um, some credit card options that you might have. If you expect to make some larger purchases, it’s kind of a slam dunk to be able to hit the minimum spend to get the signup bonus.
But if not, most people. depending on your expenses and where you live and blah, blah, blah. Like most people should be able to like use that card a hundred percent of the time and hit the limit that you need to hit in order to get the bonus. Again, it’s often three or 4, 000 over the course of three months.
And usually like grocery shopping. a couple other things that you put on there, then you’re going to be able to hit it. If you know you’re taking a trip or like you’re going on a cruise or whatever, like get a new credit card and then put, you know, if you’re going taking the family on a cruise, like that’s probably going to be like few thousand dollars.
So go ahead and do that. Or if you’re buying flights, like go ahead and go ahead and get a card and you’ll be able to hit that limit in no time. And The links that I’ll put in there, they’re going to be my referral. So I get a handful of points and I should let you know that, but it doesn’t cost you anything.
Sometimes you get a little extra, so you just have to check out the fine print. And I will also link up to the episode with Kristen where an expert goes through. We recorded two episodes, so there’s, there’s a lot. And depending on when you’re. Checking this out, both episodes might be out, it might not be the other thing I’m going to do because Kristen Kristen’s awesome.
She’s actually a meteorologist out in St. Louis. So if we’re in the St. Louis area, you might know Kristen from the news. I don’t know what station she’s on. But anyway, if you’re in the St. Louis area, it is Kristen. The meteorologist look, look it up, you’ll, you’ll be able to find her. You’ll recognize her if you check out the video.
I’m probably going to turn all of her notes, which I think was like 10 pages of notes to a blog post. So you could review that if you want to go a little bit deeper, but if you check out the episodes, we break it down. I ask dumb questions, so it’s easy to absorb. And I think that’s it. Let me know if there’s any other side hustles y’all are working on, things that you’re interested in hearing about.
I do love talking to people about side hustles. It’s just. I am not doing it personally. I will report back once I get my Etsy stuff rolling. I can envision that being a pretty fun thing to do. So I think that’s it for today. If you’re not on the email list, you could sign up. Please hop over to YouTube if you’re not watching this there.
You could subscribe, comment on every video. I don’t ask enough. Like the videos, comment, it helps the algorithm and all that kind of stuff. But you know, y’all are busy. See I don’t want to get you to you know, do stuff if you don’t have time, but if you got a second, I do appreciate it. All right.
That’s it for today. We’ll catch you on the next episode.