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From Zero to Side Hustle
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When you hear what the weekend plans entail
⚾ In 2002, the Oakland A’s won 103 games with one of baseball’s smallest payrolls. Their edge was paying for what others overlooked: players who got on base.
Today, every team tracks that stat. The advantage lasted only as long as the market undervalued it.
That’s what we hunt for: small markets where a boring skill is still cheap because nobody’s counting it yet.
Last bowl of the week.
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Investment Opportunity
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The Mineral Everyone Forgets Until Their Driveway Freezes Over
Most people couldn't tell you what scandium is for, but everyone knows what happens when roads go unsalted. North America keeps running short, and Atlas Salt (TSXV: SALT) is building a shovel-ready mine in Newfoundland, three days by ship from Boston, with C$188 million in projected yearly free cash flow.
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The $25-A-Month Bluegrass Guitar Club
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
Plenty of adults want to learn bluegrass guitar, and most towns don't have a teacher who plays it.
They want a real player checking their progress. They don't want to drive an hour to a lesson or dig through a thousand YouTube videos that don't build on each other.
That's the gap: players want a teacher, and the teacher can't be in every town.
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
Record the lessons once, put them in a paid online club, and charge monthly. Skool, a website for paid online communities, runs the whole club for $99 a month plus a small fee on each payment.
The club makes money from the lessons. But it keeps members with a monthly live Q&A and a monthly tune challenge.
►Alex Graf, a bluegrass guitarist in Durango, Colorado, charges $25 a month for Alex's Acoustic Club: 11 courses, a monthly Zoom Q&A and a fiddle-tune challenge. His site says 318 guitarists are inside. An outside tracker estimates the club brings in about $5,400 a month, counting only members who appear to pay full price.
Zooming out: one instrument, one style, one monthly price.
Think: fly tying, watercolor, chess openings, fiddle.
🥢 The winners will be the ones who stay narrow. Graf doesn't teach "guitar." He teaches bluegrass to adults who want to keep up at a jam. A narrow club is easier to find and easier to stay in.
🍜 The risk is starting from zero. Graf finds members through his Reels and TikTok videos, so the audience has to come first. Members can cancel any month, and cheaper lesson libraries exist for about $14 a month.
You might also like ⇢ Banjo, Mandolin And Guitar Lessons For $14 A Month
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What's your take?
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Three Words That Sold A $500 Concert Shirt
Who used it: Kim Rose, an eBay reseller, listing a vintage Duran Duran concert shirt.
What it got them: raised from $199.99 to $499.99, sold at full price
The recipe: she added three words to the title, keywords and description: Sing Blue Silver Tour
📋 Why it works: collectors don't search "Duran Duran shirt." They search for the exact tour they went to, and the listing that names it is the one they find and trust.
Swap this for your niche: add the most specific name a collector would type, like a model number, tour or year, to your slowest listing's title.
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How One Skid Steer Became 70 Rental Machines
Most people who start an equipment rental business need it to pay their bills right away, and that's what sinks them. A Tennessee renter kept his day job so each machine only had to pay for itself.
What they uncovered: James Polkinghorne bought one used skid steer (a small four-wheeled loader with a bucket on the front, used to move dirt and gravel) at the end of 2020. He parked it by the highway in Winchester, Tennessee with a "rent me" sign and rented it to local contractors, while working at a trailer dealership for about four more years. Today James Equipment has about 70 machines worth just under $1 million.
He calls the stretch between buying equipment and having enough rentals to carry the monthly bills "the number one killer" of new rental businesses.
So he kept the paycheck. He buys used machines on loans where the first payment isn't due for 12 months. By month nine or ten, either rentals are covering the payment or he sells the machine and roughly breaks even. He also picked his customer on purpose: the only other local rental shop focused on homeowners and parties, and the nearest national chain was 45 minutes away. A second interview tells the same one-machine, one-sign start.
What they learned: buy the asset so it only has to cover itself, and keep your income separate until it does. The same rule works for a food trailer, a pressure washer or a laser cutter.
Neither interview names his first renter, but the buyer he aimed at is clear: a small contractor in town who needs a loader for three days and doesn't want to drive 45 minutes to get one.
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7 Handmade Things Sold At One Holiday Market For $15 To $60
All seven of these people sold things they make at home at the same holiday market in Sioux Falls, South Dakota last December.
Wool mittens · Mary Englar, hand-knit · $50 a pair, 3,077 Etsy sales
Dog collars · Karli Raymond, sewn fabric · $18, 8,425 Etsy sales
Fabric wallets · Mitzi Rozeboom · $48 to $59, 3,823 Etsy sales
Clay earrings · Jaycey Pease · $15 to $18
Engraved tumblers · Cathryn and Nate Mittendorf, Hadley Grace · $35
Candles and body butter · Marissa Snyder, Harvest Soap Co. · $16 and $20
Journaling kits · JoJo Halvorsen, JoJo's Pretty Paper Shop · $20, 30,614 Etsy sales
🍱 Pick of the litter: dog collars. They need fabric, webbing and a buckle, no kiln or laser, and 8,425 sales at $18 says the demand is real. Sew ten collars in a few sizes and take them to the next craft market in your town before you list anything online.
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Hungry yet?
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Enough talk. Go cook.
That's the plate, and that's the week. Reply and tell us what you'd teach for $25 a month. Forward this to someone who practices something every night. See you Monday.
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