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From Zero to Side Hustle
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When you only have a four day week
🎸 Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” peaked at No. 9 in 1981. More than 25 years later, The Sopranos used it to close its finale, helping turn the song into one of the best-selling digital downloads of any pre-2000 recording.
The song never changed. The audience caught up.
We look for that same pattern in business: demand that never disappeared, just got overlooked because everyone assumed its moment had passed.
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Free Resource
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The Mailbox Post Nobody Wants To Dig
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
Every winter, snowplows knock over curbside mailboxes. Cedar Rapids, Iowa will pay up to $75 toward a plow-damaged one.
Homeowners want a straight, good-looking mailbox. They don't want to dig a two-foot hole, mix concrete and look up the post office's height rules.
That's the gap: everyone on the street sees the mailbox, and nobody wants to dig the hole.
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
Sell the box, the post and the install as one price. The post office wants the box 41 to 45 inches off the road and 6 to 8 inches back from the curb. HomeGuide puts a basic install at $150 to $350.
The business makes money on the install. But it grows on looks, because lit and brick posts cost several times a plain one.
►Ryan Kammerer started QC Mailbox Pro in Davenport, Iowa in July 2023 and has installed more than 500 mailboxes. Most standard jobs run $500 to $875, and brick or stone posts start around $2,300. He told KWQC a typical install takes about an hour.
Zooming out: the mailbox is the cheapest curb appeal on the street.
Think: lit posts, house numbers, matching boxes for an HOA (homeowners association).
🥢The winners will be the ones who show up right after the first big snow. A flattened box is urgent, and a $75 city check rarely covers a new one. Being the name neighbors pass around after a storm is worth more than any ad.
🍜 The risk is what's under the lawn. Call 811 before every hole. It's the free call-before-you-dig line, and it gets buried gas and power lines marked. Also, new subdivisions mostly get group mailboxes, so your market is older neighborhoods with curbside boxes.
You might also like ⇢ A High Schooler Started A Company Replacing Rotten Mailboxes
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What's your take?
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The Book Titles That Multiplied Sales
Who used it: E. Haldeman-Julius, a Kansas publisher who sold pocket paperbacks by mail for a nickel in the 1920s. When a book stalled, he changed only the title.
What it got them: 6,000 copies in 1925, then 50,000 the next year
The recipe: "Fleece of Gold" became "The Quest for a Blonde Mistress."
Same book, same nickel price. He did it again with a Molière play: "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" became "The Show-Off", and sales went from almost nothing to nearly 10,000 a year.
📋 Why it works: someone scanning a list buys the title that tells them what's inside. A poetic or foreign title makes them guess, and guessing loses the sale.
Swap this for your niche: rewrite your slowest product's title to say exactly what the buyer gets. Leave the photos and price alone, and compare sales after two weeks.
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The E-Bike Rentals An Insurer Shut Down
Vashon Adventures rented electric bikes to visiting families on Vashon Island, Washington, alongside its kayak and paddleboard rentals.
The setup: it added e-bikes in 2017. The island is hilly and the visitors weren't all athletes, so step-through electric bikes were an easy yes. By 2020 it had more than 25 of them, and the bikes were "a big hit" with families.
The numbers: about 7 years of rentals, zero insurance claims, and a new premium 400% higher.
🧯 What actually killed it: in December 2023 the insurer said it would stop covering e-bikes. The only replacement coverage cost five times as much. Co-owner Erin Kieper told the Vashon Beachcomber the insurer put her small shop in the same class as the ride-share bikes in Seattle. A clean record didn't matter, because the price was set for the whole category, not for them. Bad ferry service had already cut into 2023 sales, so they sold the fleet and kept the kayaks.
The reason they gave was insurance premiums. The deeper problem was that one company's decision about all e-bikes could end their bike line overnight.
Would it have worked if… they had had a second insurer quoting them before the cancellation letter arrived?
If you're thinking about renting out anything with a motor or a battery, get the insurance quote before you buy the first one, and ask what would change the price.
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Renting Your House To Film Crews
Your living room, booked by the hour
Your house used to be just a place to live. Now photo crews, brands and small video teams rent ordinary homes by the hour through sites like Peerspace and Giggster, and the owners get paid for a day of strangers moving their furniture.
Big TV and ad shoots in Los Angeles are down this year. But small shoots (photos, online videos, short films) rose 10% last spring to 2,118 shoot days, according to FilmLA. Those crews don't need a studio. They need a kitchen with good light.
The money is real at both ends. Peerspace says it has paid hosts more than $250 million. Kathy Kristof listed her house and earned $1,455 after fees for one 13-hour ad shoot.
Where the trend branches next:
Ordinary homes for catalog and ad photos
Character homes for TV and movies, where one South Pasadena owner averages about $5,000 a shoot day
Small crews making online videos and short films
Pools, offices and warehouses, which Giggster lists alongside houses
► Most bookings are small shoots, so a normal, well-lit house is the product.
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NVIDIA's Founder Says Farmers Should Absolutely Use AI
“If I were a farmer, I would absolutely use AI.”
That’s Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA.
He’s pointing to one of AI’s biggest untapped opportunities: farming.
DIT AgTech is already putting AI to work with 500+ units deployed and 370,000 head on-platform.
𝘐𝘯 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘬𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘥. 𝘋𝘐𝘛 𝘈𝘨𝘛𝘦𝘤𝘩 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘢 𝘍𝘰𝘳𝘮 𝘊 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘌𝘹𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘣𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦: https://bit.ly/4bzuWCi
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Enough talk. Go cook.
That's the plate. Reply and tell us about the worst mailbox on your street. Forward this to whoever owns a post-hole digger. See you tomorrow.
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