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From Zero to Side Hustle
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One more work day ‘til Friday!
🗽 Ellis Island closed on November 12, 1954. For more than 60 years, it welcomed roughly 12 million people to America. Its last arrival was a Norwegian sailor who had overstayed his shore leave.
Many arrived with a trunk, a few dollars, and no job waiting. Some built businesses because they had to create their own opportunities.
Plenty of small businesses on your street started the same way.
Morning, everyone.
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The Planner Behind The Surprise Proposal
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
A proposal means picking the spot, hiding a photographer, getting flowers there on time and keeping it quiet, usually while working full-time.
Most people propose once. They just know it has to go right.
That's the gap: people want the moment perfect, and have no idea how to pull it off.
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
Plan and stage proposals for a fee. You pick the spot, book the florist and photographer, set it up, and stay out of sight until the "yes." The Heart Bandits in Atlanta charges $1,229 for an hour with a flower arch and rose petals, and many planners charge $1,500 to $5,000.
The business makes money from the proposal. But it grows from the video of the proposal.
►Lexi Tobin, an ad-tech director in New York City, planned her sister's proposal in 2019, posted the video, and strangers started asking her to plan theirs. Now she plans proposals, engagement parties and bridesmaid proposals on the side. In the year to October 2024 her typical month brought in about $9,000, including brand deals, and her best month passed $20,000. Most of each fee pays the vendors. She keeps about 15%.
Zooming out: every proposal you stage is an ad for the next one.
Think: people who travel for work, couples in big cities, resorts that host proposals.
🥢 The winners will sell the extras. The Heart Bandits adds a photographer for $575 and a videographer for $925, more than doubling the base price.
🍜 The risk is the margin. Keeping about 15% means one no-show florist or a rainy night
You might also like ⇢ Inside The World Of Marriage Proposal Consulting
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What's your take?
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A Connecticut Man Will Pay $500 To Get His Stuff Listed Online
Who's asking: Andrew B., in Westbrook, Connecticut, on Airtasker, an app where people post a task and a price and helpers offer to do it
For what: creating his eBay and Facebook Marketplace listings: the photos, descriptions and prices that put each item up for sale
Paying: $500
🎟️ How common is this: seven of the nine tasks posted on that board from Oct. 24 to 28 were people paying for help listing things online, from $50 to put clothes on Poshmark to $970 for help across several sites.
Search Airtasker and your local Craigslist gigs for "eBay" and "listing" a couple of times a week, and quote a flat price per ten items.
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Don't Miss This
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Your bank statement isn't just math. It reveals the story of a human life. It’s midnight comfort food, retail therapy, silent sacrifices, and acts of love.
On the podcast What We Spend, real people share their unedited bank charges and the real emotions behind them.
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Four Ways People Make Money From An Old Baseball Glove
A lot of garages have a leather baseball glove sitting in a bin, and the leather in a broken-in glove is better than most of what you'd buy new.
What you can build with it:
Craft-show wallets · Iowa's John Dodds buys old gloves at Goodwill and garage sales and cuts them into wallets · $40
Ballpark wallets · Ohio's Yurko Stitch Co. sells glove-leather wallets in minor-league team shops · $65 to $95
Vintage-mitt wallets · Washington's Mack Provisions ships each one with a photo of the glove it came from · $200, and it has made up to 300 a month
Key fobs from the scraps · the same shop sells the leftover leather as key rings · $15
🥄 The best one: a wallet made from the customer's own glove. The customer brings the leather, and nobody price-checks a wallet made from their high-school glove. Robbie Harper, a Georgia port foreman who does leatherwork at home, has a six-week wait for orders.
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Evan Oxhorn's First $1,000 From Stock Music
Evan Oxhorn, a San Diego lawyer, records short instrumental songs at home and licenses them on stock-music sites, where video makers pay to use a track in their YouTube videos, ads and shows. He keeps owning the song, so it can sell again.
Day one: a full-time law job, guitar gear he already owned, and about $500 for recording software and a box that plugs his guitar into the laptop. No audience. He'd given up on anyone hearing his music.
The first customer: a stranger searching. He uploaded tracks to AudioJungle and Pond5, where buyers search by mood and length, and it took a couple of months of uploading before anything sold. He keeps songs around 30 seconds so the mood lands fast.
What the first $1,000 took: one or two songs a month, an hour at a time after work. After a year or two that came to about $100 a month. Then one song played on a Romanian TV show, and BMI, the group that pays songwriters when their music airs, sent him a $1,900 check.
🍜 The unglamorous part: his statements usually came to $5 or $10 a quarter, and the big check was for a song he calls "not my best work at all." He's still waiting for another one that size.
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Hungry yet?
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Enough talk. Go cook.
That's the plate. Reply and tell us the best (or worst) proposal you've ever seen. Forward this to the friend who's about to pop the question. See you tomorrow.
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