0:00

You probably already know that Airbnb

0:02

can help you earn some extra cash

0:04

when you're not using your home. Maybe

0:06

you're traveling for work, you're taking an

0:08

extended vacation, or you're just snowboarding someplace

0:10

warmer. But here's where it gets interesting.

0:12

You don't have to do all the

0:15

work yourself. You can tap into Airbnb's

0:17

co-host network. This is a team of

0:19

local pros who handle the nitty gritty,

0:21

so you can focus on what matters

0:23

most. Think of it like outsourcing for

0:25

your side hustle. These professional co-hosts

0:27

help with everything from creating a

0:29

killer listing that stands out to

0:32

guest communication and even on the

0:34

ground support. You provide the space, they

0:36

handle the details, and you get paid. Personally,

0:38

I'm a fan of income streams that don't

0:40

require constant oversight. When I'm traveling for work,

0:43

I'm at a conference or a mastermind, or

0:45

if I'm on vacation, I'm trying to be

0:47

present with my family. Here's a way to

0:49

add an extra income stream without having to

0:52

my phone the whole time. When you're

0:54

ready to get started, see how

0:56

much your space could be worth

0:58

and get connected with an awesome

1:00

co-host at airbnb.com slash host. 160

1:02

grand talking 160 grand talking about

1:05

Australian fantasy football. Now you know,

1:07

nothing warms my heart more than

1:09

listener success stories. And for some

1:11

odd reason, the more obscure the

1:13

niche, the better, right? So today's

1:15

guest started a podcast on the

1:17

side from his teaching job. Not

1:19

about football. Not about even fantasy

1:21

football, but about a very specific

1:23

flavor of fantasy football for a

1:25

very specific flavor of football, that

1:27

being Australian rules football. That's a

1:29

niche within a niche, if I've

1:31

ever heard of one. It's a

1:33

really fun illustration of how you

1:35

can monetize just about any area

1:37

of interest from the keeper league

1:39

podcast and keeper league pod.com.a. half

1:41

your luck. Welcome to the side hustle show. Thanks Nick

1:44

for having me. It's an absolute pleasure to be here.

1:46

I've been listening to this show for probably five years

1:48

now and got plenty of good ideas. So it's pretty

1:50

exciting to come on here and be able to kind

1:52

of, you know, maybe help some other people get some

1:54

ideas in doing similar sorts of things with their side

1:57

hustles. I'm excited to learn as well. Stick around to

1:59

here, how he has built his audience from the ground

2:01

up and the different ways he's monetize. the

2:30

side hustle days of like, hey, I know,

2:33

why don't we start a podcast about this

2:35

keeper league flavor of fantasy football? So yeah,

2:37

it dates back to 2018, just after I

2:39

had my son. At the time, I was

2:41

teaching full time. I'd been about probably, I

2:44

know, five, six years into my teaching career,

2:46

and I wasn't really sure if that's... what

2:48

I wanted to do full-time if that's the

2:50

thing that kind of you know filled my

2:52

desires I guess I thought it was when

2:55

I started but you know once you kind

2:57

of hit that sixth or seventh year it

2:59

starts to become a bit of a grind

3:01

I guess so I was listening to a

3:03

lot of podcasts at the time it was

3:05

probably my favorite thing to do is after

3:08

work go home go for a walk and

3:10

listen to a podcast and because I was

3:12

listening to so many podcasts it's basically just

3:14

I wanted to start my own. I've always

3:16

been a fan of audio and technology. I

3:18

guess my job was teaching music, music and

3:21

technology really and a lot of that was

3:23

around kind of studio recording, teaching kids how

3:25

to use microphones, record bands and things like

3:27

that. I've always had a bit of a

3:29

studio set up at home so I thought might

3:31

as well put it to good use to start

3:33

a podcast and here we are about six years

3:36

later. Here we go, time flies here. Was

3:38

anybody else? covering this topic or were there

3:40

multiple different topics that you considered before saying

3:42

now this is the keeper league is going

3:44

to be the one? No, we never actually

3:46

really went elsewhere. We've had our fantasy league

3:48

and our keeper league, what we'll call it.

3:51

We've had that going for since about 2013,

3:53

so like, you know, five years before we

3:55

started the podcast and it's something that we

3:57

just talked about on WhatsApp groups and group

3:59

chats. every day anyway and it's kind of the

4:01

one thing that we felt like we just knew

4:04

the most about we could talk about like a

4:06

you know we could talk about it for hours

4:08

type things that's like your listeners in in the

4:10

USA are probably very familiar with draft fantasy like

4:12

NFL draft NBA draft and that sort of thing

4:14

where we go like different I guess is like

4:16

we play what we call a keeper league and

4:18

I think it's sometimes known as a dynasty league

4:20

over in the USA as well. is like where

4:22

you keep players from year to year. So instead

4:24

of picking a new team each year, it's kind

4:26

of built like you're actually like a team coach

4:28

or a team manager and you've got to think

4:31

about at the end of the year who

4:33

you're cutting, who you're delisting, who you're trading

4:35

to other players in your leagues and then

4:37

you do a draft and you pick up

4:39

the new younger players and stuff like that.

4:41

So we found that there was no one

4:43

else talking about. that version and we figured

4:45

like if we're not the only ones in

4:47

the country that are playing this format because

4:49

you know I got the idea from another

4:51

person we figured there must be more

4:53

people out there doing what we do and

4:55

it's been pretty interesting to kind of hear

4:57

the way different listeners were doing it like

5:00

the way different listeners were doing it like

5:02

on spreadsheets and stuff like that just totally

5:04

different ways people have been doing it but

5:06

yeah we figured that no one else was

5:08

doing it and give it a go. I

5:11

like this niche selection of what do you

5:13

never get tired of talking about? Hey, we

5:15

were, you know, we had this group Jack

5:17

Owen for years and it was just something

5:19

that you enjoyed doing and kind of finding

5:21

this white space in the market where nobody

5:24

else is really covering it in the way

5:26

that we would want to cover it and,

5:28

you know, it's kind of an up and

5:30

coming trend towards this keeper league format or

5:32

this dynasty type of format. And, you know,

5:34

those two things kind of combined, you

5:36

know, with maybe the combination of a

5:38

combination of a variety have already have.

5:40

some level of you know audio production

5:43

knowledge or interest or experience

5:45

and like okay we can kind of

5:47

find the at the center of all

5:50

of those concentric circles is you know

5:52

this keeper league podcast so what happens

5:54

next record an episode you

5:56

launch into the world instantly

5:59

internet famous what's going on in

6:01

the early days of the show? Not quite

6:03

internet famous. I don't think we've actually reached

6:05

internet famous yet to be honest, but maybe

6:07

one day that's in the pipeline. But no,

6:10

we recorded it at my friend's house around

6:12

his dining room table at the time. With

6:14

my audio background, like I had decent microphones,

6:17

I kind of understand acoustics in spaces and

6:19

stuff like that, so how to make things

6:21

sound good even in the worst areas. We

6:23

recorded our first episode, just kind of introducing

6:26

ourselves. I think we gave five players each

6:28

that we think. because the whole the whole

6:30

premise of the podcast is not talking about the superstars

6:32

that everyone already knows about and that everyone always talks

6:34

about we talk about the next up and coming guys

6:37

in the fantasy world type thing or guys that haven't

6:39

even played yet they've just been drafted haven't played a

6:41

game or they've been playing in the reserve leagues to

6:43

try to get into the main team, to the A

6:45

team type thing, and kind of following those type of

6:48

guys. So we picked five guys each and we just

6:50

kind of talked about players that weren't really well known.

6:52

Okay, I'm fantasy, I mean, I fell fantasy and so

6:54

that was the kind of, I fell fantasy and so

6:56

that the first, I mean, I fell fantasy and so,

6:58

I mean, I fell fantasy and so, and so that

7:01

was the kind of, I first, really well-known, really well-known.

7:03

Okay, fantasy, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean,

7:05

I mean, I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel,

7:07

I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel,

7:09

I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel,

7:11

I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel,

7:13

I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel,

7:15

I feel, I feel, I feel, I sounds professional and

7:17

so what actually happened was the guy who runs the

7:20

official AFL fantasy podcast for that salary cat version he

7:22

actually retweeted it and said hey great new podcast good

7:24

to see the fantasy community growing and he did a

7:26

re-do-do-do-retweight and then he actually DMed the page on our

7:28

Twitter page and said like great work love the podcast

7:30

let me know if there's anything I can do

7:32

to help promote it and this is a guy

7:35

like I've been listening to for warning his name

7:37

is I'll mention his name is I'll mention his

7:39

name is I'll mention his name on the podcast

7:41

because he's actually become a guy I was listening

7:44

to since I was in high school you know

7:46

I'm just following the YouTube content or whatever the

7:48

YouTube content or whatever I'm whatever you know. So

7:50

yeah, that was probably the first bit of traction.

7:52

And then, you know, from there we're probably getting

7:55

a few hundred listeners per week just on the

7:57

back for our first kind of season, just on

7:59

the back. of, And

33:51

you go to gusto.com/side

33:54

hustle. Again, that's gusto.com/side

33:56

hustle to try three months

33:58

free. Yeah, do you see like

34:00

outside of these meta ads, other

34:02

ways of growing the audience, growing

34:05

the customer base? back

48:19

at all the stuff like I didn't know

48:21

when I started this, like, and now fast

48:23

forward five, six years, you know, semi literate,

48:25

I guess in three or four coding, build

48:27

games that go viral, build new apps to

48:29

help users, all that sort of stuff. None

48:31

of that stuff I knew how to do

48:33

before I started this podcast. It was more

48:36

about the necessity to learn it to kind

48:38

of move forward. And I guess that's probably

48:40

the key thing for anyone out there is

48:42

if you think you don't know something or

48:44

you think it's too challenging. It's not that

48:46

hard, like if there's enough resources out there

48:48

and you can follow instructions well and read,

48:50

you know, different articles or even now with, you

48:52

know, ChatGPT and AI and stuff like that

48:54

can really break down things and help you

48:56

learn even better. Like it's just never too late

48:58

to learn something new, I reckon. I guess

49:00

the other, the saying that I've always loved

49:02

is if you can't figure something out, figure out

49:05

how to figure it out, has always been

49:07

a big one for me as well. So

49:09

like if you can't. get to the end goal,

49:11

break it down into small steps, and try to

49:13

gradually learn that way. So I think that's

49:15

probably my tip for the side husbandation.

49:17

Absolutely. No, those are great. If you

49:20

don't know how to figure it out,

49:22

we'll figure out how to figure it

49:24

out. It's great. And it's great. And

49:26

it's never too late to learn something

49:29

new. That's something that hits me. It's

49:31

like, if you knew how to do

49:33

it, you probably would have done it.

49:35

It. For me, everyone, you can really

49:37

see how have, like, lives and breathes

49:39

this stuff. He's like a part of

49:41

the community, the audience detects that. It's

49:43

not like some, you know, private equity

49:45

firm coming in with some, you know, puppet

49:48

co-host trying to speak the language, like,

49:50

he's been in it, he's been in

49:52

it for years. On the marketing side,

49:54

it's going where the audience already is,

49:56

it's like these other fantasy platforms, these

49:58

other shows, like, like, trying to. Bring

50:00

some of those listeners and players into

50:02

your ecosystem and try and be that

50:04

a helpful resource and guesting on podcast

50:06

another way to pick up more podcast

50:08

listeners. Really like the idea of selling

50:10

data and to have's point about selling

50:12

it alongside some analysis or numbers are

50:14

one thing with like, well, what did,

50:16

you know, in our quote unquote expert

50:18

opinion, what does that, what do the

50:20

numbers mean? So like that idea of

50:22

selling data, I like the idea of

50:24

a smaller show. having some kind of

50:26

membership community where it's like on a,

50:28

you know, a cost per thousand listener

50:30

basis, like sponsorships may not make a

50:32

ton of sense, but if we can

50:34

bring our community together with some compelling

50:36

offers behind the membership paywall, I think

50:38

that makes a lot of sense, plus,

50:40

you know, recurring revenue in exchange for

50:42

recurring value, I definitely all like, like

50:44

all that. If you're interested in starting

50:46

a podcast of your own, a challenging...

50:48

medium to grow, but a really powerful

50:50

one, like we've both experienced, like for

50:52

relationship building and all that. I want

50:55

to invite you to download my podcast

50:57

starter kit. It's got resources on choosing

50:59

your right software and equipment for recording,

51:01

what my production process looks like after

51:03

we stop hitting record, how to market

51:05

your show, how to climb that listener

51:07

pyramid, so to speak, and all the

51:09

different ways the podcast can make money.

51:11

Again, that's at Side Hustle nationhuselnation.com/he FF,

51:13

or you can just follow the... Show

51:15

Notes link in the episode description and

51:17

I'll get you right over there. Big

51:19

thanks to Hep for sharing his insight.

51:21

Thanks to our sponsors for helping make

51:23

this content free for everyone. You can

51:25

hit up side hustle nation.com/deals for all

51:27

the latest offers from our sponsors in

51:29

one place. Thank you for supporting the

51:31

advertisers that support the show. And that's

51:33

it for me. Thank you so much

51:35

for tuning in it. If you're finding,

51:37

value in the show. I'd love your

51:39

help in spreading the word. Easiest way

51:41

to do it is just fire off

51:43

a text message to that friend of

51:45

yours who could benefit from hearing this.

51:47

Maybe that's your friend who's got an

51:49

obscure hobby that maybe they should start

51:51

a podcast about. Until next time. Let's

51:53

go go out there

51:55

and make something

51:57

happen, and I'll catch

51:59

you in the

52:01

next edition of The

52:03

Side of Show. Hustle Show.

52:05

Hustle on.