Picking a Side Gig | Multithreaded Income Episode 7

Picking a Side Gig | Multithreaded Income Episode 7.

There are many side hustles you can choose from as a software engineer, so how do you pick the right one? There are lots of things to consider in making sure that the job you take on is worth the squeeze. Hear from our experience in picking clients and side projects so you pick the right one!

Join our upcoming challenge at https://multithreadedincome.com/

Creators & Guests

Host

Kevin Griffin

♥ Family. Microsoft MVP. Consultant/Trainer focused on #dotnet #aspnetcore #web #azure. VP at @dotnetfdn @revconf Mastodon: @[e-mail] - He/Him

Guest

Chad Carter

I help businesses create awesome experiences.Christian, Husband, Father, Entrepreneur, Investor, Technologist, Author, Speaker, Gamer & Web3 Devchadcarter.eth

Guest

Sean Merron

What is Multithreaded Income Podcast?

In the "Multithreaded Income Podcast," host Kevin Griffin navigates the nuanced landscape of generating multiple income streams as a technologist. Aimed at professionals who wish to diversify their revenue while maintaining a focus on technology, this podcast dives deep into unconventional strategies, untapped opportunities, and actionable advice.

Kevin Griffin: Welcome back to the show.

Everyone.

, it is commentary time.

I'm joined with Sean and Chad.

How you gentlemen doing today?

Chad Carter: Doing well, Kevin.

Hope you're doing well.

Kevin Griffin: Awesome.

Well, we had the opportunity.

Well, I had the opportunity to sit

down and actually talk to Brett Fisher

about his life and his business.

, Sean and Chad had the opportunity

to listen to the first cut of the

interview and we're going to sit down.

We're going to talk about some of

the big ideas that we pulled from

the interview and Hopefully lessons

that you all can learn along the way.

, so instead of me going first, I

want to save myself for last chat.

I'm going to ask you what,

what was the big idea you

pulled from Brett's interview?

Chad Carter: Yeah, there's a lot, right?

And he, uh, it was, it was

a really good, uh, episode.

I thoroughly enjoyed, uh, uh,

listening to you two go back and forth.

Um, but I guess the, the main thing

I'll talk about, uh, today is what

he mentioned that Venn diagram.

So when he was talking about getting

clients or even, I think he also kind

of fools with this or, or takes this

into account when he's talking about

projects, what projects he's going to do.

And this has been diagram and the

things he said was it needs to

be feeding me, not draining me.

He said that has to be

bringing in revenue.

And it needs to build an audience.

So those are the three things.

Um, and I just think that's kind of

a critical thing to keep in mind.

So, you know, uh, Stephen Covey, uh,

whole book had, um, yeah, multiple

books, but one was, you know, um, seven

habits of highly effective people.

And one of the habits there is

beginning with the end of mind.

Right.

And, uh, that's just like a principle.

I just hold on to a lot, try to

anyway, not always good at it,

but that's what I try to do.

And.

I think just trying to when you're

starting out or trying to determine, you

know, how you're going to go and create

side income, uh, and or grow your side

income to so it can be your main income.

I think this advice here on this whole

Venn diagram is really, really good.

Because if it's not feeding you

and it's actually draining you,

you can't keep it up long term.

It doesn't matter how disciplined you are.

It doesn't matter how hard worker you are.

It doesn't, you know, it's like, if

you don't, if it's not feeding you

and it's actually draining energy out,

you, it really cannot be sustained.

So I think that being in

there is super important.

And then of course, if it's not bringing

in revenue, it's not bringing the money.

Well, you don't have a business.

Uh, you're not going to be

in business very long there.

So it has to be a critical.

And the interesting thing is.

Um, I, I tend to go on premium

pricing versus trying to be the

cheapest on stuff, uh, because.

You know, there's no advantage

to be the second cheapest, right?

There's no advantage

being second cheapest.

And if you're the cheapest, well,

somebody, it's just always going to be

providing as much value as you can for

as little as you can, and you just can

get priced out, out of the game anyway.

And, uh, which is great for the market.

Uh, but as consultants and, you know,

providing value, it's, it's all about,

uh, determining where that value is and

having a premium price, but also like

in order to charge that price, you can't

just say, Oh, I'm gonna raise my prices.

But you charge a price

in order to do that.

You have to provide

tons and tons of value.

Something nobody else

in the market is doing.

That's, I think, where the key's at.

So it's not just about, Oh,

I didn't charge more money.

I'm gonna double my rates.

You have to actually provide value.

But the whole point is

revenue has to come in.

And if you have that revenue coming

in, and it's actually a premium

revenue, you can then hire a team.

You can then bring in other people.

You can actually solve

problems in more creative ways.

Sean Merron: And it,

Chad Carter: and again,

Sean Merron: at some point, right.

China becomes like a supply

and demand equation, right?

Like it's like, okay, I have

X amount of hours or X amount

of bandwidth or resources.

Right.

And so naturally you can

start to charge more, right.

As . , you get more clients, you

get more, you know, more revenue

potentially, or you reached a point

where your expenses are so high.

You need to raise your revenue

from all the demand coming in.

So it is interesting to try and figure

out what, what is the right price to

start with, where you're just trying to,

you know, you know, get, get, get a bunch

of, and we see this a lot actually, where

people come in new businesses, especially

in the, um, labor industry, right.

Manual labor.

Living fences, for example, down here in

Gulf Shores, it's like people will come

in and like be the cheapest contractor.

Right.

At first, just to get the business.

Right.

Or like mowing lawns, right.

Landscaping and stuff.

And then once they get it, they start

to realize, you know, like good clients,

bad clients, and, you know, now I have

the opportunity to really start raising

my prices and, you know, reducing the

amount of jobs that I want to take.

It's more becomes about

quality over quantity.

At that point,

Chad Carter: Yeah, I think

that's exactly right.

Because the thing is, if you...

Sometimes you have to, and he

mentioned this to you, sometimes

you just have to do stuff for

money, something for money, right?

Because you're just getting started out.

You can't say, I can charge this premium

rate because I have all the securities.

I have all this stuff.

I'm going to provide all this value.

It's like, we haven't really

proved that value yet.

You haven't, you haven't proven that you

can do that or that you will do that.

Um, and so unless timing is just right

and you have just the right person,

it's very hard to kind of charge this

premium rate and go straight into it.

So usually you have to

build yourself up into that.

Uh, but knowing Knowing that

that's your end goal when you get

started, is a really powerful thing.

Uh, versus just getting in, just trying

to get business and then spending a

decade working at these low rates, not

realizing that, oh, there's actually

a better way, a better way to do this.

Um, and the other thing he mentioned

that that third person, third piece of

the diagram was building an audience.

And if you, and again, I think this

is more from the content management

side, uh, of stuff that he's doing,

but in general, if you think about

the audience, it's all about.

You have this notion of a funnel, right?

So you have like what's called a

sales funnel and you have potential

leads that come into your funnel

and you kind of filter down, then

ultimately they become a client.

Or they buy your product, right?

Depending if it's a service or, you know,

an actual product that you're selling.

And in order to Um, in order to

actually make a decent amount of

money, you need to have a lot of

people coming into your funnel.

A lot of people coming in to know about

you, uh, to cause the best, the best

sales you can get are inbound sales.

When they call you up and like,

Hey, Kevin, I want to work with you.

I saw you online.

And I'll work with you and

you're like, well, great.

My fee is this.

And it's, it's like the hard parts

already done versus, you know,

people have to go out and call,

call and send emails everywhere.

I mean, it's just a totally

different, totally different ballgame.

So that's where that, that build

audience to me, it's all about

setting yourself up, uh, so that,

uh, lead generation is much easier.

Kevin Griffin: I used a couple of phrases

and one you're going to touch on is when

you get those inbound leads and coming

in, I call it acting the professional.

There was this point in my like

consulting, freelancing, Career where

I was just kind of guessing what I

was doing and I would go into a coma.

Well, maybe I could charge

you this, this and this.

And it was kind of a negotiation

with myself , to figure out

what I should charge someone.

And then much later in my career.

And it's what I do now.

It's the.

All right.

This is how much it costs.

You get X, Y, and Z.

And I, it's not even an option.

Like there's no negotiation.

It's like this, you want to

employ me for, for a project.

These are the terms.

It's not like I can go to

Walmart and pick stuff off the

shelf and go, all right, well.

You're telling me it costs this

much, but what if, what if I only

give you this that much, um, yeah,

consulting works the same way.

And you're talking about the Venn diagram.

I have another thing.

It's a, it, if it's not

a hell, yes, it's a no.

. The way that I gauge a lot of things

I'm working on because we just

have a very fine amount of time

and energy to work on projects.

And I know bright feels the same way.

Like if I'm going to start working

on something or make a conscious

effort to work on a project or

initiative, it's gotta be a hell yes.

If not, it's gotta be a no, because I

need to keep the room open for the things

I'm going to be very passionate about.

Sean Merron: I had something

like that recently.

And, uh, Someone was asking,

because I have a bunch of friends,

you know, business owner, friends

of people that are looking for

software technology at some point.

And I was asking for, for me

to help build them a system.

And yeah, it was like, okay,

what would make this a hell?

Yes.

Right.

Exactly.

Kind of what you said there.

And I was like, and you know, I

was like, well, this is the number

that comes to mind initially that

would, that I would, make it happen.

The project was exciting, but also

I knew that just time wise, right.

I'm fortunate enough to be at a point.

You know, in my career and where I feel

like, you know, I don't really have to

take on some of these, you know, jobs that

are kind of lower quality or trying to

like bid the lowest and all that stuff.

So really it's a point where,

Hey, I know like I can do a

better job, higher quality.

I can hire someone to help me and

I can really kind of manage that.

Um, but here's the price.

You know, and it is what it is,

but I know people get sticker

shock when they see that.

And this person did as well.

So it's I'm kind of glad

they did in this case.

And I didn't have to pick up that

job because I know if that didn't

happen, I would've got probably stuck

in something that I really wouldn't

have enjoyed and really wouldn't have

seen the value that, I really needed

in order to make that job happen.

Chad Carter: Yeah.

I think the key is.

Being able to be at a point where, you

know, you can provide the value, right?

Because, if you know that you can

bring in this company an extra

250, 000 a year, then charge them

50, 000 is a no brainer, right?

Even if it's a 10 hours worth

of work or something, right?

So that's crazy hourly rate.

It's like, it doesn't matter if you can,

if you know that you can bring them in

250, 000, you can easily charge them

50, 000 without blinking an eye because,

you know, the amount of value they get.

Is extraordinary, especially if

you can work it out where they

don't have to pay once they get

their first 50, 000 or whatever.

Like when you're confident and what

you can provide and you can provide

that type of value, you can charge.

Uh, really high rates, even when

somebody else's would charge, you

know, a hundred bucks an hour and,

uh, you know, charge them basically

a thousand dollars for that.

You're charging 50, 000.

It's like, well, that's 50

times what the normal radius.

Well, yeah, but I can guarantee that

you're getting, you know, pretty

much five times the amount of what,

of what I'm, you know, charging her.

So it's all about figuring

out what you can provide and

the value you can stack on.

I've heard before, and I think

it's really valuable is you

don't decrease your prices.

You increase the value, right?

Instead of saying that I'm negotiating on

my price, Oh, you're a hundred dollars.

Now I need you to really be 85 an hour.

It's like, no, I can't do 85.

Now I can't do 95 an hour, a hundred

dollars an hour or 200 an hour.

What was the number?

It's right.

And it's like, well, if you're trying

to negotiate on that, it's like, no,

but this is what I will do for that.

And again, in general, it's

a bad idea just for folks

listening to charge per hour.

So you want to charge per hour per value,

uh, and not actually do the, do the

hourly thing, because it's very difficult.

Cause at that point, as soon as you

started going down that path of charge

per hour, you are the commodity.

And then I can go and get, and get Sean

for 95 and Kevin for about, and actually

you can't obviously, but the whole point

is you can, you can go get somebody

else for just a little bit, a little

bit less if you're at the commodity.

So you don't price

yourself as a commodity.

Sean Merron: And I think a lot

of times, like I can see it where

problems are presented to me.

And I guess my thought.

Or my brain goes to

like opportunity costs.

When I talked to a lot of business

owners, they see it as, Hey, I'm

spending 20 hours a week in this, you

know, and yeah, they could value their

time to see how much it would be worth

to, or how long it would really take.

As I get more into private equity,

actually, this is something I

think about more is like, how long

would it take for me to regain my

investment, to make my money back?

Right.

Um, that's a, always a good thing to think

about when you're going to make a purchase

or an expense or build something, not only

how much time it's going to save you, but

how long it's going to take to get back.

Also, now that I have this time back.

In addition, now, what

new value can I create?

And that, that kind of shifts me in

a direction I want to talk about a

little bit, which is the more of the

like strategical prioritization stuff.

Cause this has been, so he talked

a lot about time management.

One of the things I kind of saw Brett

evolving into, honestly, as I heard

him talk was like from small consultant

shop or, you know, individual really

right into now he's kind of growing

back into, Hey, I have a team.

And I need to make sure that whole team's

aligned on the right priorities, you

know, going after the right objectives,

doing the right thing for the week.

He said something like this is

the big goal of the week, right?

That's what, where's he's

kind of at right now.

I kind of see him actually evolving more

into that strategical, like running

a whole, you know, a bigger company

kind of, kind of transitional phase.

Um, and I've been in large corporations,

I've been in small companies.

A lot of the time what happens is.

And I'm, you know, more

and more is just aligning.

You're trying to get alignment across the

board constantly on the right priorities,

the right things we should be doing.

Like I have engineers

that can do great work.

They can, you know, I can coach them.

I can build an awesome

engineering department that can,

um, you know, deliver stuff.

But the question is always, are

they delivering the right stuff?

Right.

And, um, you've heard the whole, or you

maybe haven't heard, um, but there was.

You know, a book in the past, I think

Kevin may have introduced it to me,

or maybe you, Chad, about putting

the important before the urgent.

Right.

Um, and ensuring that every

way or every week, right.

Every day, almost that you're

chipping away at the important stuff.

So I know me personally, like,

I want to walk away at the

end of the day, feeling like.

I was pretty productive.

Right.

I hit, I hit something that helped

achieve that big priority that

I know I need to work towards.

So in the morning, the first thing

I always do is like, I'm going to

go for the one big rock every day.

Like, that's my focus,

like do a big rock first.

Right.

And then maybe the other stuff that comes

up throughout the day, I'll chip away at.

Kevin Griffin: I know for me.

It's, uh, the, the type of work I'm

doing right now, full time at the end of

the week, it's Friday and I'll go, all

right, what did I accomplish this week?

And some weeks it feels like I did

nothing because there's no tangible

thing that I accomplished, but.

I put out 20 fires and I helped

other members of my team get on tasks

so they can get their work done.

it's the worst feeling in the

world to get to the end of the

day on Friday and realize I don't

feel like I accomplished anything.

This was a week, this was a wasted week.

What, what am I going to do with myself?

All right, I'll just start fresh on Monday

and it turns out it's the same thing.

Um, I could really learn from that.

You know, there's one big task that

needs to get accomplished every

week, and there's nothing to say.

And if you get it done on Monday,

you can't have another big task.

You try to get done that week.

Chad Carter: Yeah, something

I've seen around this.

I really like a lot is, um, three, three

tasks a week again, but they all support

the big thing, whatever the big thing is.

And then you take those three tasks.

If you can figure out how to break

those down to three things, you got to

get done that day in order to get those

three big things done for the week.

That also hits your main goal.

Then that's a great way to again, Some

that gets more into almost trying to

fine tune your daily calendar, you

know, though, and sound like Brett,

that's not really his, his gig.

And that's fine.

Um, he, he mentioned something about

the Pomodoro technique, uh, on this and

he, how he kind of shies away from it.

And I'm kind of the same way

I used to really enjoy the

Pomodoro technique, but the 20.

25 minutes was just, it was too short.

So I pretty much did like

three in a, three in a row.

And, uh, you know, it went like an

hour and a half and then, you know,

took a 15 minute break and that

seemed to work out better for me.

Uh, but then all of a sudden it

was just, I don't know, I, I kind

of got out of, out of doing that.

And I didn't, it was kind of a neat

thing, but it really didn't seem to

provide a ton of value to me personally.

So it's just interesting.

I, I definitely think I found myself

getting into weeds on what this is,

this, my block a day in my block a day.

And to your point, Kevin,

when something gets.

You have a fire or something happens

and you feel like the whole day's

blown down because, or, you know,

whatever, instead of just like, well,

no, I'm not going to, I'm not going

to pack my entire day with this.

I'm going to have margin.

This is why I'm trying to

get done this week, period.

And as long as you're disciplined enough

to actually start working on a Monday and

not leave it till Friday, you're good.

And if you don't have enough

discipline to do that, then you

need to work on, on that part.

Sean Merron: I like, I like something

I think Kevin, you've also said in the

past, um, making time to work on the

business instead of in the business.

And really I can see that

more as the strategical stuff

versus the tactical stuff.

That's again, corporate talk.

Even when you're just starting

out, it's like that, you know,

I, I remember Kevin, we had the

two frugal dudes podcast, right?

Like we constantly, I

had to think about, okay.

Is it really worth like building some

images to go put on Twitter, right.

And like, you know, spend my

time, you know, the little

extra time I had every week.

Is it, you know, is it

building little tweets, right.

That we can automatically schedule

and ship and ship out, right.

Or is it better spent, you know, going to.

Network and, you know, uh, build some

relationship with someone that we

want to have on our podcast, right?

It's all about, it's all about trade offs.

Everything's about trade offs.

I mean, think of software

architecture is about trade off

system designs about trade off, right?

I mean, that's all it is.

And then same with priorities as well.

I mean, you know, when you're trying

to think about how to spend your time,

especially in the beginning, right?

Like, you know.

What, what is the right

marketing channel, right?

Are we going to use YouTube

Instagram, you know, uh, Twitter.

Of course you want to use it all, but

where's the most value, um, you know,

spent where, where should we target?

Kevin Griffin: It's looking at any

particular task and asking yourself, is

this something that requires me to do it?

Like with two frugal dudes, we

didn't do a lot of our own social.

we had Nikita who did the social for

us and, uh, the real core benefit

we brought to the business was.

Being the face of the business

and interacting with the folks

and doing the networking, , but

I don't need to do social media.

You didn't need to do social media.

Um, and I know what bread like a lot

of stuff he does and he has his team

for he's asked himself that question.

Do I need to do the editing on the videos?

And the answer is no, you

can pay an editor to do the

editing on the videos for you.

So I probably didn't really allude

to this to the audience or in the

interview, but I have a very long

history with Brett and Brett and I

have known each other for way too long.

And so I knew Brett in the first,

technically the second job I had out

of college and, worked under him.

He was kind of a mentor to me as when

I was a young kind of technologist

figuring out what I wanted to do.

And we just stayed friends since.

And a part of that journey

was we, we formed a business.

So, and Brett did not talk about

it at all during the interview.

And it was a little

business called wind sitter.

we would develop basically monitoring

software for windows servers.

Cause it sounds really boring and

we didn't execute on it the way

that we probably should have, but

we had wanted wind sitter to be.

That thing that we still do our full time

job and then we have this thing on the

side that we're working towards and we

worked and we worked and we worked and we

worked on it and I think it's an important

thing to talk about Windsor was a failure.

It's went 3 years and eventually,

uh, Brett and I had a conversation.

Is this worth?

To keep going with.

And the answer was no.

So we took the little bit of money

that we made on the business.

We paid off the server bills that we had.

And I think we went out to a nice

dinner and that was the extent

of what we made on Windsitter.

I've had this unique opportunity with

Brett to kind of be side saddle with them

on a lot of the initiatives he started.

It's really nice now to

see him finding success in

something that works really well.

I wanted Windsor to

work, but things happen.

We learned a lot along the way, and I

think in the footnote of his current

business is actually Windsor because

his docker training that he's doing

now the work he's doing with Maven that

all stemmed from him trying to figure

out how to deploy no JS consistently.

In our production environments, we can

see where he is today, but it really

all started with Windsitter because

he picked up Docker as a solution to

a very particular problem that we had.

I'm super happy with where he is.

Chad Carter: Yeah, I think,

I think the key, what you

just said there is fantastic.

It's, it's a matter of, okay, yeah.

Winsitter was quote, unquote, a failure.

And actually the fact that you were able

to go to a nice dinner after a few years,

like you didn't go in debt for it, right?

I mean, you know, it's coming

from, yeah, there you go.

So, so from that perspective, it wasn't

actually a failure, but the key is,

even if it was, the point is what

you learned during those three years.

And that, that's kind of the

main thing in all this stuff.

So that's why I can jump back

to the Venn diagram real quick.

That whole, it has to energize you.

It can't drain your energy.

It's so important because

it's all about the journey.

It's all about what you're

learning through this

progress, through the process.

Okay.

He had, what'd he say?

Six or seven businesses over the 20 years.

Uh, and, and, and most

of them didn't work out.

This is the latest one is,

was working out well for him.

Right.

And that's, you know, uh, between

us, we have the same, same situation.

So the key is getting started

sooner rather than later.

Uh, so the sooner you get started,

the sooner you get some of these

failures, but again, don't, you

can't look at them as failures and

definitely don't look at it like, Oh,

this failed, therefore I'm a failure.

Uh, that messes up your mind.

You can't, you can't get into it.

Can't get into that, into that,

uh, pathway and I've been there,

uh, once it's kind of, kind of

drummed down for about 18 months.

I was just, you know, it's

like, well, I'm just out.

I'm just not, you know, just because

it actually came down to, uh, my

mindset of saying, well, this thing

failed, therefore I'm a failure.

I'm not going to do anything else.

It took me a while to kind of

come out of, uh, come out of that.

But the, the key is if I hadn't lost

those 18 months, I've been further, you

know, further down the road than I am now.

The key that I've realized since

then is it is about the journey.

Uh, it's about what

you're learning as you go.

So even if something is quote

unquote a failure, it's okay.

Cause that, the time that you

spent there wasn't for nothing.

You've actually learned what not

to do at least one thing not to do,

if not a bunch of different things.

Sean Merron: Yeah, and you've probably

heard the famous saying many times, right?

You don't win or fail.

You win or.

Learn, right?

I remember the first time someone said

that, I don't know why I never thought of

it like that, but it really is the truth.

I mean, that's the living example

right there with Kevin, right?

Like, you know, you don't,

the word fails pretty rough.

It's always just an opportunity.

It's teaching you something

and you have to try and.

Like kind of reflect, right.

Like on that, what you did and like,

get the lesson out of it every time.

What did I learn through that?

What actually was the benefit?

Cause there was some, there always is.

And it's going to ultimately

mold you into the next step

that you have on your journey.

Kevin Griffin: All right, guys,

that was a fun conversation.

I appreciate you hanging out with me

and discussing some of the finer points.

Thank you to the audience

for hanging out with us too.

And we'll see you next time

for another episode of the

multi threaded income podcast.