Latest / Unstoppable Success Podcast / How to Turn Any Setback Into Extra Income | Bart Merrell on Side Hustles, Mindset and Multiple Income Streams

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How to Turn Any Setback Into Extra Income | Bart Merrell on Side Hustles, Mindset and Multiple Income Streams · Unstoppable Success Podcast

• 0:19
  Well, and I don't have a leg. And so here's my side hustle Samurai leg.
• 0:28
  It's tax deductible, so I did learn something in accounting.
• 0:31
  But when I found out this was going to happen, I said, okay, well, first of all, how bad is this gonna hurt?
• 0:41
  I don't like this. But it's going to happen. There's nothing I can do about it. How can I monetize it?
• 1:15
  Jaclyn: Hello, everybody, and welcome to another amazing episode of the Unstoppable Success Podcast. I'm your host, Jaclyn Strominger, and as you know on this podcast, we hear from amazing individuals. They get to share their tips, their tricks, their insights on how they have had unstoppable success.
• 1:31
  Jaclyn: And they like to share their wisdom with you so you can have unstoppable success. And let me tell you about the amazing guest we have today.
• 1:41
  Jaclyn: So, we are talking about something every entrepreneur and professional should be thinking about, how to create greater financial security by turning what you already know into an additional income stream.
• 1:54
  Jaclyn: income stream, say that 10 times fast. My guest, Bart Merrell, is an author, presenter, trainer, and the host of the Monetize Your Mindset podcast.
• 2:04
  Jaclyn: And he believes that most people are not prepared for what happens when life happens, and as he says, it will happen. So, through his work at Your Ideal Side Hustle.
• 2:15
  Jaclyn: Bart shows people how to identify the right side hustle for their skills, experience, and interests, and then turns it into real income.
• 2:23
  Jaclyn: His message is not simply about making extra money, it's about creating choices, resources, and greater security, so you are better prepared for whatever life brings. So, Bart, welcome to Unstoppable Success. I'm truly excited to talk to you, because we all know we can all use a little bit more money.
• 2:43
  Bart: Yes, thank you, thanks for having me. I look forward to the conversation.
• 2:46
  Jaclyn: Yeah, so, Okay, so what was, what, what did you fall into that became your side hustle?
• 2:54
  Bart: I have never had a real job. Anything that crosses my path, good, bad, or ugly, I always ask, how can I monetize it?
• 3:02
  Bart: And, and that's what I've done. I've taken several of my Good, bad, or uglies to six figures.
• 3:09
  Bart: And it's just what I've done, it comes to me naturally.
• 3:12
  Bart: I didn't, I didn't intend on this happening.
• 3:17
  Bart: My goal when I started college was to get in the FBI and chase serial killers.
• 3:24
  Bart: That was my dream job.
• 3:27
  Jaclyn: Okay!
• 3:28
  Bart: And we had a friend, a family friend that was an ex-FBI agent, and he said the easiest way in is through accounting, and then once you get in.
• 3:38
  Bart: You apply to the positions that are open, and you don't have to stay in the white-collar crime. You can, you can make your way over to the behavioral science division.
• 3:47
  Jaclyn: Okay.
• 3:47
  Bart: If you're good at it. And I'm like, okay.
• 3:49
  Bart: My goal is to get in. I started college. Right off, I figured out that There's two things about accounting that I, that were a problem.
• 3:59
  Bart: One, I didn't like it, And two, I wasn't very good at it.
• 4:04
  Jaclyn: I was gonna say, it requires math, right?
• 4:07
  Bart: Well, I didn't mind the math, I just, I just didn't want to get stuck counting other people's money.
• 4:12
  Jaclyn: Right.
• 4:13
  Bart: And so I took a break my last, right before my last semester to go down and help my dad on the pig farm.
• 4:20
  Bart: And so we're down on the border of Mexico, you know, we're in New Mexico on the border of Mexico, so I'd have to speak a lot of Spanish. And so I wanted to improve that because my Spanish would be a great quality for the FBI.
• 4:33
  Bart: While I was down there, I had RK surgery done on my eyes. This is what was before LASIK.
• 4:39
  Jaclyn: Okay.
• 4:40
  Bart: And it was still considered experimental, but I was down there making money in Podunk, New Mexico. No place to spend it.
• 4:47
  Bart: and friends in the Customs and Border Patrol.
• 4:51
  Bart: And just even cop friends of mine were getting it done. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna get it done. I have the money. I got it done.
• 4:57
  Bart: 2020 in one eye, 2025 in the other eye. I didn't have glasses until about age 52-ish.
• 5:04
  Bart: Okay. And then I had to get glasses again, so I, it was perfect, it was great. I got back up to college, and I started the application process into the FBI.
• 5:13
  Bart: And I found out that that surgery automatically disqualified me from the FBI.
• 5:19
  Bart: I was devastated.
• 5:22
  Bart: Because, like I told you earlier, I don't want to count other people's money. Right! And so I'm like, what am I going to do? I'm doing landscaping as my, as my part-time job at college, and so I graduated, I went ahead and finished.
• 5:37
  Bart: And I'm still doing this landscaping, part-time job, trying to figure out what I'm gonna do.
• 5:43
  Bart: And I fell back on what my dad taught me. Now, dad was a pig farmer, but he wasn't just a pig farmer, he was a businessman.
• 5:50
  Bart: Had his hands in many different things, usually in the agriculture industry, because that's what he liked.
• 5:57
  Jaclyn: Right.
• 5:57
  Bart: And so, he never set me down and taught me the birds and the bees of business. He taught me by example, and then anything I tried, he was there to encourage me and support me along the way from a very young age.
• 6:11
  Bart: And so I just fell back on that. A buddy of mine who worked for the bungee jump company in my college town jokingly asked me, would you like to go back to Japan? Because I'd spent a couple of years in Japan, I spoke Japanese fluently, and their bungee jump company just sold a bungee tower to Japan.
• 6:30
  Bart: Now, he did not know that I was an adrenaline junkie, but I'd never bungee jumped, so I didn't know anything about bungee jumping.
• 6:37
  Bart: But I thought about it for a second and, like, non-jokingly said, Yeah, I'll go.
• 6:44
  Bart: And Three months later, I'm in Japan, pushing little Japanese people off the top of an 8-story bungee jump tower, and that's just where things start. I contracted with the Japanese company.
• 6:58
  Bart: And then The next year, we did some more bungee jumped towers over there. And then there's this SkyCoaster, it's a big swing thing in all the, all the amusement parks in the USA.
• 7:08
  Bart: I took the first one of those over there with this same company.
• 7:12
  Bart: And did all the construction, the training, the staff.
• 7:16
  Bart: And so, anyway, that was the start of how things happened. And I just let things happen, and I say let things happen. Some people say, oh, Bart, you're just lucky.
• 7:27
  Bart: And we'll get into my luck stuff here in a little bit, but Luck is, you know, Seneca says luck is where preparedness and opportunity meet.
• 7:36
  Bart: And I add one more thing, and you gotta take action.
• 7:39
  Bart: Because if preparedness and opportunity meet, and you don't take action, nothing happens.
• 7:44
  Jaclyn: Right.
• 7:44
  Bart: And your opportunity goes to someone else.
• 7:48
  Bart: And so that's just what I've done, is anything good, bad, or ugly that crosses my path.
• 7:55
  Bart: I monetize. Let's get to the ugly. I don't know if you can see my shirt.
• 8:01
  Jaclyn: It says, I entered a butt-kicking contest.
• 8:05
  Jaclyn: And, and then you're, oh, and now I know. Ha! You're, you're on crutches in there!
• 8:13
  Bart: Well, and I don't have a leg.
• 8:17
  Bart: And so here's my side hustle Samurai leg. It's tax deductible, so I did learn something in accounting.
• 8:25
  Bart: But when I found out this was going to happen, have to happen back in 2023 I said, okay, well, first of all, how bad is this gonna hurt? Once the shock and awe was over, my twisted mind says, okay, I don't like this.
• 8:42
  Bart: But it's going to happen. There's nothing I can do about it.
• 8:45
  Bart: How can I monetize it?
• 8:48
  Bart: 6 months post-op, I contracted with my prosthetist.
• 8:53
  Bart: to help people go through what it is I had to go through.
• 8:57
  Bart: And he didn't ask me. The conversation went something like this. I was in the, appointment for my leg.
• 9:05
  Bart: And I said, Scott, You know that I interviewed 3 other prosthetists before I decided on you.
• 9:12
  Bart: One of them had a guy.
• 9:15
  Bart: A guy that I could ask questions about, how bad's this gonna hurt? What about phantom pain? How long till I'm back on my feet, or maybe I guess I should say my foot, because one's gone. Right.
• 9:27
  Bart: And I said, Scott, you don't have a guy.
• 9:31
  Bart: I'm your guy.
• 9:33
  Bart: And that started the conversation, okay, what do you want? I says, Scott, I don't want a real job. I want to be on retainer.
• 9:40
  Bart: You call me, you give me the numbers, I call the people, I go visit their home, tell them what changes they might need.
• 9:46
  Bart: Tell them how to take care of themselves after this happens, because He has actually had a couple of clients That went from a below-the-knee amputation to an above-the-knee amputation, because they didn't take care of their leg right.
• 10:01
  Bart: And they didn't get help when they needed, so I, anyway, so I monetized getting my leg chopped off.
• 10:09
  Bart: Now, your people, your listeners, I'm not saying go chop off body parts.
• 10:14
  Jaclyn: No, don't.
• 10:15
  Bart: Starting Friday.
• 10:15
  Jaclyn: Right, right. And listeners, if you're saying, you know, he just showed me, he showed me his leg, so I should, if you're listening to it, he did show me his prosthetic leg. So if I have to go back, I can ask you, what made you lose your leg in the first place?
• 10:30
  Bart: I didn't listen to my wife.
• 10:33
  Bart: She's mean, she's fierce. You gotta be careful, no.
• 10:37
  Bart: So, I
• 10:38
  Jaclyn: You took a hammer to it.
• 10:39
  Bart: Yeah, I purchased, a, personal development trip to Canada, to the Blue Glacier National Park in Canada.
• 10:50
  Bart: and about, about a month before I was supposed to go.
• 10:54
  Bart: She comes out, she's big into feng shui, And she said, Bart, You can't go.
• 11:00
  Bart: I'm like, I can't go where?
• 11:03
  Bart: You can't go to Canada. It's a bad direction.
• 11:10
  Bart: I'm not gonna live my life on your feng shui.
• 11:14
  Bart: And she protested a second, and then went back in her office. She comes back out again, she says, no.
• 11:19
  Bart: It's a horrible direction.
• 11:22
  Bart: This could affect you for the rest of your life.
• 11:27
  Bart: Well, I went to Canada, obviously, and The last day I was there, it was, you know, it was camping up in the mountains. The last day I was there, I was dropped from a ropes course.
• 11:39
  Bart: and dropped on my ankle, and this is a type of a personal development camp where they're, oh, I know it hurts, but tough it out, you can make it.
• 11:47
  Bart: And so the rope course was the beginning of an obstacle course, and I finished the obstacle course.
• 11:53
  Bart: By that night, I could barely walk. I mean, I'm going up to get my little pin that says I completed it, and I can, I'm limping like crazy to get this little pin.
• 12:02
  Bart: And anyway, I had 2 plane rides and a bus ride home back to Salt Lake City, or 2 bus rides and a plane ride home.
• 12:09
  Bart: Back to Salt Lake City.
• 12:12
  Bart: on crutches for someone 5'7", I'm 5, or I'm 6'4" And I had 2 suitcases. By the time I got home, my leg was swollen, clear to my, clear to my knee, and I was running a 102-degree fever.
• 12:26
  Jaclyn: Shit.
• 12:27
  Bart: Went to the doctor, they said, it's not broken, it's just a bad sprain, and I should have asked questions, but I didn't. It's the doctor.
• 12:35
  Bart: He knows everything, right?
• 12:37
  Jaclyn: No.
• 12:39
  Bart: I didn't ask questions. I mean, it hurt the worst I could, I mean, this was the most painful thing I've ever done in my life.
• 12:45
  Bart: And anyway, I didn't listen. Nine years later, I was in the hospital because of blood clots in my lungs, because my ankle wouldn't move.
• 12:54
  Bart: And my, that leg filled up with blood clots.
• 12:58
  Jaclyn: Ow.
• 12:59
  Bart: And so after that, I said, I need to get this checked out, see if I can get some movement in my ankle so I don't die of embolisms in my lungs.
• 13:07
  Bart: And it was, I found out that my ankle bone, the talus bone, was crushed on the back and the front.
• 13:15
  Bart: And they didn't catch it.
• 13:17
  Bart: And then the, I went to several orthopedic surgeons, and they said, well.
• 13:21
  Bart: There's nothing we can do now, you're just gonna, when it gets bad enough, you're gonna wanna get it fused.
• 13:27
  Bart: Well, I'm a tough cowboy from New Mexico. When it got bad enough.
• 13:32
  Bart: I went in to get, I went in thinking I was going to schedule a fusion appointment.
• 13:39
  Bart: And the rad tech, he's taken x-rays of my ankle on the first one. They're not supposed to say anything to you, but from behind that petition wall, he's like.
• 13:49
  Bart: Damn! You don't have an ankle bone! And so my ankle bone disintegrated.
• 13:58
  Bart: M, There was nothing to fuse.
• 14:02
  Bart: Went in the doctor, the doctor confirmed there's nothing to fuse, and said your, basically, your only am, your only options are amputation.
• 14:10
  Bart: Or stay in a wheelchair, because if you walk around on it much more like it is.
• 14:14
  Bart: It's gonna pop, it's gonna snap, and you're gonna have an emergency amputation.
• 14:18
  Bart: So that was kind of a long story, but that's how I got here.
• 14:21
  Jaclyn: Wow, okay.
• 14:22
  Bart: But it's, it's one of those things
• 14:24
  Jaclyn: You went 9 years with a, with a messed up ankle.
• 14:27
  Bart: 12.
• 14:28
  Jaclyn: 12, sorry, yes, 12.
• 14:29
  Bart: So I got it, it was March 25th.
• 14:32
  Bart: 2024 that I got it amputated.
• 14:35
  Jaclyn: Wow.
• 14:36
  Bart: And, I've done a lot of crazy things when it comes to extreme sports and extreme stuff.
• 14:42
  Bart: Walking through the hospital doors that morning to get my leg cut off.
• 14:47
  Bart: was the most terrifying thing I've ever had to do.
• 14:50
  Jaclyn: I can only imagine.
• 14:52
  Bart: I mean
• 14:52
  Jaclyn: there.
• 14:53
  Bart: the, the, the best way to explain it to me, and it's an, I know it's an extreme exaggeration.
• 15:01
  Bart: But, to me, it was like A death row inmate walk into the death chamber, to die.
• 15:08
  Bart: I knew I wasn't gonna die, but I was not gonna be walking out.
• 15:13
  Bart: I would be walking in, and I wouldn't be walking out. A piece of me was gonna be gone.
• 15:18
  Bart: I had no idea how bad it was gonna hurt.
• 15:21
  Bart: I didn't know how bad, how long it was gonna be to get back on my feet.
• 15:26
  Bart: I didn't know these things, and so I just walked in.
• 15:29
  Bart: I walked in yelling in my head.
• 15:32
  Bart: Okay, peg leg walking, peg leg walking, I'm gonna be okay. It's just a peg leg.
• 15:38
  Bart: And, Anyway, here we are. I expected the best, and the best happened.
• 15:44
  Bart: And with business or anything, you need to expect the best.
• 15:48
  Bart: And then deal with what comes your way.
• 15:51
  Jaclyn: And And listeners, I want you to just understand what Bart just said.
• 15:57
  Jaclyn: Because, What we tell ourselves.
• 16:01
  Jaclyn: you know, people talk about mindset, and you talk about mindset, Bart, but listeners.
• 16:06
  Jaclyn: what are you telling yourself? Are you telling yourself you're gonna fail, or are you telling yourself you're gonna win?
• 16:11
  Jaclyn: Are you telling yourself that, that it's gonna take 20 years for you to hit $65 million, or are you gonna do it in a month? I mean, like, what are you telling yourself? And it really matters, and so, you know, you could have walked in and said to yourself, this is gonna be the most painful, it's gonna be horrible, I'm never gonna walk again, and you probably wouldn't.
• 16:30
  Jaclyn: But
• 16:31
  Bart: Yeah.
• 16:33
  Jaclyn: But that's not what you said. You, you're, you're, like, the best thing is going to happen to me. This is not, this is, this is just a bump in the road.
• 16:40
  Jaclyn: I mean, and
• 16:41
  Bart: Yeah. Or a step in the loop.
• 16:42
  Jaclyn: Sorry.
• 16:43
  Bart: At that time, Probably my main source of income by 50-60% was dog training.
• 16:52
  Bart: So one of my side hustles is I'm a dog trainer.
• 16:55
  Bart: Why am I a dog trainer? Because I adopted a 90-pound, 8-month-old Rottweiler that didn't know the word no.
• 17:02
  Bart: If I'm gonna learn how to train my dog, I'm gonna train other people's dogs. So it's just my mindset, again, getting in the way. But, so I'm worried about finances.
• 17:13
  Jaclyn: Nope.
• 17:14
  Bart: When life happens If you're not prepared, and even being prepared, I had multiple streams of income, which put the pressure down, but one of my main income streams was gonna be sidelined for who knows how long.
• 17:26
  Bart: My goal was to be training in 4 months.
• 17:29
  Bart: I did it in three and a half.
• 17:34
  Bart: So, My, my mind was there.
• 17:38
  Bart: I joined a couple of Facebook groups after my surgery, like amputee support groups. I am so glad that I didn't join them before.
• 17:47
  Jaclyn: Oh, God, right.
• 17:48
  Bart: Because you have 50,000, 100,000 people, and the ones that are talking are the ones that are showing the bad stuff that's happening to them.
• 17:56
  Bart: you know, the gaping wounds of a leg that didn't heal right, and you're just like, oh my gosh, if I would have saw those before, would I have been able to have the positive attitude that I had? I don't know.
• 18:09
  Jaclyn: Well, you know, it's interesting that you say that, because, you know, it's and nothing against Facebook and nothing against support groups, but so many times you get into so many of those support groups, and it's more the, the woe's me negative versus the uplift. And honestly, what people need is the uplift. They don't need the negative. They need the positive.
• 18:32
  Jaclyn: reinforcement the, and, and the, and, you know.
• 18:37
  Jaclyn: you don't want the negative Nellies, because that will just keep bringing you down.
• 18:43
  Bart: Well, and Let's think about this a little bit. You have a gaping wound that's red all around it, it's obviously infected, and you're asking a Facebook support group, should I go to the doctor?
• 18:56
  Bart: Yes, you should go to the doctor, like, 10 days ago! So, yeah, I totally understand. Right, right, because
• 19:04
  Jaclyn: Because, and that's the thing, too. What, that question about, when people ask.
• 19:10
  Jaclyn: And I'll say this, because I, one of my favorite sayings is, you know, I'll be nicer if you'll be smarter. Come on, be smart about your health. Be smart about, don't, you know, don't, if, if, you know.
• 19:23
  Jaclyn: If something hurts.
• 19:25
  Jaclyn: and you're not doing anything to make the hurt, like, so if my finger hurts, and it keeps hurting, and I don't do anything about it.
• 19:33
  Jaclyn: Well, Why is it hurting? Go get it checked out!
• 19:38
  Bart: Yeah.
• 19:39
  Jaclyn: go figure it out! You don't just wake up in the, wake up and, unless you smashed it, and if you did, you should get it checked out, right? Like, I'm just, you know I had, speaking of dogs, one of I had somebody come over to the house, and she's a little dog, and not trained, which I didn't realize. I have a dog, trained, and I put treats down to try and make it calm, to, like, make it feel whatever, and then as I put the treats down, it went And I ended up with 4 stitches in this hand, right here, and then 1 on this hand. And I'm walking out like this, you know, like.
• 20:24
  Jaclyn: I, like, left my house, and she's in the backyard. I'm like, okay My husband had just come home, like, we gotta go to the hospital, I need stitches.
• 20:33
  Jaclyn: And he goes, what? I go, just trust me, I need stitches. Like, but I'm not gonna wait. I'm not gonna be like, oh, my I'm like, you'll bleed all over the place. Like, you, you, you You know, and then I would ask, I'm like, I'd send them, like, a note. Okay, how long is it supposed to hurt? How, what about, you know.
• 20:49
  Jaclyn: Yeah. What's the movement? You know, ask, ask questions, and don't be afraid to ask, that's what the, you know, that's what people are there for to ask. And the people that you need to ask.
• 21:00
  Jaclyn: are the physicians, I mean, you can ask other people, the question that person could have asked was, I've been to the doctor, they told me this, have you had this experience too, and what did you do?
• 21:11
  Jaclyn: Right? Right? Like, it's, there's different ways you have to ask things.
• 21:16
  Bart: Yeah, and you can go back to the reason my leg's missing.
• 21:19
  Bart: I didn't ask enough questions.
• 21:22
  Jaclyn: France.
• 21:22
  Bart: I was in the most pain I'd ever felt in my life, even more than the amputation.
• 21:27
  Bart: For several weeks.
• 21:30
  Bart: I should have said, something's just not right.
• 21:33
  Bart: And done something then, versus just, oh, the doctor said it's not broken! Okay, I'll deal with it.
• 21:39
  Jaclyn: Right.
• 21:40
  Bart: Nope.
• 21:40
  Jaclyn: Right, right. So, let's talk about the whole side hustle. How did you get into helping people? I mean, obviously, you can, you find the opportunities, so how did you get into helping other people find their side hustle. And the interesting thing I say about this, you know, Because you're, it's it's, seems like you're pulling out what they're good at, not, not necessarily finding an MLM or a direct marketing company. Or maybe it is, but
• 22:09
  Bart: No, it's when I go into an appointment with someone, I have no agenda.
• 22:14
  Bart: It's not join my network marketing company, it's not sell my stuff, it's, we're gonna go into your life.
• 22:21
  Bart: And find the things that, that you know.
• 22:23
  Bart: That you've experienced, and see if there's something there, one, two, maybe three things that we can turn into an income stream.
• 22:31
  Bart: And it started, so, I've done it myself.
• 22:35
  Bart: ever since I missed my chance in the FBI.
• 22:38
  Jaclyn: to her.
• 22:39
  Bart: That's just what I've done.
• 22:41
  Bart: And then it was in 2016, 2015, I was volunteering at a drug rehab center in Salt Lake City.
• 22:49
  Bart: I was doing a Toastmasters-style club, helping the, it was a 90-day live-in drug rehab center, helping them learn how to tell their stories.
• 22:59
  Bart: Without dropping the F-bomb all the time. And anyway, helping them learn how to speak and tell their stories to improve their situation.
• 23:07
  Bart: And I was listening to Jen tell her story.
• 23:11
  Bart: And she's talked about how, when she was growing up, until she went to college and had roommates.
• 23:17
  Bart: She thought everybody else's life was just like hers.
• 23:20
  Bart: Because when her and her family were out and about.
• 23:24
  Bart: they were relatively normal. It wasn't until they got back home that the abuse and the neglect happened.
• 23:30
  Bart: And she said, I thought my life was just like everybody else's.
• 23:34
  Bart: And I'm sitting there thinking, I'm like.
• 23:36
  Bart: It's the same when it comes to how I think about making money.
• 23:41
  Bart: And if you didn't grow up with my dad, or someone like my dad.
• 23:45
  Bart: You don't think like I do, and I can help with that.
• 23:49
  Jaclyn: Hmm.
• 23:49
  Bart: And that's how it all started. It was because of Jen and her story.
• 23:53
  Bart: And on my drive home, I had a 45-minute drive home.
• 23:57
  Bart: Monetize your mindset popped in my head.
• 24:00
  Bart: I got home, I hopped on GoDaddy, typed it in, MonetizeYourMindset.com was available, I bought it.
• 24:06
  Bart: I didn't even know what I was gonna do with it.
• 24:08
  Bart: But then I, that's when I started to write my book, Monetize Your Mindset.
• 24:13
  Bart: And so, That's how it all started.
• 24:16
  Bart: Started with a book.
• 24:17
  Bart: Started with speaking. I, I'm an adrenaline junkie, and when I got married, my wife says, you know, maybe we can stop doing the stupid, crazy stuff.
• 24:27
  Bart: I don't want you to die. I mean, yeah, I know I'll get your life insurance, but I still don't really want you to die.
• 24:34
  Jaclyn: I want to spend time with you.
• 24:36
  Bart: Yeah, and so I calmed down.
• 24:39
  Bart: And, I started speaking because that was my new adrenaline rush.
• 24:44
  Bart: I mean, I got on stage, and all I had to do was a simple testimonial, 3 to 5 minutes long. I said something that was funny, and the audience laughed, and I was like, wow, this school?
• 24:56
  Bart: I said something that they were supposed to and aah about, and they and aahed. I'm like, oh, this is good.
• 25:02
  Bart: And then I got off stage, and it just, the whole thing, the preparation.
• 25:06
  Bart: The adrenaline rush, the pressure, and then getting off and getting the, oh, you did a great job, and getting the accolades, that whole thing was just a huge adrenaline rush for me.
• 25:15
  Bart: And so I started, and then things just, like I said, things came into place.
• 25:21
  Bart: And I take the, I took the action and turned them into different streams of income.
• 25:26
  Bart: And then I, Continued down that road of speaking.
• 25:31
  Bart: But Apple, or Intel, or whatever company is not gonna pay me to come in and tell their employees they need to get a side hustle.
• 25:39
  Bart: you know, that's not gonna happen. And so I started to do my own events. That's what I had to do. I actually had a speaker friend of mine, Ty Bennett, he's a really top speaker.
• 25:49
  Bart: And he says, you're gonna have to change your topic.
• 25:53
  Bart: But I don't want to talk about something else. I want to talk about this.
• 25:57
  Bart: Something that just really I mean, when I get off this podcast, I am hyped, I'm excited, I'm like, okay, I need to go make some videos.
• 26:05
  Bart: And, and I didn't want to change my topic to corporate, so what am I going to do?
• 26:11
  Bart: Well, I'm gonna do my own events.
• 26:13
  Bart: And so then I started building a whole thing around the Side Hustle Samurai, the Side Hustle Dojo, and the, the, Bushido Code, the Code of the Samurai.
• 26:25
  Bart: Even though it was written years ago for the samurai, it is an amazing guardrails, or set of, set of criteria that you should use in business.
• 26:35
  Bart: And then you have the Five Rings, the Book of the Five Rings, which is the most famous samurai that most successful samurai wrote it. Once again, it's a platform for business.
• 26:50
  Bart: Written 400 years ago for samurai.
• 26:55
  Bart: But it fits in business and how you should do business, so that's when I started building my whole my whole system. Plus, I spent time in Japan. I liked the old samurai.
• 27:06
  Bart: And, yeah. So that's kind of how things started.
• 27:10
  Jaclyn: So, first of all, listeners, I want you to understand.
• 27:14
  Jaclyn: you know, one of the things that Bart is also saying is you have to take action. Like, you have an idea, you, you know, there's Don't wait.
• 27:22
  Jaclyn: don't, you know, I mean, you came home and you said you started to write the book. You started, you went home and you took an action, like, it came to you. So, when you have the aha moment, don't just let it go. Take action.
• 27:37
  Jaclyn: Cause you don't know where it's gonna go.
• 27:39
  Jaclyn: Exactly. We all have aha moments, so what do you do with those moments?
• 27:43
  Jaclyn: When you say, aha. So, that's a huge thing. So, When you're
• 27:49
  Bart: Let's add one more thing real quick.
• 27:51
  Jaclyn: Yeah.
• 27:52
  Bart: So, my wife, you're gonna think my wife's evil, but she's not. She's really nice. But several years ago, she's like, hun.
• 28:00
  Bart: I'm getting more than I expected, and I would like to see a little less of you.
• 28:04
  Bart: You've been working on that before picture long enough, it's time to start on that after picture.
• 28:10
  Bart: You know, she was kindly telling me that I'm fat, that I'm overweight.
• 28:15
  Bart: And I was, and I, when I agreed, okay, I need to lose weight, once again, the aha moment.
• 28:21
  Bart: My wife wanted me to get back to what she expected, what she bargained for.
• 28:27
  Bart: So, back to my wedding weight.
• 28:29
  Bart: Back to my wedding weight is a goal that many people have.
• 28:33
  Bart: I went to GoDaddy, typed in BackToMyWeddingWeight.com, it's available, I bought it.
• 28:40
  Bart: I had no idea how I was gonna lose weight.
• 28:43
  Bart: I held onto that domain for seven and a half years.
• 28:47
  Bart: Before I found something that worked for me.
• 28:49
  Bart: And it turned into a stream of income.
• 28:53
  Bart: So, that, when the, when the aha came, I went and bought something. I did something. You don't have to buy something, but I did something.
• 29:02
  Jaclyn: Did something, right.
• 29:05
  Bart: That's clear.
• 29:05
  Jaclyn: it's like you took an action. You took some action, so take some action. Maybe you're writing it down in a notebook, and you're putting, or you're putting it on a whiteboard, and maybe it stays on your whiteboard.
• 29:14
  Jaclyn: But whatever it is, take some kind of action.
• 29:18
  Jaclyn: So that you don't forget about it.
• 29:24
  Jaclyn: And so, when you're working with people to help them find their side hustle.
• 29:29
  Jaclyn: What's it like when they have their aha moment with you?
• 29:32
  Bart: You could see it.
• 29:35
  Bart: I mean, and it's, you can, so I'll be talking with people, and so I have people make 3 lists.
• 29:42
  Bart: What do you like to do? What do you need to do? What are you already doing?
• 29:48
  Bart: And so I say, go home and make your list, and then we'll go over them.
• 29:52
  Bart: and, if I'm on the call, so one lady, I was working with her, she's a school bus driver.
• 29:59
  Bart: And she came to me with an idea, and I said, Stephanie, I know you have your idea, but humor me.
• 30:05
  Bart: And go through my process.
• 30:07
  Bart: And so I gave her the homework, go make these lists.
• 30:11
  Bart: And she goes home.
• 30:12
  Bart: And she's supposed to meet with me next week. Two days later, she calls me. She's like, Bart, I'm so mad at you.
• 30:18
  Bart: I'm like, okay, why? What did I do?
• 30:20
  Jaclyn: I do.
• 30:22
  Bart: She says, I woke up at 3 o'clock this morning and I couldn't go back to sleep. You know I need to be on the bus by 6.
• 30:29
  Bart: I'm like, okay, 3 o'clock this morning, I was home in my bed, I don't know how I did anything.
• 30:36
  Bart: Well, I had an idea come in my head, and I couldn't go back to sleep. I had to go start writing things down.
• 30:42
  Bart: a list of the things I need to do.
• 30:45
  Bart: To see if this is gonna work.
• 30:48
  Bart: And so, I didn't give her that idea.
• 30:52
  Bart: All I did was start the brain working.
• 30:56
  Bart: and get the wheels rolling. She thought of it on her own.
• 31:00
  Bart: And so that's what's so fun, or, you can A guy, a person will come to me, he came to me with, he's like, I like digital marketing. Well, digital marketing's a huge thing.
• 31:11
  Bart: So, what do you like about digital marketing? Where is it?
• 31:14
  Bart: You know, what, what, tell me what you're gonna give me.
• 31:18
  Bart: And he went through things, and And then he hit this one thing.
• 31:23
  Bart: And it's, his countenance changed.
• 31:26
  Bart: And he could tell me, he could explain to me what it was. He could explain what I would get, where I could understand it. I'm like, dude, that's it.
• 31:36
  Bart: That's your slice of the pie in digital marketing that you need to focus on first.
• 31:43
  Bart: And so you can see a change. It's just, You see this
• 31:48
  Jaclyn: entire affect changes, right? They get super excited, their whole body shifts, their face lights up. I mean, it's so cool when you see that happen, right? It's just like, oh my god, right? It's like the lightning bolt has hit, right?
• 32:01
  Bart: And they can explain it to where I, anybody can understand it. And you're just like, oh yeah, that's it, you got it, that's the one.
• 32:09
  Bart: It's just so cool.
• 32:11
  Jaclyn: That is really cool. So So now you, so you have a course that you have on your website that people can take, or a workshop?
• 32:21
  Bart: It's a course, it's a one-on-one training where we work together. It's 90 days hands-on, and then another 90 days, I call it the Ronin.
• 32:30
  Bart: period to where it's a little more hands-off. Instead of meeting once a week, we meet once a month. Okay. And I have an emergency handle you can pull. If you need me right then, pull the handle, and I'll be there within 30 minutes, meaning we'll be on a call to discuss what's coming up, because When you're doing this stuff, and usually it's at the beginning, you're gonna have Your closest family, your closest friends that are gonna tell you you can't do it.
• 32:59
  Bart: And that's when you need the mentor, that's when you need someone to help them through, and so I I put things in there to where you can Pull that emergency handle, and I'll be right there, and let's talk through what's going on.
• 33:09
  Bart: But yeah, so it's a 6-month course. We go from idea to cash flow in that 6 months.
• 33:18
  Bart: Yeah.
• 33:20
  Jaclyn: That's awesome, I love that.
• 33:23
  Jaclyn: I could talk to you all day about this, because I think it's so important. I do truly believe that people do need to have financial security, and I'm a, I'm a firm believer in multiple streams of income.
• 33:32
  Jaclyn: Because you never know.
• 33:36
  Jaclyn: You don't, you don't know. And you could be working at a company, And the lights can get turned off tomorrow, not because you did anything wrong or anything, but something happened to the company. I will share one of our, one of my podcast guests owned a company, she was doing a transaction, and To save her employees, because she needed to put capital in, and it turns out the company that she was going to to get capital, as soon as she signed the deal, the next day, the guy gets arrested.
• 34:10
  Jaclyn: I mean, it's like, you know, you don't make that stuff up.
• 34:13
  Jaclyn: But, so you just don't know. I mean, you know, things turned around for her, but my whole point is, if you are one of those employees, what do you do when the lights go off for that bit of time before she could figure out what the next thing to do to turn the lights back on? Right? So, you just don't know. So, I'm a firm believer in side hustles. I always say you know, I'm a big fan, in some ways, of network marketing, because it teaches you a lot of skills, and I always say network marketing is personal development wrapped around a product or service. But yeah, so listeners, you know.
• 34:48
  Jaclyn: take Bart's advice, and go take his course, and find out what your side hustle is.
• 34:53
  Bart: Well, and the, the, I, like I say, I help you find your ideal side hustle, the one that's meant for you and your, your life, your, around your busy life.
• 35:04
  Bart: And if it's something you're already doing that you can just tweak a little bit.
• 35:07
  Bart: Then it doesn't take any extra time.
• 35:10
  Bart: And one of the, one of the biggest pitfalls, the number one pitfall when, when doing a side hustle that causes the failure.
• 35:17
  Bart: Is picking the wrong one.
• 35:20
  Bart: So I say life is too short to be building someone else's side hustle, so make sure your side hustle is the one for you.
• 35:28
  Bart: And that's what we do.
• 35:30
  Jaclyn: Yeah, I love that. Alright, so listeners, do me the favor. Make sure you connect with Bart, take his course, because I would love for you to have a great side hustle that is meant for you. And then please do me the favor of share this episode with your friends, your colleagues, any associate that you know, because there's some great nuggets here. And then lastly, please do me a favor and become a supporter of the show.
• 35:50
  Jaclyn: For a small $3 a month, we help and give you great show notes, information, worksheets, things that come out after every single show. So, subscribe.
• 36:02
  Jaclyn: And you'll be given a wealth of extra information.
• 36:06
  Jaclyn: Because, and that also helps keep, helps keep, keep, helps us keep the lights on. I can't speak. Helps us keep the lights on. So, anyway, so thank you so much, Bart, for being an amazing guest, and listeners, thank you so much for listening. It truly means the world to me.
• 36:23
  Jaclyn: This is the Unstoppable Success Podcast. I'm your host, Jaclyn Strominger, and our goal is to help you leap to your greatest success.