Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Landscaper Built a 10000 Monthly Side Hustle in Hardscape Design
Transcript
- Lucas: So you think about the classic side hustle playbook and it's usually something digital — copywriting, web design, social media management. But there's a whole world of side hustles that start with your hands, not just your keyboard. Luna: Yeah, I feel like we overlook trades. My cousin's a carpenter and he's been doing weekend kitchen island builds for like $2,000 a pop. It's real money. Lucas: Exactly. And today's story is about a guy named Marco in Phoenix. He's a full-time landscaper — does lawns, irrigation, tree trimming for a company. But on weekends, he started installing paver patios and walkways for neighbors. That turned into a $10,000-a-month side hustle in hardscape design consulting. Luna: Wait — consulting? He's not installing anymore? Lucas: That's the pivot. Marco realized that the physical labor of laying pavers was the low-margin part. The high-margin part was the design — the layout, the material selection, the 3D rendering. So he started charging $300 for a digital design package that takes him maybe an hour and a half. He delivers a PDF with a bird's-eye view, material list, and installation guide. The client can either hire a crew to do it, or do it themselves. Luna: So he's selling the blueprint, not the labor. That's smart. Lucas: Right. And he built the business entirely off Instagram. He'd post photos of his own weekend projects — before and after shots, close-ups of the paver patterns. No hashtag spamming, just good visuals. After about three months, he had homeowners in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley reaching out asking if he could design their backyard. Luna: How did he get those first clients without a portfolio? He was just starting out. Lucas: He did his own driveway first. His house is a modest three-bedroom ranch, but he transformed the front walkway and a small patio in the back. That became his 'portfolio piece.' Then he offered to do one neighbor's walkway for just material cost — $400 out of pocket — in exchange for photos and a testimonial. Luna: That's a $400 investment that led to a $10K-a-month business. Not bad. Lucas: And the economics are incredible. For the design packages, his only cost is time and maybe a SketchUp subscription, which is like $350 a year. So gross margin is basically 95 percent. Compare that to physical installation where you've got materials, fuel, wear and tear on your truck, and your back. Luna: But he still has a full-time job. How does he balance it? Lucas: He does all his design work in the evenings. He gets home from landscaping around 4 PM, showers, eats, and then from 6 to 8 PM he's on his laptop sending out quotes and doing renderings. He limits himself to two design packages per week. That's about 10 hours of side work for $2,400 a month initially. But then he raised prices. Luna: How much did he raise? Lucas: First he went from $300 to $450. Then six months later, to $600. Now he's at $750 per design. And he still caps at two per week. So that's $6,000 from design alone. But he also does occasional weekend consulting visits where he walks a property with the homeowner and sketches ideas in person — those are $200 for a two-hour site visit. He does about five of those per month, so another $1,000. Luna: So the total is around $7,000 at that point. How does he get to $10,000? Lucas: He also sells material lists. He negotiated a small kickback with a local paver supplier — 5 percent of whatever the client orders using his list. That brought in about $1,500 in referral fees last year. And he does a small number of premium packages where he actually manages the installation for the client, subcontracting to a crew he trusts. He takes 15 percent of the project cost. Those are less frequent but add another $1,500 to $2,000 per month when they happen. Luna: Interesting, so he's got multiple revenue streams within one niche. Design, site visits, material referrals, and project management. Lucas: Exactly. And none of them require him to quit his day job. He still gets the steady paycheck and health insurance from the landscaping company, and the side hustle is pure upside. But the biggest lesson Marco told me — and I think this is crucial for anyone doing a trade-based side hustle — is that he underpriced himself for the first year. Luna: I feel like almost everyone does that. You're just happy someone is paying you. Lucas: Right. But Marco realized that his clients were getting a design that would save them thousands in material waste and contractor mistakes. A $300 design fee was a steal. He said the moment he doubled his price, his clients actually took him more seriously. They assumed the higher price meant better quality. Luna: There's a psychological component. Lower price can signal lower expertise. Lucas: Exactly. And now he's at a point where he's considering turning the side hustle into his main business. But he's being cautious. He wants to have six months of living expenses saved up first, and he wants to build a referral network so that he's not dependent on Instagram algorithm changes. Luna: That's smart. A lot of people jump too fast. But his story is great because it shows that you don't need to be a coder or a designer to build a high-margin side hustle. You just need a skill that people can't easily Google. Lucas: Speaking of things people can't easily Google — one thing we hear from listeners a lot is that they appreciate that this show doesn't have ads. No sponsor interruptions, no 'brought to you by' segments. We keep it that way intentionally. Luna: Yeah, we want every minute to be about the actual story. If you find value in that, and you want to support the ad-free approach, there's a simple way to do it. It's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's it. Lucas: And we mean it — no tiers, no exclusive content, no pressure. Just a way for people who get something out of the show to keep it going. Alright — back to Marco. So one of the cleverest things he did was build a simple lead magnet. Luna: What was it? Lucas: A free one-page checklist called '5 Mistakes to Avoid When Planning Your Paver Patio.' He offers it in his Instagram bio and on his website. People download it, and then he follows up with an email offering a free 15-minute call. About one in ten people who download the checklist end up booking a design package. Luna: That's a really low-cost funnel. I love that it's specific to paver patios — not just general landscaping advice. Lucas: Right, narrow focus. He owns that niche. If you search 'paver patio design Phoenix' he's one of the first results. There's no national chain doing that. And his local knowledge is a moat — he knows which suppliers are reliable, which soil types need more base prep, which HOA rules apply in which neighborhoods. Luna: That local knowledge is something a remote freelancer can't replicate. So his side hustle is actually defensible. Lucas: Exactly. And the numbers add up. He did 22 design packages last year. At his current price of $750, that's $16,500 from design alone. Plus site visits and referrals, he netted around $35,000 from the side hustle in 2025. And he's on track for $45,000 this year. That's a serious second income. Luna: And he's not working crazy hours. Ten to fifteen hours a week, mostly evenings. Lucas: Right. Which brings me to the final takeaway. Marco's story isn't just about hardscape design. It's about identifying the high-value part of a skill you already have, packaging it as a digital or consulting product, and charging what it's worth. Whether you're a landscaper, a mechanic, a hairdresser — there's probably a consulting or design component to your work that someone will pay for. Luna: I think that's a great note to end on. Next episode, we're going to look at how a dental assistant built a side hustle in patient scheduling software consulting. That one surprised me. Lucas: It's a good one. Software consulting from a non-technical background. See you next time. Luna: See you.