Midlife Side Hustles - How to make that quick cash! - Ep 2

What's a side hustle and how do you choose one?  If you ever need to make some quick cash to bring into your household, side hustles are a great option.  From eBay to Facebook Marketplace to selling books and Instacart - there are so many options!  Felicia shares her Midster go-to side hustles with Tish in this episode. 

This week's obsessions:
Felicia:  Watermelon Glow Drops
Tish: using Swavorski crystal pins in new ways!

Transcript

Tish Woods: 0:21

Welcome to the Midsters podcast, where friendship meets midlife. We are three lifelong friends exploring the unlimited possibilities for women at midlife. Hi, I'm Tish and I'm coming from South Carolina just south of Charlotte.

Felicia Pasquier: 0:39

Welcome Tish. My name is Felicia and I am in sunny Florida in the Tampa Bay area. Tonight we are going to talk about something super exciting. Very it this is not a dry subject. This is exciting for all women. And we're going to be talking about side hustles.

Tish Woods: 1:02

What? What's the side hustle?

Felicia Pasquier: 1:05

Okay, so all of us have busy lives, you have your family, you have work. But sometimes that's not enough. We need a little extra, we want to go on a family vacation, we need to pay our bills, we're running short. So a side hustle is that something you do on the side to generate a little extra money. It's an awesome way to bring some extra money into your household,or we all need to learn that.

Tish Woods: 1:29

But yeah, before we get started, because I need to know some some some side hustle. But before we get started to talk about our obsessions for this week, down here with you my obsession. So I've been on this weight loss journey. And what I found is I have a ton of these jeans that are just a little too big in the waist, and it needs like an inch or two off. So I wanted to wear these jeans out the other day. And I took a Swarovski crystal pin. It's like, it looks like a little ladybug or bug of some sort has all kinds of crystals in it real colorful. And I was able to cinch my jeans a little tighter to make it fit at the waist better. And then instead of buttoning it, I use the pin to close it. Hmm, I really loved it because it gave I had just jeans and this pink sweater on. And it just gave that little bit of bling to it. And I thought I think I'm gonna do this with my other jeans too. Because I love the look of it.

Felicia Pasquier: 2:35

It's gonna be like your signature item.

Tish Woods: 2:38

Yes. You know, I have all these pins. I never wear pins. I always say Oh, it's so pretty. I want to but I I just feel uncomfortable sticking it on a sweater or on a coat. I just never know what to do with them. I mean, I think getting in your drawer. Okay,

Felicia Pasquier: 2:55

I have boxes in my jewelry box of pins. Some of them are my grandmother's my mother's. But you know people don't wear pins on holidays before they used to wear them on their lapels on their sweaters on their scarves. So I am honestly I cannot bear to get rid of them because some of them are beautiful the rhinestones, they have beautiful designs, flower bouquets. But I never can think of a modern way to wear them. And I think that's a really, really good idea. Something I've never thought of.

Tish Woods: 3:27

There you go. Give it a try. Yeah. What about you? What is your obsession this week?

Felicia Pasquier: 3:32

So I'm always obsessed with makeover videos. I love women who just look natural, and then they get a makeover and they're like a different you know, fantastic, beautiful woman. But one of the trends that has been very popular with the Korean makeovers, I don't know if you've seen all the Korean makeovers and they put face Pody. And they take but they have this blast skin meaning their skin is so perfect. It looks almost glassy. So I have found Glow Recipe. Glow Recipe is the brand, but they have watermelon blow dewdrops, they not only hydrate, they're a serum, it has hydro lot. What is that word? I can never say that word hydrolic acid.

Tish Woods: 4:21

I you know that I know what you mean. I know what you mean.

Felicia Pasquier: 4:24

Vitamin E, but I put it on as the face primer. And then after I do my makeup, I just dab it on my cheeks, my nose, my forehead anywhere where I want that little glassy look. And it's just beautiful. And it smells good. So that's my obsession this week.

Tish Woods: 4:41

We will totally have to put a link about that product in our show notes. Well, that's very Oh,

Felicia Pasquier: 4:47

yeah, for a long time. It was discontinued not discontinued but out of stock. But now it's readily available. So go to the link on our page.

Tish Woods: 4:56

Okay, great. So I gotta learn about this side hustle. I need to make some extra money. How do I do it?

Felicia Pasquier: 5:04

Okay, so there are a lot of ways and I'm just going to talk about two of the ways I have done it. I haven't become a millionaire. I haven't left my full time job to do this full time even though a lot of people have been really successful in five households. And they make it you know, their full time job. But it's a great way to make extra money for your family to pay the bills. And if you go on the web, tick tock, tick tock is a great resource. It's not just a bunch of dancing girls, that they if you enter side hustles, you know, hashtag side hustles, you will see a long list of side hustles. But, so it's a great way to earn extra money, and flexible hours.

Tish Woods: 5:49

Okay, great. So you've learned about some of these things on tick tock, right? What's a good first thing that you started off with?

Felicia Pasquier: 5:58

So what I do is, it's called retail arbitrage. Have you heard that word?

Tish Woods: 6:06

You know, I've heard it before. But I don't understand what does it mean.

Felicia Pasquier: 6:09

So it's a very fancy word for buy low, sell high. So basically, you know, I think we learned about that in econ class. In college many, many years ago, you buy low, sell high. And that's what retail arbitrage is. So you will go into a retail store, and you will buy a product, perhaps it's discounted or on clearance. And you turn around and you flip it on an online store on eBay for more money, so you're flipping product, and you're making a profit on that on that discounted profit product.

Tish Woods: 6:47

Also, where are some places where you go and sell these kinds of things?

Felicia Pasquier: 6:51

So there are several, the number one that I've been using is for years and years is eBay. Everyone knows eBay, you can sell anything on eBay, you know, vintage T shirts, old phones, you know, someone, there's a buyer out there for anything that you sell on eBay. You can sell on Amazon, you create an Amazon store, and you can sell there. And there are other online places like Facebook marketplace. I think you told me about Facebook marketplace. Yes. Right. And robots and stuff there.

Tish Woods: 7:29

Okay, so I know where you're selling things. So where do you find these items? Like where do you go to get these items that you turn around?

Felicia Pasquier: 7:37

You get them anywhere, you can go to garage sales, garage sales, especially if you like going garage sales, you can go to garage sales, look for clothes, look for books, you know, exercise equipment, tools are really popular. You can go to Craigslist. Craigslist is a great resource because sometimes people will say I am so strapped for money. I don't have money to put out. Well, Craigslist has a free section where you can it will say free sofa come and pick it up. So you go pick up this free sofa, the free chair, you clean it up, and then you put it on Facebook marketplace for 20 bucks. And the only thing you've you know expended a time or is your your is time you haven't put any money out. So that's a great way. And thrift stores. thrift stores are wonderful, especially for selling books because they have a big supply of books and you can go through the books and find out books that are profitable.

Tish Woods: 8:38

Oh, so you like to sell books as well?

Felicia Pasquier: 8:41

Yeah, books

Tish Woods: 8:43

How do I know if I mean I you know, I'm not really good at knowing like what books what books sell what books don't.

Felicia Pasquier: 8:52

So we'll learn I'll tell you guys, I'll go through the Amazon a little bit. But basically, there's this there's an app that you can get on your phone. It's called Scout IQ. And you're able to scan the book and it tells you it gives you three colors green it's a profitable book that you can resell yellow, there's not enough history so they wouldn't recommend it or read it's a it's a loser not gonna make any money they've read that book is rejected.

Tish Woods: 9:22

Okay, okay, that's a great way to start selling on Amazon

Felicia Pasquier: 9:26

The other thing sometimes you need authorization to sell some products maybe like a toy like Mattel you need authorization. So books you there's no authorization required. So books are a great way to get started learning how to sell

Tish Woods: 9:43

Oh, I I wouldn't even know that there's certain products you couldn't sell because of authorization. Yeah, so books are safe. Books ours. Yeah.

Felicia Pasquier: 9:52

They are. Absolutely.

Tish Woods: 9:57

So what are some of the things that you found that sell the best?

Felicia Pasquier: 10:02

So if you're going to start selling online, there's there are some things that sell better than others clothes are an excellent thing to sell online especially children's clothes or designer brands if you go to a Talbots or Calvin Klein's Something like that. Vintage concert tees are very, very popular. Some people will even get old T shirts, and then they tie dyed them. And then they resell them on eBay. Books, we talked about books, books are very easy to sell on Amazon, I find that books that Amazon rejects, I can sell them on eBay. Sometimes I'll get free books from people. People know that I'm flipping books, and they'll give me a big pile of books. And sometimes the book is not profitable, but I can sell it on eBay, you know, for $3 and shipping and make a little extra money. They're power tools. Who doesn't like a power tool? Have you ever had a garage sale?

Tish Woods: 11:03

Oh, yes. Oh, definitely. The guys always come in you sad, sad walking in. He's gonna say where are the tools? Where are the two?

Felicia Pasquier: 11:10

Right? You always get the guys that say do you have any tools? So tools are excellent. sporting equipment. I know you have all of your kids were very active in sports. So if you can get a good the crop What is it lacrosse that your son plays? Oh, yeah, how expensive those are, yes, extra balls, or, and the other sporting item that's very, very popular, especially if it's ready to go as bicycle. You can sell that on Facebook marketplace. And that's gone. Usually within a day. The bicycle bicycles are very popular.

Tish Woods: 11:49

I know as I was learning how to golf, that was a big thing. I went because I didn't want to spend you know a lot of money and just learning. So I got my starter set of golf clubs off of marketplace. And just went and picked them up and got the bag and everything. And it was like $50.

Felicia Pasquier: 12:09

So it's definitely you had did it. You have a big ticket item that you bought on Facebook marketplace.

Tish Woods: 12:15

I did I actually well, what was that? I bought and I fit treadmill. Brand new off of marketplace. Yeah. So before I buy anything, I'm always checking marketplace to see if somebody is selling it for so. Absolutely. I want to do a whole episode on what in my house is from Facebook marketplace. Because it is more than I swear half of my stuff is from marketplace. Because I went through one day and I was pointing at everything in different rooms that was for marketplace. I'm going to do a whole segment on that because marketplace.

Felicia Pasquier: 12:56

But see that's that's retail arbitrage that's making money. That's that's a side hustle. You're just the opposite. You're the purchaser

Tish Woods: 13:06

But I purchased at a discount so I can get more for less but Right. Yeah, so there is there's a demand. So I'm the demand. Yes, you are. Yeah, as a supplier, I'm the demand.

Felicia Pasquier: 13:17

Yeah. So don't think that you are only going to sell cheap items, you had a really big ticket item that you purchased on Facebook marketplace. And so sometimes someone may have a treadmill at home that that's been, you know, used as a clothes hanger. You know, so you don't have to put any money. I'll just list it on Facebook marketplace. And there's a buyer out there you there's a client somewhere that who wants that treadmill.

Tish Woods: 13:40

Okay, so tell me a little bit more about the books because that seems to be I know you are super passionate about books. I know if you go over to your house, there is huge bookshelves filled with books. I know books are a passion for you. So tell me that whole process how that works, to buy and sell books.

Felicia Pasquier: 14:02

So I will tell you everyone says you know how they say that expression were do something you love, and it's not a job. That's why I think I enjoy the flipping of books because I love books. I'm a book collector. So on my own before I was flipping books, I would go into a thrift store. And I would go through the shelves and shelves, the book. And I can go into a Barnes and Noble bookstore and spend two hours no problem just walking around. So when I'm flipping for books, it's almost the best of both worlds. I'm making money. I'm buying books that I can sell. So the best way that I have found to sell the books is to sell on Amazon. You know, and I'm gonna go through quickly. Are you ready?

Tish Woods: 14:44

Okay, I'm ready. Okay,

Felicia Pasquier: 14:47

get the pen in the pad. First thing you're going to do is set up an Amazon store, you're going to go to www.amazon.com You're going to log into your Amazon account, and you're going to press become a seller.

Tish Woods: 15:01

Okay? It's easy.

Felicia Pasquier: 15:04

So I'm set up as I'm set up as a seller. Now what do I do? Well, just keep in mind Amazon does do a back not a background check, but they make sure that you're a real person. You're not a fake person. So it takes about a week to get accepted. So I plan on that you're not going to sign up for amazon and start selling right away. Second thing you're going to do is you're going to get your your phone, you're gonna go to the App Store, and you're going to download an app called scout. IQ. Got that? Like Boy Scout scout? Yes, Scout IQ.

Tish Woods: 15:37

Okay, so I downloaded this app, what is this app helped me do,

Felicia Pasquier: 15:40

what this app is going to do, it's going to tell you if a book is profitable. So you're going to grab a book off the bookshelf, you're gonna go straight to the, to the barcode, you're going to grab your phone, and you're going to scan that barcode, there are three different colors green, it's profitable, grab that book, and we're gonna sell it yellow. There's not enough history. So we don't know if it's good. Or read that book is a reject, put it back on the show, not want it. And then finally, you're going to grab all those books, and you're going to put them in a box, and you're gonna ship them off to Amazon. And there you go. You're an amazon BOOK reseller.

Tish Woods: 16:19

So once you send them to Amazon, Amazon takes care of it.

Felicia Pasquier: 16:22

Yep. And the nice thing about shipping into Amazon, it's a fulfillment center. So you send them the books, you don't have to have the books piled up in your office, in your bedroom in your living room, you ship it into Amazon, and they sell it and they keep about I'm gonna say 30%, and you keep about 70%. Now, that was really easy, you know, set up an account, get the get the app, and then send them the books, but nothing as easy as it seems. There are there is a learning curve.

Tish Woods: 16:54

So when I asked you this, I ever had a bad experience.

Felicia Pasquier: 16:59

Yes, I had a very bad experience. I have sent in hundreds of books and they sell if they make more than $5. You know, I'm sending it in because I'm a new seller. I'm trying to establish my store. So I was very excited because the books that are sell the you know, with the highest profit margin are schoolbooks academic books, medical textbooks. So my sister's gave me all these books from her son, who was studying to be a doctor at that time. And they were biology books, chemistry books, one book in particular. It was a prophet, it was brand spanking new shrink wrapped. It was perfect. in perfect condition. I hadn't even opened it. i And I think the profit was $300. Can you believe that that you can make 300 Sounds great. It's amazing. So I sent it in. have books sold. So quick. I was so happy. Two days later, I get a charge back. All right. What what is this? I wasn't familiar with that. What's the chargeback? Well, the person who bought the book, return the book to Amazon. And Amazon is very friendly with the returns, you know, they'll take anything back. Okay. And the person's reason was book not as described. And when they returned the book, they returned the same textbook but an older US version. So basically, I got robbed of $300.

Tish Woods: 18:35

So somebody took your shrink wrapped, never open book, and $300 textbook, they purchased it, then they said it's not as appears. And then they sent an old version of the same one back so they could turn around and sell the new one.

Felicia Pasquier: 18:52

Yes. So yes. And how could you

Tish Woods: 18:56

have done anything to prevent that?

Felicia Pasquier: 18:58

So there are a lot of groups that are dedicated to selling books on Amazon retail arbitrage. So I went into one of the groups on Facebook and I entered by scenario. And as it turns out, sadly, there are a lot of dishonest people in the world. And this can happen on occasion, what people have suggested when you have a very profitable book, and it's new, to go in the book and maybe mark a page, you know, go to page 64 And put a star. So when the book is returned, make sure you have a picture you can tell Amazon that they sent back another book, but unfortunately, and sometimes it's the same person. And it's very frustrating because this person gets reported over and over to Amazon but Amazon doesn't do anything. So that was one bad situation out of many, many. Okay. Yeah.

Tish Woods: 19:58

Are there any specific books that sell better than others, like topics?

Felicia Pasquier: 20:04

academic books that are tough sellers, religious books, self help books, the books that sell that do not sell very well or the mass produced novel Now if you have a first edition, you know, a Stephen King Pet Cemetery, that would sell very well. Some of the mass produce Patterson, you know, the mystery books that are just mass produced. They don't sell well. I will tell you this, you asked about how I get books. So I do go to thrift stores. But there's another way that I learned how to get books very, for free. And I got this from my Facebook group. Have you heard of the app next door?

Tish Woods: 20:50

Is that where people for a local area sell things and know their neighbors about stuff?

Felicia Pasquier: 20:56

Yeah. So next door is a group that you join. And it's based on your address, you enter your address your zip code. And so it's a group of your general neighborhood, your jet jet, geographic area, and people put lost pets that type of thing. So what I did one time is I said, I will pick up your books for free that I was starting a resale business, and I would pick up any books that they wanted to discard, and I would donate the books that I couldn't use, and one lady must have given me over 200 books

Tish Woods: 21:33

are fantastic. That's a great way for someone to clean out their books, and also help out one of their neighbors. I love that idea. Yeah, let me ask you besides the selling on eBay, and doing the books, what do you have any other side gigs that you've dabbled in?

Felicia Pasquier: 21:53

So eBay, I have been an eBay seller for years and years, I've been an eBay buyer for a long time as well. So what I find is sometimes, sometimes when I can't sell a book on eBay, I can sell it on on Amazon, I can sell it on eBay, and there's a buyer for everyone.

Tish Woods: 22:13

Okay, so but is there anything else that you've done? I think you had said told me one time that you were doing shirts, the print on demand. Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about this print on demand.

Felicia Pasquier: 22:27

So again, online, if you go online, there's tons of information on print on demand. And I thought, Wow, what a great way to sell products. So print on demand. Sometimes people are creative, your doodlers. And they like drawing. So what you do on print on demand, you create an image a drawing, and you upload it to a print on demand site, like prenta phi RedBubble. Even Amazon has a print on demand site, you upload your image, and you decide what products you want your image to go on a t shirt, or perhaps a mug, or tote bag. So you upload it to the sides. You don't you don't you're not responsible for the shipping, you're not responsible for buying merchandise. And when someone orders your product, this print on demand company prints your design on the product that you have selected. So you could do t shirts, mugs,

Tish Woods: 23:28

I have like great ideas, but I'm not a graphic artist. So what can somebody like me still do it? Okay, for

Felicia Pasquier: 23:39

you know, me, I'm not an artist, I have a lot. I'm an ideas person. But I am not necessarily artistic. So I had a great idea. I thought I had a great idea for T shirt. But I knew what I wanted to do. But I didn't have the artistic ability or skill set to do my design. So I went on Fiverr Are you familiar with Fiverr?

Tish Woods: 24:00

No, tell me a little bit more about that. So Fiverr

Felicia Pasquier: 24:04

is a basically a Labor Board site where people list themselves, not necessarily manual labor, but they list skills they may have, they will type your term paper, they will transcribe a document, they will do a voiceover for you that type of thing. Well, one of the subject categories is a graphic designer. So I went on Fiverr and I was looking at graphic designers and especially graphic designers that do t shirts, designs. I picked one I, you know, told him my idea and he replicated and created my image perfectly. He sent me the file, I uploaded it to red bubble attempted to upload it to Amazon that's a different story. And just waiting for people to order my T shirts. So for me, this is a relatively new side hustle. So I don't really have a track history of how I'm going to do but I always like try new things and I in that in that scene really fun and entertaining and fun way to make extra money.

Tish Woods: 25:12

So when you upload it, you still have to do some of your own marketing with the T shirts. So right

Felicia Pasquier: 25:19

Yeah, I think that's when you upload to these sites, it will say do you want to advertise, and it will say, meaning they're going to feature your item. And you can pick a week, two weeks, three weeks, and they can say, you're going to feature it a few times a day, and you pay a certain fee, and then they will feature your T shirt. You also can advertise, you can do a lot of your own advertising on Facebook, you know, share it with your friends and family. And I think once it gets a track, you know, once more sells, I think you kind of go up in their recommendations. And you know, you're a little more visible.

Tish Woods: 25:57

Well, I love I love the idea of that, because you're not keeping inventory. You once you have everything from the graphic artists downloaded, it's basically out of your hands as except for promoting your products. So I really liked that one, I'd love to get some more information on that. Well, this has given me a lot of great ideas on maybe finding my own side hustle, what is the one takeaway that you want our listeners to think about?

Felicia Pasquier: 26:28

Okay, there's a side hustle for every single person, you just have to figure out what you enjoy doing. And go on the internet and just search side hustles there are hundreds and hundreds of side hustles that anyone can do. Many times these side hustles take off, and they become very profitable. And there are many stories that you can see online of people who have actually left their job to do a side hustles as a full time. Oh, that's their full time side hustle becomes full time. Yeah, absolutely.

Tish Woods: 26:59

Well, I would love to hear from our listeners to hear successful stories about their side hustles what ideas that they may have had, I would love to hear from people's experiences on what has been some really good side hustles for them. Love to hear that. So definitely if you're listening, what is hear from you.

Felicia Pasquier: 27:23

Fitz, You know, before we go on, I want to know, you know, we didn't we didn't talk about this before, but you did a side hustle recently where you got a free vacation out of it. When you travel, and you were a caterer.

Tish Woods: 27:37

Oh, yes, I did. I did.

Felicia Pasquier: 27:41

Because that was a very unique side hustle that you were able to go on vacation and make money.

Tish Woods: 27:46

Yes. I in the past have been I've done catering. And I actually was asked to go to one of these huge cabins. They were having a work. Christmas party was actually over a weekend. It was over a three day period. And I was asked to go and cook. So I was the you know, live chef chef, you were the chef at this girl's weekend. Right and I got to stay at this amazing cabin up in Tennessee. Had some time off during the day to go exploring. We had a hot tub on the porch. We had a pool inside there was a theater. I mean, it was an amazing house had slept 1520 people in the house. And so yeah, so I took something I had done before and went and did three days with them. Forgot how much work it really was to do that. But yes, there's always a side hustle for everybody for

Felicia Pasquier: 28:48

Just figure out what you're good at what you enjoy to win. And there's a there's a side hustle for everyone.

Tish Woods: 28:56

Wow, the mixers podcast drops every Wednesday, we will hit the road and do some mobile podcast. And we just want you to become part of our tribe, the misters tribe. So please subscribe, invite your friends comment, let us know what you think about our show. And we look forward to hearing from you. So until next week, have a fabulous weekend