The Best First Side Hustle Anyone Can Start
Koerner and guest Mike McCoy demonstrate how to launch a highly profitable first side hustle by selling products at farmers markets, using McCoy's pizza dough kit as a case study—he generated $60,000 in revenue working part-time in one summer, then scaled to $3-4 million in online sales. The episode covers both the vendor perspective (how to pick a winning product and market it locally) and the market operator perspective (how to start a farmers market business with near-zero overhead), offering multiple entry points for builders looking for a quick, capital-light revenue stream.
Key takeaways
- • Farmers markets are a low-friction customer testing ground: spend 3-4 hours selling a product to real customers and get immediate feedback on demand, pricing, and product-market fit before investing in inventory or infrastructure.
- • High-margin consumables sell best at markets—focus on baked goods, specialty foods (pickles, pasta, pizza mixes), and products priced $20-50 with 60-80% gross margins; avoid cheap craft items and 3D-printed goods that people buy out of pity, not desire.
- • Samples are a 50/50 sales driver at farmers markets, especially for food products; make it easy to try the product on-site so skeptical customers become convinced buyers rather than price-shopping browsers.
- • Operating a farmers market itself is a high-margin, low-overhead business: rent parking spaces or partner with existing high-traffic locations (shopping centers, city parks) and charge $50-100 booth fees; a 200-vendor market yields $20,000 revenue in 5-6 hours of work on one Saturday.
- • Scale farmers market sales by stacking multiple markets per week rather than adding inventory; McCoy attended 3-4 markets weekly and generated $1,200-1,500 in sales per market, totaling $60,000 in one summer with minimal operational overhead.
- • Online scaling requires mastery of Facebook/Instagram advertising, not just farmers market success; McCoy's first four months of online sales were "dismal" until he took over ad management himself and achieved $160,000+ in monthly revenue within 30 days using 60+ active ad creatives and high-margin product economics.
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