The no-spin FAQ
Why do this in public?
Because memory edits the story. After something works, the messy start turns into a tidy lesson. After it fails, it looks obvious it never could have worked. A dated ledger makes both edits impossible, so I keep the whole sequence in the open: the idea, the bet, the work, the number, and the call I made.
These are mini hustles, not startups, not empires. Businesses sized to fit around a life. My bet is that five small, well-run things compound into one that matters.
Guiding principles
Borrowed from movement practice, applied to tiny businesses. They shape how everything here runs.
Beginner's mind (Shoshin)I've done this long enough to know better, so every bet starts at zero revenue on purpose. What doesn't reset is experience and audience, so each experiment page names its inherited advantages instead of pretending they aren't there.
Containers, then no containersThe five rules are a container: $1,000, twenty shared hours, ninety days. You grow inside a constraint, and when you outgrow it, you discard it. An experiment that outgrows the lab graduates and gives up its slot.
Movement and stillnessShip all week, then stop. Sunday is stillness: the numbers go in, the note gets written, the review happens. The cadence is the practice; frantic hustle is just noise wearing a costume.
All models are wrong, some are usefulThe playbooks worked once, in one town, for one person. They're maps, not territory. Copy the process, not the answers, and expect your numbers to disagree with mine.
Meet Chris (not my first hustle)
This isn't my first hustle. I've turned up in Side Hustle School (episode 87), Chris Guillebeau's 100 Side Hustles, and on Side Hustle Nation. All of them told the story after it worked. Mini Hustles is the opposite: live, from zero revenue with advantages disclosed, where you watch each bet earn its keep or fold in public.
I started a cleaning company in Washington, D.C. while living in Japan. The distance forced me to learn remote selling, delivery, hiring, and delegation before any of it felt natural. That company, Think Maids, grew into a national brand, and I sold it in 2024. After that I built and sold Inova Local, a staffing agency that helped local operators hire remote talent. Today I run Local Business MBA, teaching owners to build companies that can run without them, which is the same work the Skool group (EXP-01) is distilled into.
That history hands these experiments real advantages: an existing audience, operating judgement, collaborators, and systems I can reuse. It also builds in blind spots, and I may move fast through work a first-timer has never seen. When an advantage changes a result, the experiment page says so. Away from the lab I'm a husband, a lifter, and a serial starter of things. My longer backstory lives on my personal site.
More about me →My exits
Experiments that outgrow the lab don't die; they get sold. Mine did, before Mini Hustles had a name.
Inova LocalA remote-staffing agency that helped local operators hire virtual talent, built and sold.ACQUIRED · PRIVATE EQUITY
Think MaidsA cleaning company, grown and sold.ACQUIRED · INDUSTRY LEADERS
Valet MaidsAcquired, rebuilt, and exited in 8 months.5.6× RETURN
Express Home MaidsAcquired, rebuilt, and exited in 8 months.3.6× RETURN
Where my rules came from
Under $1,000 in, because "I need funding" is usually "I need permission." A grand is enough to test whether strangers will pay you, and little enough to lose without lying about it.
Twenty shared hours a week, the constraint that keeps it real. Every hour one experiment takes is an hour another starves. You can watch that fight on the dashboard.
Profitable in 90 days, reviewed at 30, long enough for compounding to show up, short enough that hope doesn't become a strategy. Most verdicts come at day 30.
Must be fun, the rule everyone thinks is a joke until it buries a profitable experiment. It has. Misery compounds faster than revenue.
A real path to $10k/mo: "mini" describes the hours, not the ambition. If the ceiling is a hobby, it's a hobby. Nothing wrong with hobbies; they just don't get a slot.
My one promise
Every number on this site is real, posted within a week of happening, and never retroactively edited. If I inflate a number, kill the site. That's the deal, and it's the entire business model, so I'm unusually motivated to keep it.