- How do I get my hands on more income?
How do I monetize?
- [Announcer] Welcome to Hobby Meets Hustle,
the show that pairs young professionals
with business experts to help them
turn their passion into profit.
- Yes.
- [Announcer] Meet Luis Octavio,
a 40 year old creator and master of DIY a la Mexicana.
Luis will hear advice from our panel of experts
Nikki, TurboTax expert, Brittney, financial expert,
and Ashley, side hustle consultant.
- One of those ideas that I had was to do a raffle.
- Raffling is actually considered gambling.
- [Announcer] He'll then select one expert to be his mentor.
Who will Luis pick?
- And I think I really wanna work with...
- [Announcer] Find out now on Hobby Meets Hustle.
- Nice to meet you, hola.
My name is Lisa Octavio and I am the person
behind these DIYs that you see here,
or as I'd like to say DI-GUEY.
It's about taking regular household items like you see here,
these bottles, giving them a new life, repurposing them,
but repurposing them with my (foreign language) behind them.
- Fantastic.
- You have an amazing energy.
- I've been doing these things
since I was like 17 years old.
I never put any of my creations on any social media platform
and I thought, listen, if I put these things out,
I think it's gonna be a dead giveaway that I am queer.
So it wasn't until this year that I decided
to try out TikTok and now I have 24,000 followers.
So here I brought some of my most popular TikToks,
the mirror over there with Frida,
then like this chair here
and that is what DI-GUEY is all about.
- Amazing. - What a story.
- Yeah, that's incredible, you're a true artist.
- Gracias, thank you.
- What would you say are some of your pressing challenges?
- Right now, the goal is how can I create
from hobby to a side hustle
and potentially getting it to be a business?
- You have a lot of inventory? Just curious.
- I don't have a lot of inventory.
- Putting a price on this, it's so subjective.
I recognize it's very difficult to identify a number.
- People have asked, hey, I'm interested in buying these,
but then I run into the problem of, how do I price this out?
How do I monetize?
One of those ideas that I had was to do a raffle.
How do I set tax things aside? What do I do?
- Raffling is actually considered gambling.
- I don't wanna do anything that's obviously not legal.
- You have to be very careful.
I can definitely help you figure this out.
- So now the question is who do you choose as your mentor?
- So if you select me as your mentor,
I will help you put a formula together
to help you kinda get to that next level.
- If you select me as your mentor,
we'll work work on how to monetize this, how to set a price
or we can explore other options.
- And if you select me as your mentor,
I would just help you get more organized
with the business financial plan
and how that could relate to your personal financial plan
so it does become a profitable business for you.
- Gracias.
- Who will you choose as your mentor?
- I think, I think I really wanna work with Nikki.
If you could help me- - Yes.
- Get that off the ground, I'd be very, very happy.
- Awesome, I'd be honored to help you.
- What I need the most is to be able to continue to grow
and not bump into any legality issues.
I think my most pressing right now is the expenses
because I wanna be able to know what can I expense?
- Tell me this, how do you have your expenses organized?
Like how do you know what you spend?
- I mean I basically have an Excel sheet
and I, whenever I remember, I'll put in there
like scrape paint for X, Y, Z projects,
but I haven't been saving any of the receipts
or anything like that.
- Have you thought about isolating your expenses
in a separate account or with a separate card?
- I've never thought about that,
but I can see why that would be so much easier.
How do I decide what I expense on that card?
- As a business owner, you are entitled to report
and deduct all of your expenses on your tax return.
When you go and you shop for paint and furniture
and all of these things, these are reportable expenses.
If you have a home office, for example,
you have a spot in your garage,
you can take a portion of your rent,
or a portion of your mortgage payment
and you can deduct that as a business expense.
- I never even thought about that,
and yeah, that's where I'm doing all my DIYs
is in the garage.
- That's your office. - Yeah.
- Let's cover how you're bringing in your revenue.
I think you mentioned raffling as an idea.
Raffles aren't off the table.
The one thing that makes it gambling,
it's the money component.
In order for participants to have a ticket,
or a spot in the raffle, it has to be no purchase necessary.
If you're not sure of how to price your items,
you can host an auction.
- As you're mentioning that, my wheels are spinning
and I'm thinking, okay, maybe I could do a live
and I think my followers would probably appreciate that.
- And then finally, we talked about you
and your products.
You have such a wide array of products,
so I would really encourage you to focus
and hone in on a singular area
and that will give you much better pathway for success.
- Oh my God, that's so difficult
to focus on just one, but I will try.
- Luis, I have some exciting news for you.
To help you reach your business goals,
Intuit is gifting you with three years of TurboTax Live.
- Oh my god.
- That means that you have access to tax experts
to guide you through this.
You have one year of access to QuickBooks online
so you can organize your accounting and MailChimp.
- Oh my god, that's so exciting
'cause I was already sweating it,
like who's gonna help me with this?
So that's great, I love that, gracias.
- Also, we're gonna give you a small gift fund
to help finance some of your projects
and get you off the ground.
- That is so awesome.
Can I get a hug?
I wanna give you a hug because that's so awesome.
Muchos gracias.
The fact that these experts
are here giving us advice is amazing.
What I would say to anybody that's has a hobby right now
that thinks could potentially be a side hustle
is just try it.