Ep. 3376 - First $1,000: “I went door-to-door selling home alarms…”
Side Hustle School
Chris Guillebeau
4.7 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week's First $1,000 segment, we hear from a real-life door-to-door salesman. Some “knockers” can earn six figures a year or more, as long as they can cope with repeated rejection. Here's the story of one guy who's well on his way.
Side Hustle School features a new episode EVERY DAY, featuring detailed case studies of people who earn extra money without quitting their job. This year, the show includes free guided lessons and listener Q&A several days each week.
Show notes: SideHustleSchool.com
Email: team@sidehustleschool.com
Be on the show: SideHustleSchool.com/questions
Connect on Instagram: @193countries
Visit Chris's main site: ChrisGuillebeau.com
Read A Year of Mental Health: yearofmentalhealth.com
If you're enjoying the show, please pass it along! It's free and has been published every single day since January 1, 2017. We're also very grateful for your five-star ratings—it shows that people are listening and looking forward to new episodes. 😎 🙏🏼
Side Hustle School features a new episode EVERY DAY, featuring detailed case studies of people who earn extra money without quitting their job. This year, the show includes free guided lessons and listener Q&A several days each week.
Show notes: SideHustleSchool.com
Email: team@sidehustleschool.com
Be on the show: SideHustleSchool.com/questions
Connect on Instagram: @193countries
Visit Chris's main site: ChrisGuillebeau.com
Read A Year of Mental Health: yearofmentalhealth.com
If you're enjoying the show, please pass it along! It's free and has been published every single day since January 1, 2017. We're also very grateful for your five-star ratings—it shows that people are listening and looking forward to new episodes. 😎 🙏🏼
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | in this week's first $1,000 segment, we're going to hear from a real life door-to-door |
| 0:10.3 | salesman. And this is actually a thing. Like if you imagine this is a thing of the past, |
| 0:14.7 | there are actually people still doing this. They're doing it successfully. They're not all |
| 0:18.7 | annoying. At least that's that's the promise here. Personally, |
| 0:22.0 | I wouldn't be excited about people coming, you know, to my home to try to sell me something. |
| 0:26.7 | But it's an industry, right? And some door knockers, as they're called, that's their, like, |
| 0:31.9 | you know, if you're a door to a salesperson, then you are a knocker or a door knocker. Some of them |
| 0:36.7 | can earn six figures a year or more, |
| 0:38.8 | as long as they can cope with repeated rejection, which is a big part of the job. So I thought it |
| 0:43.6 | would be fun to feature a story of at least one guy out there who is doing well in this world |
| 0:48.7 | and seems to like it. And as I said, for the right products like solar panels and other things, |
| 0:54.1 | is that what this guy is selling? |
| 0:55.9 | Let's see, alarm systems. |
| 0:58.3 | Well, we'll hear the details from him. |
| 0:59.6 | That's the whole point is to hear his story. |
| 1:01.5 | So his name is Robert, a real life door to door salesman. |
| 1:05.1 | Let's hear the story of persistence and overcoming rejection. |
| 1:09.3 | I'll come back at the end with a few words of wrap up. |
| 1:19.3 | This is Robert, reporting in for my science hustle story. Here it is. I've started doing |
| 1:24.7 | door-to-door sales, which to a lot of people sounds crazy, but long story |
| 1:29.0 | short, I had a buddy get into it and he swore that it was lucrative. |
| 1:32.8 | He was selling alarm systems, and in his second month he earned $10,000. |
... |
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