Welcome to the Scaling Success Stories series!
If you’re new to this series, I ask online entrepreneurs questions regarding growing and scaling their business.
This is the series description:
You can get your fill of online business tips by reading the other interviews on the Scaling Success Stories page.
Interview with Harry Campbell from The Rideshare Guy
It was my pleasure interviewing Harry Campbell, founder of The Rideshare Guy, which is a blog and resource guide for Uber and Lyft drivers. Back in 2014 when Uber and Lyft were just starting, Harry was looking for information online about his new side hustle: driving. When he couldn’t find what he was looking for, he took matters into his own hands and started a blog about it. Now it’s a multi-million dollar media company.
Check out what Harry had to say to my questions!
1. Why did you start an online business and how does your passion still drive your business’ growth today?
I started The Rideshare Guy (RSG) to fill a need I couldn’t find elsewhere: answering rideshare drivers’ questions.
While I had previous personal finance-related blogs, RSG was really the blog that took off and went from blog to business.
I’ve been running RSG for 5 years now, but if anything, I am more passionate about the industry and my business than ever.
Rideshare/mobility is always evolving and it’s been fun to cover it from different angles, including via YouTube and my podcast.
2. At what point did you realize that your business was “taking off” and that you could really make money from it?
About 6 months into running The Rideshare Guy, I realized I had something really good.
I was getting interviews, advertisers, and traffic — really the trifecta when you’re trying to build an authoritative and profitable brand, right?
That’s when I realized that this ‘blogging thing’ could really change my life, from working as an engineer to being my own boss and running my own company.
It was really exhilarating!
3. At what point did you realize you were living the life you wanted to?
As soon as I realized I could take time off and still have my business run like a well-managed machine, I realized I could branch out from my ‘core business’ and start to pursue more passion projects.
This included taking time off and spending more time with family and friends!
It’s a great feeling to know I have a solid team to run the core business while I pursue other interesting opportunities, like speaking gigs, and time with family.
4. One of the biggest fears of outsourcing is trusting the people you hire to run your business the way you would. How did you overcome this and where did you find the right freelancers and employees to help you grow your business?
I started working early in my business with a team-first with an ads/affiliate manager and second with a virtual assistant.
I knew in order to make this business viable, I had to invest some money upfront to produce content consistently and get sponsors/advertisers to help me pay for that team!
The best freelancers I’ve found don’t necessarily come from my audience — my core team is made up of people who are not drivers.
However, for writers, the core team is drivers because you couldn’t really write about rideshare driving or delivery without… you know… driving and delivering!
5. A common myth is that as you grow and scale your business, you have to sell your soul to make money, especially when you venture into paid advertising. How do you debunk this myth in your business?
Yeah, I don’t think this is necessarily true.
One thing I’ve always been proud of on RSG is that when we work with sponsors or advertisers, we tell them upfront we’re going to try their product and give them a fair review — fair to our readers.
I’ve never covered a product that I or my writers didn’t like — we’ve never outright hated any product, but if we found flaws or issues, we mentioned them and gave the company the opportunity to respond/explain.
Our readers appreciate our honesty and I feel that our integrity has helped sales, not hinder them.
6. Why do you think most people fail to grow their businesses and what advice would you offer them to keep pushing, despite all the setbacks?
It takes a lot of discipline to stick to blogging, writing, promoting content, etc. RSG has published 3 to 4 articles every week now for 5 years – and trust me, it’s not always easy, especially at the beginning!
I would say to people struggling to grow their business to focus on being consistent in all aspects — writing, promoting, reaching out to people/sponsors/etc.
Pursue advertising early so you can stay motivated by earning money and maybe paying for writers/contributors or a VA to help keep you on track.
7. How important has niching down been (no matter how hard it hurts) to your business’ growth and profitability?
Niching down has been really beneficial to my business.
I saw a relatively small (at the time) niche in rideshare driving, and it was really the start to a much bigger, more interesting and profitable business that now covers more aspects of mobility (including micro-mobility, like scooters).
If I had stuck with just my personal finance blogs, I probably wouldn’t have realized as much success because they weren’t niched down enough.
8. What do you attribute your success to and how do you explain it? Do you think the same strategies will help you reach your next monetization goals? Why or why not?
I attribute a lot of my success to just being consistent.
As I said, I published 3-4 articles a week even at the beginning. Could I have slacked off and still been as successful? Probably not — there are other rideshare bloggers out there, but I think people gravitated toward me at the beginning because I was so consistently helpful.
Now, there’s a lot more competition and I think my strategies will change a bit — I’m still pushing out 3-4 pieces of written content a week, but now I’ve also added 3-4 videos a week, 1 podcast a week, and branching out into publishing content on other mediums like LinkedIn.
Now, my business also has to be more strategic about SEO and the kind of content we produce in order to reach out next monetization goals.
The same thing, however, is always consistency — whether it’s new content, updating old content, or creating videos/podcasts, RSG will always consistently deliver quality information to our readers.
9. To scale, you really need to have a systemized business. What steps have you taken to build those systems and how do you optimize them?
I’m a big fan of SOPs — Standard Operating Procedures.
I think we have SOPs for almost every aspect of the business, everything from something as ‘simple’ as scheduling social media and onboarding new writers to more complex processes like improving articles for SEO.
For the most part, I try to do a lot of this work myself first, then have someone else replicate what I did and document it, review that SOP, and add it in Asana.
Almost all tracking goes through Asana, and having our tracking + SOPs in Asana has really streamlined our systems.
10. If you could speak face-to-face with yourself when you first started your business, what pearls of wisdom would you impart?
Well, for one I’d say “your life is going to be incredible in a couple of years!”
And not that it wasn’t at the time, but I don’t think I ever saw RSG providing the types of opportunities it currently does.
6 months into starting RSG, I definitely started to see those opportunities, but right at the beginning, I couldn’t have predicted I’d talk with the CEO of Uber, or interview the former COO of Lyft, or other opportunities I’ve had.
The second thing I’d say is “document everything!” I definitely could have been more diligent about starting those SOPs earlier in RSG’s formative months and years.
About Harry Campbell
Harry Campbell, aka The Rideshare Guy, started his blog for Uber and Lyft drivers in 2014 when the companies were just getting started. What started out as a niche blog about driving for Uber and Lyft has now turned into a multi-million dollar media business with over 600,000 page views a month, 75,000 e-mail subscribers and a full team to help run things. You can read more from The Rideshare Guy here, check out the RSG YouTube channel here, or subscribe to his mobility-focused podcast here.
Conclusion
Thanks for participating in my series, Harry!
As you can tell, it’s NOT EASY growing and scaling an online business, but there are some things you can do to aid you in the process.
Inspired by Harry?
Now, it’s your turn!
I assembled the Scaling Blueprint to show you how to…
- Outsource Effectively
- Systemize Your Business
- Shatter Your Revenue Goals
After working with six-figure and seven-figure clients, I know the difference between how they function.
Let me help you start scaling successfully.
Cheers to future success!
