this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour, straight after this programme. hello, everybody! a very warm welcome to talking business weekly with me, aaron heslehurst. let's go and take a look at what is on the show. hey, need more money? how about a side hustle? as millions look for ways to make extra cash to meet the rising cost of living we are going to take a look at the boom in the second jobs market. does your outlook signature need a makeover? here is a trick for adding your photo and clickable icons into your signature. whether it is giving software tips on tiktok or starting

a global travel company, the side hustle can lead to riches and rewards but it can also open people up to being the victim of scammers. i will be talking about the possibilities and perils of the side hustle, with these two — there they are. kat norton, who's gig on tiktok has changed her life, as well as erin witte from the consumer protection committee of america. —— the consumer federation of america. plus, i talk to the big boss of the travel company flix on how he turned his side hustle into a global transport disrupter. wherever you're watching me from around the world, once again, a big hello

and warm welcome to the show. you know, the side hustle, it's become a watchword for a new generation who, well, want to make a bit more cash but it is a newish term for an old—fashioned idea — making some money on the side while still working another job. some of the biggest companies in the world were started as side hustles. we're going to make some history together today. apple computers was founded by steve jobs and steve wozniacki when they were employed at atari and hewlett—packard respectively. facebook started as a side hustle for mark zuckerberg when he was a student. and jack dorsey started what would be twitter in 2005 while working at a podcasting company. today, the interest in side hustles is growing massively as people look for ways to make a bit more cash. younger people in particular are looking at the side hustle. a global survey of thousands of people for microsoft found that an extraordinary 70% of people in their teens — or gen z — and 20s are considering or already

have a side hustle. 0ther surveys have found that in the united states, four out of ten adults had a side hustle in 2022. here in the uk, nearly half of brits are considering a side hustle, according to the web hosting firm go daddy, which found that 85% of them were driven by the rising cost of living. go daddy also found that globally, 57% of side hustles are run by women. my first guest started her side hustle during the pandemic. she began by simply giving tips on how to use excel spreadsheet software on the social media platform tiktok. today, it's definitely making enough money that she was able to leave her old job behind. kat norton, or miss excel, a real pleasure having you on the show and thanks for your time. let's start with this — simply, how did you start your side hustle? it all began back injune

2020, i started posting microsoft excel tip videos on tiktok. and within four days, i had my first video hit 100,000 views, and then by the sixth day, i got approached by an it company to take on a side hustle making training videos for their company, for students, parents and teachers in g suite products, so by day six, i was making content, i had a side hustle, was still working a0 hours at my dayjob — i worked at a consulting firm — and within a few weeks, the miss excel accounts quickly went viral on social media and i looked out one day and i had over 100,000 followers. then i kept going and creating more content across the platforms and scaling up the audience and reallyjust providing the free content was something that was lighting me up, so i was having a great time doing it. and then i started creating courses later on that year. correct me if i am wrong,

you don't make the income from the tiktok platform, do you? no. you use it to link to other sites? so, a few months in, i had about 100,000 followers across the platforms and i was looking for a way to serve people on a deeper level because the free content was short and cute and quick and people were learning from it but a lot of them wanted more of a full course experience, so i built out the most fun, entertaining excel course i could possibly imagine and started selling that in november 2020. and then, a couple of months later, it was actually bringing in more passive income than my dayjob was every month. so at that point i was, like, the dayjob is getting a0 hours, the side hustle is getting ten hours, maybe i need to re—prioritise. so i ended up leaving my day job injanuary 2021 and then, i built out nine more courses across the microsoft office suite, google sheets, a kids�* course, and started bundling them and selling them together. kat, what kind of time commitment does it take now? really now, i would say it is a few hours a day at most but i pretty much make my own schedule.

for example, we went and travelled around europe for a month and i really didn't work much at all during that time and kind ofjust let the business run itself — i have an awesome team now. 0thertimes, though, i do like to work on the business and i made sure to build a business around the lifestyle that i wanted. because i do not want to create another situation like my corporate job was, which was not really lighting me up. and kat, when you started the side hustle, did the company that you were working for, did they mind? no, they were incredibly supportive, incredibly supportive — even up until the point where i left as well, they were all cheering me on on my way out the door, and i actually work with them now as one of my corporate clients. wow! so i also do training for companies and organisations and they bring me into host live sessions, so they actually brought me back on now as a vendor. it is a win—win! yeah! younger people — correct me if i am wrong — kat, younger people are more likely to have a side hustle.

why do you think that is so? it really depends on the person i think too. i have seen people across the different age groups. i do think that the younger generations were exposed to social media at a much earlier age, so it is something that is super familiar to them. i forget what statistic it was built around a very large percentage of young people, gen zers, to be youtube stars or social media stars when they grow up. so, it is something which was not around back in the day and it is much more normalised for those younger generations now, but that being said, i have seen people across all ages do incredible things on social media. kat, you mentioned that you started it in 2020, your side hustle, kat, smack in the middle of the pandemic. did the pandemic actually help you in that sense? it did in the sense that it helped me shake me off the path that i was currently on. i was a business consultant, travelling every week. for 3.5 years straight, i was travelling every monday, pop on a plane, fly to a different state in the us, fly home every thursday so i didn't really have time

to look up and to be, "is this what i want to do with my life? "is this lighting me up right now?" i had a good time doing it but it really was not fulfilling me from a creative perspective. so, when i stopped travelling due to the pandemic, i was back in my bedroom of my parents house and working my dayjob in my little room and i was, "got some time to think here" and that is where i started kind of thinking of different side hustle ideas and things i could create because i also had more time on my hands — travelling took up a big chunk of my week. 0k, kat, i don't ask many people this but i have got you in front of me and i am going to have to ask you — how much money do you make doing this? so, this past year, we did over $2 million. shut the front door! no! it's been... ian — i've said it to you before, we're in the wrong job! the company made $2 million doing excel spreadsheet lessons, if you will? yeah.

wow! but for me, it's not about the money. i look at that number as a testament to how many people i got to help that year. so looking at it, the bigger that number is, the more people were in the courses and the more people were elevating themselves at work every day, showing up more confident, getting promotions and raises and that is the part that lights me up and the business flows along with it. let me end on this — what's next, kat, for miss excel? so, i'm just looking to really expand the brand globally and it's something that i really want to just be able to create more courses and grow the business and help as many people as i can, so this year, we are tightening up our systems and working to get our courses out there in the world. well, kat, my show is global and you're going to get a lot of eyeballs and i only take 20% commission, so there you go! love it! kat norton, a real pleasure to have you on the show. i don't need to say good

luck with everything. we will check in again with you soon. thank you so much for having me! so, with the rise of new ways of making money, there is also the rise of people scamming people with offers of side hustles they can do from home. often, these scams hide behind offers of work which at first seem legitimate and only when you are further down the line do you realise it is all a scam. in just three months of last year, america's federal trade commission found that fake business and job opportunities led americans to being scammed out of nearly $70 million injust three months. those people, they are often the most vulnerable and as the cost of living goes up, there are fears that more will fall prey to scammers. so, i caught up with the director of consumer protection for the consumer federation of america. erin witte, a real pleasure having you on the show. basically, are there more scams going on these days, and if so, why?

yeah, thanks, aaron, so definitely, there are more scams. i think that we really saw an increase in 2020 — of course, this was during a global pandemic. people were home, they were spending more time on social media, scanning the internet, and it really created a fertile ground for criminals to design and target schemes that were just designed to steal people's money and unfortunately, it was quite effective and so, we had this fertile ground that was created in 2020 and in the past year we have seen costs increasing tremendously for consumers all over the world due to things like inflation, housing prices rising, jobs are more competitive and consumers have really felt the pressure more recently to feel like they need to find more money. and this, again, combined with the criminals who are paying attention to these trends — they know what's going on — they are constantly morphing and changing their scams in ways that are more effectively going to steal your money. wow. another thing that we have seen is an increase in the way that social media is used to promote

what are often scams, or at least deceptively touted business schemes. it's almost impossible to scroll tiktok or youtube without seeing tremendous content that has taglines like, "earn $1000 a day," "earn money while you sleep". this get rich quick scheme is not new but it is particularly pervasive in social media. recent studies have also shown that again, criminals know this. and gen z consumers in particular have stated that they are more likely to go to things like youtube or tiktok for their financial advice. so, when we have criminals who know this, who are becoming more sophisticated and constantly changing the way that they target certain populations, it is unfortunately going to keep being effective. so, that said, erin, what are some of the red flags people should look for? so, some of the most common schemes that we've seen can really range.

there can be some legitimate opportunities to earn money as a side hustle. i am a personal trainer in my spare time, to the extent that i have any, but in addition to my full—time work. there may be ways to do that. but there are certainly things to look out for if you are solicited with one of these, quote, unquote, "business opportunities". things like drop shipping, where you can create an online store and sell things directly from the manufacturer to the consumer. also things like being a mystery shopper, online surveys or sometimes even multilevel marketing. a common theme that we see with these side hustles are taglines, like, "earn money while you sleep". they're soliciting people who might not have specific skills for what they are being solicited for, or that they do not have to do much to earn a lot of money. there are also things that are just outright scams, like business coaching programs or investment coaching opportunities. this is where you pay someone to coach you or you purchase

coaching sessions to help grow your business or even start a business. but the only thing that these really do is take a lot of money from you and then the scammer will probablyjust then recruit you to start making your own videos or trying to sell your own, quote, unquote, "business opportunity" to somebody else, all the while lying to you about the amount of money that you might make. so it really is a case of, if it sounds too good to be true...? sure, that is always great advice but also it is to remember that criminals are targeting you. it is notjust a mishap, it is often you were the subject of a very targeted design scheme. scammers can take information that they have gained from years of doing this, to see what has worked and what hasn't, and if they send out 10,000 solicitations and they get maybe ten people to respond, that is a pay off for them. they know how this operates and they are good at doing it. so, what kind of research should people do before diving in? i find that the best advice is simple. there are endless websites that you can look at that will give you advice about what to look for, what to do, and there

is a lot of things, but i like to keep it very simple, and the acronym that i use for this is scam. s-c-a-m. what are some practical steps that you can take? the s stands for slow down. take a second. if you are being solicited by an outside company for a limited—time offer, or they're using high—pressure tactics, that you have to act now, that is a big red flag and something that you should really be cautious about. the second letter is c, and that stands for cheques and cards. if you are being asked to cash a cheque or deposit a cheque and send money back to the company, or to purchase gift cards and send them back to the company, that is a big red flag. the a in scam is ask questions. ask google, ask your mum, ask a trusted friend, ask somebody that you know will give you sound advice, and you can pair this with the s and slow down, to give you an opportunity to look this up.

0ne really simple thing is to google the name of the company or the opportunity and the word "scam." you would be amazed at what pops up. finally, the m is to make a report to your government regulator. the more data that they have and the more reports and numbers and information about how it's being designed and targeted, the better outreach that they can do and perhaps even law enforcement to go after some of these criminals. and erin, let me end on this. are you concerned that people are more susceptible, as we endure this cost—of—living crisis? absolutely. look, this increased pressure on consumers to earn more money might make them more susceptible, but i think more importantly, it gives a big tool to criminals who are designing these schemes and this conduct. so, consumers might be out there looking more often than they otherwise would have, and deceptive videos or website content can make it seem like it's very easy, but the fact is that often it's not. you have to put in a lot

of time and effort. unless you can capitalise on an existing skill, it is something where you don't go into this with the expectation that you are going to earn a lot of money. maybe it's just something that you're doing for fun, but again i think it is more important to focus on the fact that this is really a tool for criminals, so that when you see something that comes across your social media that maybe you weren't expecting, just remember, someone is out there designing that content because they know that you are going to see it and you are exactly who they are going after. erin witte, a real pleasure having you on the show. thanks for all that advice, really appreciate it, and we will talk to you soon. thanks so much, aaron. great to have you. so far on the show we have been hearing about people taking on a side hustle, some with success and some only to be scammed. my next guest, along with some colleagues, started a side hustle more than ten years ago when he was working as management consultant. today, flix — it is a global travel operation running buses and trains around the world and serving 3a million people last summer alone.

so, i caught up with its big boss. andre schwammlein, real pleasure you having you on the show. and andre, on the show this week, we have been talking about the side hustle. so i'm just wondering, how challenging was it to get flix started while you were working somewhere else? great to be here. thanks a lot for the invitation. and actually, it felt very natural for me to start it on the side. so i was working at bcg. i was in consulting back then. and i started a phd. i was looking at start—up ideas on the weekend. even in consulting you don't work every weekend, so you have weekends off, and so i had time to do that, search for ideas and discuss with my co—founders what to do during my active work. so, we tried to play it very transparent, that we were looking at a business idea, and back then, it was ten, 13 years ago, it was not super common

to have a start—up idea and pursue that, but they were very positive in that sense, not necessarily on the idea of doing something with buses, but in the openness of communication and the idea of someone starting his own business. let's talk about your business, andre. you are a global travel company. buses and trains are the main thing that you have, including the iconic greyhound bus network in the united states. and let's be frank here, because people don't think of buses as cutting—edge travel. i'm just wondering, how has it changed? oh, it has changed a lot. and i agree with you, at the end we are selling the same kind of product that was sold for a very long time. essentially, we bring people from a to b, bring them from city to city b, and this is what people are buying. but the way we developed the product, what you don't see is the different product. the product is the network

we offer, the prices we offer, the way we market the product, the brand behind it, the technology that, that make the product successful in the marketplace. and andre, i'm wondering, certainly nowadays, are younger people more likely to get a bus than a plane? what definitely happened over the ten years that flix has been active in this space in europe and in the us, in turkey and in brazil, the bus became a better option to travel. so, 15 years ago, most likely you would not have allowed your daughter to take a bus from london to paris. today, if i go to university, the majority, 90%—plus have used a flix bus and consider it for their future travel, so i think we shape the future of the industry in a positive way, and therefore the bus is on the way of taking its natural place in mobility. so, we have to provide something for society, and we are part of the solution. but are we already in a state where people shift, especially from planes, especially

for environment of reasons, towards something which is more environmentally friendly, be it buses or trains? then i would say, to a very limited extent. people are aware of the problem of flying, around the c02 emissions and climate change. do they completely act according to that and then rather sit on the bus? i don't see that on a big scale yet. i hope for a change over the next couple of years. but at the moment it is not visible. people like that if they take the bus there is very little co2 emissions and it is eco—friendly, but it is not the main reason why they pick it. how much more environmentally sensitive are you than your rivals? for example, your website talks about a bus with solar panels that runs from dortmund in germany to london, but let's be frank, that is just one bus. and you know this, andre, critics will say that that is just green washing.

we know that climate change is coming and we have to do something, and we have to get to real net zero and we have to change the way we live. and our claim would be, we don't need to forbid people to travel. we need to enable them to travel in an environmentally friendly way, and already today, if you sit in a bus compared to your car or even a plane, you are doing something good for the environment because our co2 emissions are lower than even in some countries trains. we are on a high level with trains. so today it is already good to travel on a flix bus. but that is the more important part, we are really doing a lot of work towards net zero. real net zero. so it is not enough for us to be environmentally very good, but we have to get to net zero, and all the things you can read about electric buses, hydrogen buses we have invested in, not only pilot project but also research and investing money and resources into that. we believe and we know there is a path to net zero for our industry.

andre, do you have business passengers? i'm just wondering if you could really replace flights for those customers. we are definitely — this is... if you look at our customer base, essentially, i would say, we want to cater to the whole population but not for every use case. the business customer might use one of our services that go to an airport and maybe even if you live in zurich and you are a well—off banker, you might not consider travelling a flix bus to go to milan. but if you want to go to munich airport, it might be the best solution, because we are faster than a train, orfaster than a plane, because of the travel times to the airport and so on. so, the broad—use case is not business travel, but i want to be attractive for even the people that mainly travel in business. but this is definitely a room for us to improve our product further, think about new creative ideas to tailor our network and it is also

an element on flix train where we want to broaden our customer base to more people who might not use buses in that sense to travel from berlin to stuttgart because it is simply a very long bus ride, but on a train they might consider it, and therefore we want to also broaden our role towards society and towards consumers. and andre, let me end on this — the war in ukraine, how much has that impacted your business? i mean, it is a topic that is very high priority for us as a company, not because we didn't have a huge business in russia and we shut it down immediately after the war started, and we will not restart it, there is a moral obligation from my perspective. and what i am very proud of the team, the tremendous work towards ukraine. we were present with a very small business prior to the war, and we never stopped operating. so, we withdrew from eastern ukraine

until lviv, but we reopened service to kyiv one week after the ukrainians won the battle for kyiv. and i think our team, and it is not driven by me as the ceo, this is driven by our team in poland and ukraine, they say we want to be there for the country, we want to provide transportation for people, be it refugees, be it people returning to ukraine, we want to be there for the country and rebuild the country once the war is won, and therefore the team is doing a lot of work towards that. we have a large network in ukraine, we are the only carrier that is operating even towards the east ukraine, so we are trying to follow the ukrainian army and provide transportation as soon as it is safe. and we are proud of what the team is doing, the drivers, they are driving in a war zone. it is strange if you are just scheduled out of night services because you say there might be drones at night and you might get bombed. but i am very proud of what the team is doing,

so i hope the war ends in a positive sense for ukraine as soon as possible, but we at the moment are also very proud of what we can do to support ukraine. andre schwammlein, the big boss of flix, i really appreciate your time. good luck with everything, andre, and i will check in with you soon. thanks a lot. it was a pleasure talking to you. that is it for this week's show. i hope you enjoyed it. you can keep up with the latest on our global economy on the bbc website or the smartphone app. you can also follow me on twitter. tweet me — i'll tweet you back. thanks for watching. i will see you soon. bye— bye. hello there. most of us had a fine day on monday with plenty of sunshine around. it is arguably one of the best days weather—wise we'll see this week, with the sunshine and relatively mild air. did tend to cloud over in the west later in the day. and that's a cloud is all associated with an area of low pressure. this up near iceland in the north atlantic. look at this weather front wrapped round and round and round the centre of the deep low, kind of like water going down a plughole. now, this low is going

to influence our weather because the weather fronts are associated with that low, even though it's over 1,000 miles away. all those fronts are actually dangling across the uk, a warm front followed by a cold front. so we've got a bit of rain from that feature. here comes the cold front southwards over the next few hours, bringing a little bit of rain across parts of england and wales, showers following into the north—west. now, although we did have an early dip in temperatures in the nights down to about freezing, actually, temperatures by dawn coming up about seven or eight degrees pretty widely. and it's tuesday morning, the dregs of that weather system clearing the south pretty quickly. any rain, light and patchy. sunshine follows. a few showers into the north west of england and wales, but the majority of the day showers for northern ireland and scotland, where some of the showers will be falling as snow in the mountains about 500 metres elevation. so for the most part should be above the road network, really. not expecting any major problems. it's going to be a windy day wherever you are, but particularly so in scotland, with gusts of wind reaching around 50 or 60 miles

an hour, and the winds get even stronger than that as we go through tuesday night. the iceland low passes close to the faroe islands, just kind of squeezes the isobars and give us wind gusts of 70 or even 80 miles an hour across parts of northern scotland. those winds could be disruptive then for a time, still very windy across these northern areas into wednesday before the winds start to ease down a little bit later in the day, it will still be pretty blowy. we've got a warm front that is going to be bringing some rain wednesday across northern ireland into south—west scotland, northwestern parts of england and wales, quite a bit of cloud elsewhere, a few breaks, but mild weather. temperatures 11 degrees across the south. and then looking at the weather picture later in the week, we've got relatively mild air coming around the top side of this area of high pressure. so, weather—wise, well, for many of us, it's going to be largely dry, probably quite a lot of cloud around and staying quite breezy. but look at these temperatures, 12 degrees for a time. for reference in london this time of the year, the average is about seven. bye for now.

welcome to bbc news. i'm rich preston. our top stories: the us secretary of state says urgent steps are needed to restore calm between israel and the palestinians after weeks of heightened violence. i comment on all parties to take urgent steps to de—escalate tensions, establish conditions for the security and stability that both israelis and palestinians deserve. security is stepped up in pakistan after at least 59 people are killed in a bomb attack on a mosque in peshawar. three emergency service workers in memphis are sacked following the death of tyre nichols, and another two police officers suspended. former brazilian president jair bolsonaro applies

for a tourist visa to allow him to extend his stay in the us.