Best Side Gig I Ever Had: $11K in 4 Months
October 2017. I'd just gotten divorced in July. Then the IRS sent me a letter.
$11,000. That's what I owed—because my ex-wife cashed out most of her 401k and I was the primary SSN on our joint return. The IRS couldn't reach her, so it landed on me.
I had the money in savings. I didn't want to touch it.
So I found a gig.
Proof is a company that connects process servers with jobs through an app. All contractors. You accept the serves you want, go deliver the paperwork, document the serve, get paid.
I'd work my 10-hour day job, then go out for another 4 hours knocking on doors, handing people paperwork they didn't want to receive. Repossessions. Credit collections. Court orders. Family court summons.
Was it fun? Not exactly.
But I needed $11k, and complaining about it wasn't going to solve anything.
The first few weeks, I accepted every job that came through the app. Bad move.
I was driving all over the city—30 minutes here, 45 minutes there. Inefficient. I was working hard but not smart.
Then I started paying attention. The app's distance estimates were off. Way off. I learned the patterns, figured out how to identify jobs actually in my area, and started clustering serves together.
More serves per hour. More money per tank of gas.
One Saturday I picked up 14 jobs around Denver University. Residential serves mostly—credit collections, court appearances. Exposed me to a lot of people barely getting by—bouncing along the bottom.
I finished all 14. $1,100. One day.
The other problem: gated communities.
People behind gates are harder to serve. That's part of why they live there.
I'd pull up, no code, no way in. At first I'd wait around hoping someone would let me tailgate through. Inefficient.
Then I started talking to the FedEx and UPS drivers. They're in and out of these places all day. I'd strike up a conversation, mention I was doing deliveries too, and they'd give me the gate code. Usually good for the week.
Problem solved. Move on.
Here's where it got interesting.
I started treating every serve like it mattered. Professional documentation. Clean submissions. No sloppy work.
Word got around. I became a "go to" server. The better jobs started coming my way.
Same-day professional witness serves—lawyers, doctors, accountants. These were urgent. Someone needed served before a deadline, and they needed it done right.
$150 per serve.
Then bulk serves. Four executives at the same company. Each serve was a box of paperwork.
$250 per serve.
Four months later, I had the $11k. Paid the IRS. Done.
I could've drained savings. I could've put it on a credit card. I could've spent six months fighting with my ex or arguing with the IRS about fairness.
Instead I found a gig, learned the system, got better at it, and solved the problem.
Here's the thing most people won't tell you:
When life hands you a problem, you have two choices. The easy path or the hard one.
The easy path is complaining. Waiting. Hoping someone else fixes it. Telling yourself you're too tired, too busy, too whatever.
The hard path is doing the thing you don't want to do—after you've already worked a full day—because the problem isn't going to solve itself.
The hard path sucks in the moment. But it builds something in you. Resourcefulness. Reputation. Confidence that you can handle whatever comes next.
I hear people say "I'm so tired. I can't do this anymore."
Yeah. I was tired too. I still knocked on doors.
The gig itself was actually interesting. Process serving is part detective work—figuring out where people are, what their patterns are, how to catch them. It's puzzle-solving with real stakes.
And it paid well for what it was. No boss. No meetings. Just an app, a stack of paperwork, and a list of addresses.
If you ever need to make money fast and you're not afraid of hard work and awkward conversations, look into it. Proof, ABC Legal, ServeNow—there are several platforms.
But that's not really the point.
The point is: when the IRS letter showed up, I didn't sit around feeling sorry for myself. I found a path and worked it until the problem was gone.
That's the only move that matters.
— Scot Free