This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, hello, what's up? Oh my gosh, welcome to Sada School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Very special week for me here, The Money Tree. My new book is out this week, tomorrow technically, although you might actually be able to find it in some stores today.
Or of course you can order it online. This book is all about finding the fortune in your own backyard. And today's classroom feature is highly relevant, not just to you. Well, firstly, it should be for you because you are the listener, but also to the real world scenario I am in, as I'm not able to go on tour like I normally would. I'll talk about that a bit as I go along.
Last week's episode was all about a side hustle sprint, essentially a question posed as a thought experiment. What if you had to launch a project in two weeks or less? Today, I'd like to discuss a topic that is dear to my heart. It's highly relevant to the current climate of the world, yet it's also relevant, timeless, you could say, to those who want to put forward a message or reach more people or sell a product or service without being overly salesy and in a way that is relationship focused. I get a lot of questions about that.
How can I sell without being salesy? Well, I call this the power of your own small army. And the best way to talk about it is through a story. Way back in the day when the cavemen began to emerge from the Stone Age and I set up my blog on WordPress, I didn't know much at all about blogging. I followed people like Gretchen Rubin and Leo Babauta and a few others, but I didn't have a lot of resources.
I also wasn't sure what I wanted to write about. I had like a vague idea, but not a specific one. And I certainly didn't have a business plan. So what I did was for better or worse, I decided to build this movement, which was called the art of nonconformity at the time. I decided to build it one person at a time.
The only business goals I had were getting people on my email list and hopefully eventually writing a book. Otherwise I didn't really have anything to sell them. There was no grand strategy, master plan, et cetera. Well, I set up that blog and people slowly began subscribing. And for every one of them, they got this usual, thanks for subscribing message, like you get when you join any email list.
But then I also sent them another personal note that said, hey, this is Chris. I saw you join my blog, the art of nonconformity. That's awesome. Let me know what you think and if I can help you with anything. So this was an actual personal note.
Obviously I'm copying and pasting it, but I did it every single day. If five people join the list, I would do it five times. If 50 people join the list, I would do it 50 times. And I did it for about a year and a half or however long it took to get my first 10,000 subscribers. So I did it 10,000 times.
And finally I stopped, but during that time, I had gotten to know probably 3,000 or more of that first group, which was very helpful. I didn't get to know everything about all of them, of course, but I got to know at least a little bit about probably a third of that group. It was really fun because people would often write back and say, you know, is this an autoresponder? You know, is this an automated message? And I would be right there to be like, nope, it's me.
So as I said, let me know what you think and if I can help you with anything. So a lot of interesting conversations came out of that. A lot of relationships that I have, you know, to this day. And then, so probably like around that time, a year and a half later after I'd started, when I went on my first book tour, I adopted a similar strategy by visiting every US state and every Canadian province. So I went to 63 cities and I remember those gatherings very well.
Like it's been more than a decade, but I really remember the smaller ones that didn't have a lot of people. You know, sometimes I would have a good crowd and I was like, wow, I've made it. And then I would go to West Virginia or North Dakota and I'd have a very small group of people. But all along the way, whether it was, you know, a smaller big, I got the chance to have a lot of group and individual conversations that then basically set the path, you know, for the next few years of what I did. And so this is all about this model that again, I call the power of a small army.
It's very relationship focused, very individual focused. And why am I telling you this? Well, I'm telling you because, you know, you may not want to send 10,000 emails. And right now, most of us probably aren't touring. In fact, I'm a little sad that I'm not leaving today on what was going to be a big tour.
But the point is that you can reach people one by one, too. By two, I mean also, not like the number two. And not every person out there can be a customer. Like in fact, we often talk about the ideal customer and how you're not trying to serve everyone. But just because every person shouldn't be your customer, there might be other people in your orbit who want to help somehow.
They might be an ambassador for you. They might be a mentor for a specific insight. They might help with something technical or some other problem that you're having. They might be a connector to bring you to somebody else. So I always have this guiding principle when you aren't sure what to do.
Like if you're stuck and you're like, "Well, I've got some time, but what do I do?" When you aren't sure what to do, do one thing to make money or grow your business, you know, and one thing to help someone. And that's because money is the lifeblood of your business and ultimately, life is all about relationships. So do one thing to make money and one thing to help someone. I recently had a conversation with Kathy Heller, has a podcast about quitting your day job, and we talked about this concept of going one by one, person by person, to build those relationships in your business and life. And so this model is very different from the startup way.
It's very different from trying to scale, you know, running a bunch of Facebook ads, et cetera. And like every model, it's not meant to work for everyone. It's not meant to work for everyone all the time, but it's what I come back to time after time. It's kind of how I'm approaching the next few weeks as I hope to get this new book, The Money Tree, out to as many people as possible. So in a moment, you'll get your assignment for the week, along with a couple of practical ways to apply this model.
If you like the idea of building relationships one by one and doing so in a way that's going to support your side hustle, I'll talk about that. First, I'd like to thank our sponsor for making all of this series completely free to you. [Music]
Okay, so what are some practical ways to apply this model? If you're like, I like it, relationship focused, you know, what do I do with it? Well, first principle is people like to help.
So remember that, people like to help. They want to help, but they also like specific asks. They like to know, you know, what exactly can they do? How can they help you? You know, what are you stuck on?
What is your number one need? How can they be part of your mission? Which I will talk about more in just a moment. So in my case, as I think about, okay, small army campaign, Money Tree Launch, well, for my book, this is a very gift driven book in the sense that it's going to succeed if people buy copies for their friends. If they have a friend who's struggling, a friend who's in debt, you can buy a copy for that friend.
Like that's probably the number one thing. You can also leave an online review, which is always awesome, or you can post something online. You can post a photo of the book if you've got it, post your thoughts about it, just to help to get the word out. You can send people to moneytreebook.com. Any or all of those things would be awesome.
Like, and this is just my example, right? I want you to think about what is your example. You know, people like to help. What do you need help with? And how can you give them a specific ask?
Next, people like to be acknowledged. Just think about public radio. If you listen to NPR, public radio does this all the time during their fundraising drives. They're like, thanks to so-and-so, really appreciate Kelly and Wichita. You know, she's helping us out with a $20 a month donation or whatever it is.
So these days, like how does this apply in the modern world? Well, retweeting someone or commenting on their posts, liking their Instagram posts, any way that you can engage digitally with someone is a form of acknowledgement. And then third, it's always good to inspire a sense of togetherness, a sense of togetherness, a sense of mission, shared community identity and belonging. So later in the week, we've got this Throwback Thursday episode coming up with a guy who founded a business called The Long Hairs. And this is a really interesting business.
I'm not sure what I thought about it when I first heard of it. And then the more I looked into it, I was like, oh, this is actually pretty interesting. It is an e-commerce business serving men with long hair. And the origin story of that, like there's a whole podcast episode about it, but the origin story is like these guys who are growing their hair long and they felt alone. You know, like they went to get some hair ties and the hair ties are mostly made for women.
So they created this whole business, which is now, I believe a six figure, very healthy, successful business. In big part, not just because they have a helpful product, but also because they're inspiring the sense of community. So we'll talk a bit more about that in the episode. As I'm saying this, I'm realizing it might actually be the following week, but it's coming up soon. If it's not this Thursday, it will be the following Thursday.
So to go back to that story, you know, those 10,000 emails that I sent, honestly and truly I can say they led me to what I'm doing today. And I am still in touch with some of those people from that 63 city tour, which a lot of people ask me like, isn't that inefficient? Isn't that expensive? Isn't there a better way to spend your time? And I responded, well, this is how I want to spend my time.
And I really do believe it's an investment. Maybe you can't go to 63 cities right now. Maybe you don't want to send 10,000 emails, but how can you apply this model to your side hustle idea or existing business? That's going to be your assignment for this week. Who will be in your small army and how will you recruit them?
What are you going to offer them? What is that sense of togetherness and mission? And what is that specific ask? You can read notes for this in every classroom episode this year at sidehustleschool.com/classroom. This has been episode 1192.
Thanks so much. I'm so glad you're out there. I look forward to sharing the money tree and side hustle school with you as we keep rolling. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
