This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
What's up? What's up? Welcome back. This is Chris Guillebeau here with you for Side Hustle School, episode number 171, just cruising along. And here on the show, Italy Week continues.
Wait, did I tell you it was Italy Week? Okay, it's not really Italy Week, but there are two stories in a row that have to do with Italy. They are not related, though I suppose they could be. It's about a woman who was born in Italy, now lives in the US, and creates a side hustle that allows her to travel home and get paid for it. So that's pretty cool. And along the way,
I've gotten a lot of questions about business bank accounts. Like do you need to open a separate checking account for your side hustle? Short version is most likely yes. That is often a very good decision. And it's also very simple as well. So we'll look at that in the context
of this story coming right up. Francesca Montillo's side hustle was 20 years in the making. Ever since she left high school, she dreamed of starting her own travel business and sharing a small pizza slice of her native Italy with the world. But instead of following her dream, Francesca opted for what she thought was the safe option. She studied for her master's degree and went to work in the healthcare field at the Harvard Medical School Teaching Hospital in Boston, where she was guaranteed a good job and an opportunity to work her way up the ranks. Yet
for her entire working life, she knew there was a little Italy shaped hole inside of her that needed to be filled. She yearned to reconnect with her roots, walk the strata and eat Italian food in places where they'd never even heard of Domino's or Pizza Hut. So after 20 years of waiting for the right time, she decided to finally go for it and start her side hustle. There's often a spark of inspiration or an aha moment when someone figures out what they're supposed to do with their hustle, or at least has an idea for it. And Francesca's aha moment came when she looked back at all the free advice she'd given out over the years. She had shared her family's authentic Italian recipes
with her friends, helped them book entire holidays and taught countless people about Italian culture. So she asked herself the all important side hustle question, can I charge for this? Putting together a basic website that she called the lazy Italian. She wrote about her experiences, holidays she'd planned and recipes she loved to cook. She made sure to highlight the fact that she was truly Italian herself. She then took herself out of her comfort zone and began to
market the site through podcasts, local television and even a feature in the Boston Herald. Marketing wasn't easy but Francesca was determined to be anything but a lazy Italian when it came to making her side hustle a reality. Eventually those efforts paid off and she found herself with her first paying client for planning an Italian holiday. And she knew she might have a viable business on her hands. But instead of eating a whole tub of gelato to celebrate the way some of us would, she opened her first business checking account and lazy Italian culinary adventures LLC was born. Investing about $3,000 of her own money, Francesca set about turning
his first sale into more sales. She took exams to allow her to serve real Italian food through her cooking classes, licensed her home kitchen with the city and fleshed out her website to make it look more professional. She also did something smart. She diversified her side hustle into two separate parts. One that makes money while she's in America, and one that makes money by allowing her to travel to Italy. When she's at home, she teaches Italian cooking courses to hungry students,
but it's the second part of her hustle that brings her the greatest amount of joy that is being paid to revisit Italy and take people on tours to explore the country she so dearly loves. And who doesn't want to be able to deduct a Mediterranean holiday as a business expense. Right now Francesca is making an average of $500 a month through this project, although the number can get a lot higher when she's got a big tour to work with. Her ultimate goal is to turn this side hustle into full time work. She realizes it might take a couple of years, but to nudge that along, she wants to start promoting her tours to bigger groups. She also wants to stop running state side cooking
classes, even though she enjoys them so that she can turn her focus to writing a lazy Italian cookbook. She's also partnering with school alumni tours to help her add a level of exclusivity to her trips. It's a posturific recipe for success. So first of all, congratulations to Francesca. I love how she's been able to draw on her heritage and create a link between that and some of her other skills, that advice that she was giving away for years. Listen, if there's advice that
you've been giving away for years, it doesn't mean you shouldn't continue to help your friends and family. But if they're interested in your advice, there might be other people interested too. So maybe you should consider that age old side hustle question, can I charge for this? And now speaking of money, I know a lot of people wonder about the logistics of having a second income or money that's arriving apart from their paycheck. And I'll do a whole extended episode at some point to delve into the issues of business licenses, taxes, etc. There've also been some
listener questions in the archives if you want to go back and listen. But just a quick recommendation, if you do nothing else, especially at first, it is very wise to separate your business income from your personal income. Your side hustle income essentially is business income. So it can be very helpful to open a business checking account, which is either free at your bank or low cost. If for some reason it looks like it's going to cost a lot of money or be difficult, you probably need a different bank because it shouldn't be that hard. And then it's just fun to be able to log
in and see this is my dedicated account. The only money that's coming into this account comes from the side hustle. If I have expenses, then those expenses are coming from that account. Just helps you keep a much better record throughout the year. So it's good for record keeping and it's also good for motivation. Speaking of motivation, as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with
action is so much better. Today's show notes are already up at the site. That is sidehustleschool.com/171. And by the way, what do you call a fake noodle? An impasta. And here's one more to impress your
friends. What is the dress code at a pasta convention? The dress code is bowtie. Thanks so much folks. I'll be here all week, every day actually. I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is side hustle
school.
