This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey there, welcome back. You are listening to Sadduceil School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. And as we begin today, let's do a very basic exercise together. I want you to make a list.
I understand you may be listening to this while you're driving, or you're at the gym, or otherwise you can't use your hands. That's OK. It's a very simple list. You can do it later. And the exercise is to think about and write down all the ways you spend your time when you have a choice about it.
So you can categorize things. You can just write things down as they come to you. But think about your hobbies. Think about what you like in the arts or music. Think about what you like to read.
Do you read novels, nonfiction, magazines, teenage vampire romance? Do you like sports? Do you like playing sports, watching sports? Do you like games, video games, other kinds of games? When you're surfing around online and you're just kind of wasting time, what do you go and look at?
When you travel, how do you like to travel? You could go anywhere in the world, where would it be? And lastly, let's say the day is totally open. Your schedule's been canceled. But for a good reason, if the wide open day, what do you do?
So I don't actually believe that the best way to start your hustle is to follow your passion and just to think about things that you like to do. I think it's a little bit more complicated than that. And you have to think about your skills and what other people value. But it is true that many successful hustles come from digging a bit deeper into this concept of how you like to spend your time when you have a choice, and then finding a way to create value in that for other people. Now, today's story illustrates this concept well.
It's all about how a designer decides to create tarot card decks and ends up making as much money with her side hustle as she does at her day job. I'll tell you about that in just a moment. Today's story comes from Tina Gong in Brooklyn, New York. By day, Tina works as a senior designer for a feminist media publication. But in her spare time, she's introducing a more introspective method of tarot reading with her next-level tarot card company called Labyrinthos Academy.
Now, for a lot of people, the words tarot card reading produce a certain image of a fortune teller who predicts impending doom or immense wealth and good fortune. And there may be some element of that in the industry, but at least for a lot of people, that's not necessarily what tarot cards were originally about. And Tina's goal is to offer an alternative to all of the smoke and mirrors. Tina took up tarot at an early age, but instead of using her deck as a tool for determining her future, she used it as a method to obtain a deeper understanding of herself. She believed that some of the most powerful sources of information can come from within and that tarot can help a person come in contact with their higher self.
And she had a lot of friends who were interested in one of their own readings, but she realized pretty quickly there were a lot of misconceptions about this whole thing. So in her attempt to help her friends see tarot from another perspective, she went online looking for resources she could pass on. And you can probably guess what came next. After many hours searching, Tina realized that while tarot was becoming more mainstream, there really didn't seem to be a lot of resources out there that were dedicated to instructing people about it and a similar approach to the one that she used. And in fact, no matter where she looked, it appeared that a lot of other people in that community were genuinely trying to make others feel that their futures were being told.
And Tina believed that kind of put the power in the hands of the cards instead of the user, which in her opinion took away from the whole experience. Now at this point in our story, Tina was several months into an illustration challenge she had given herself to create something every day. And she was posting all of her illustrations to Tumblr in order to hold herself accountable. Since tarot was such a big part of her life, she found herself sketching out her own ideas about common tarot decks. And before long, she began to get requests from followers looking to purchase them from her.
She'd never really considered doing that. She thought it would be cool to have her own deck completely of her own design. So to get a feel for the process, she went ahead and ordered something from a print-on-demand company. And the quality wasn't super great, took a long time to get to her. But still, there was something incredibly satisfying about being able to hold this tangible extension of her art in her own hands.
She took some photos of this DIY deck and posted them on that Tumblr. And the response was really great. This still wasn't for sale. It was just people saying that they liked it. And they were excited.
So Tina decided to pursue the next steps. She looked around for a local printer, got some referrals, and then placed her first substantial order. Now listen, everything for that first set of decks came to about $6,500. And for her, it was the most money she had ever spent on anything in her entire life. But she thought less about what she was losing and more about what she could possibly be gaining.
And she saw this as an investment in herself and her art. And to Tina, there was nothing more important than that. Now next, as great as Tumblr is for social sharing, it's not really a great market for selling a product. So Tina realized she would need to have a storefront in order to make this a reality. And she started out, as a lot of people do, on Etsy.
She called her deck Golden Thread Tarot because of the intricate gold foil design. And people began purchasing her decks and sharing her beautiful designs with her friends. And before she knew it, she was coming close to running out of that first order, which for her had been very substantial. She was worried she would never sell out. It would just end up giving those decks away to friends and family, perhaps for the rest of her life.
Thankfully, she didn't have to do that. And for the next stage of growth, she wanted to create that online store of her own. And even though she had a lot of experience in coding and development, she also wanted something really simple that wouldn't take a ton of time on her end. Now by this point, she's calling her business Labarenthos Academy. And she created a site for it using Shopify, where she just signed up and simply modified an existing theme.
This saved her a lot of time and money, and also just allowed her an opportunity to focus on the brand she was building. As Tina puts it, Labarenthos Academy is kind of like a performance art piece crossed with the business. She sends out her tarot kits with acceptance letters. And she created a quirky little backstory for all of the mythical creatures featured on the decks. She feels it gives a creative spark to a world that often feels like it's made of numbers and not much else.
And this side hustle has provided her with the opportunity to create without having to worry about her finances. And much to her surprise, it's been tremendously successful. As of right now, her monthly income with Labarenthos is equal to that from her day job. So she's essentially doubled her income through this labor of love. Now one of the things that Tina mentioned to me is that when you work for others, inevitably there are compromises you have to make with your work.
And that's not totally a bad thing. You don't necessarily want to be 100% responsible for everything. But for her, she felt being able to be in control of her own creative vision for this side project felt really good. And being able to have customers who actually liked her work enough to pay for it was incredibly validating. And I really like that.
I think it's important to find something in your life that you have total creative control over. Again, it doesn't have to be everything. But you will find a certain freedom in having total control over something. So however you're out there building your hustle, whether it is something that is distinctly creative, like within the world of the arts, or something different, think about what that creative control means to you, what that freedom means to you, and always think about why you're doing this. What is your goal?
What is your ultimate outcome? What are you hoping to create for yourself? Remember, inspiration is good. But inspiration, combined with action, is so much better. So when you think about your idea, don't just think about it.
Go and do something about it. And let me know what happens. If you want to find the show notes for today's episode, go to sidehustleschool.com. You can also read about building your own Shopify store just like Tina did. Find some other resources as well that might help you along the way.
I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Sodasleschool. And I hope to see you tomorrow.
