Physical Therapist Turns Memes Into $22,000

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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What's up friends? Welcome to Side Hustle School. Got a great story for you today. It's all about a physical therapist who makes money from memes. That would be memes, M-E-M-E-S.

I'll define that in a moment for anyone who's not familiar. And in fact, he made $22,000 last year, focusing entirely on marketing to other people in his profession. So it's really tightly focused. Physical therapists all about marketing to other physical therapists with these inside jokes. Now, no one had ever done this before and he figured he might as well be the first.

So before we get going, let's not assume anything. If you don't know, a meme is an image or video that portrays a particular concept or idea that is spread through social platforms. That's kind of a wordy Wikipedia definition, but basically if you have used the internet or if you have text messaged or iMessaged or WhatsApp with anybody, you've probably seen them even if you couldn't define them. So there's little images and videos that people spread around. And the reason why this guy has been successful, this is what we're gonna focus on here.

The reason why he's been successful is because he's speaking a secret language. It's the language of his profession. It's the kind of thing where anybody else sees this and they're like, okay, I don't get it. Why is that funny? But anybody in the profession is like, oh yeah, that's hilarious or I get that.

So it's kind of a mutual recognition or identification that comes with these things. And what I'd like you to think about is if you have a profession, whatever that is, whether it's mental health counselor or high school teacher or full stack developer, emergency room nurse, whatever it is, just about anything, then you probably know a secret language too. And sometimes perhaps your secret language can unlock a secret source of income. All right, we're gonna call this physical therapist turns memes into $22,000. Stay tuned for the story.

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Some side hustles start from the desire to one day escape a day job. But Andrew Tran's story is more about finding a creative angle to enjoy his chosen profession in a sustainable way. See, Andrew trained to become a physical therapist and working with patients is both rewarding and draining. Physical therapists, also known as PTs, help people heal and get stronger. In some circumstances, physical therapy can prevent the need for pain medication and even surgery.

That's why Andrew's goal is not to leave the profession necessarily. As he puts it, ideally, I would like to be in clinic about two days a week. I still love patient care, but I don't wanna get exhausted, burn out or lose interest in my job. Whenever he found himself getting bored with the didactic work of PT school, Andrew would draw memes on whatever topic they were learning about. He says it might be because of my ADD tendencies, but when I see or hear something, my brain is always connected with something else in life, whether that's pictures, movies, TV shows, GIFs or music.

By the way, I did say GIF, not GIF, G-I-F, speaking of insider language, okay. By the time Andrew was graduating, online memes were growing in popularity and he tried finding some related to physical therapy. Since he couldn't find a page that was consistently posting them, he took it upon himself to create an Instagram account, which he called Physio Memes. That's with an underscore, physio_memes. The account took off, perhaps because he was the only one doing such a thing.

A year later, he decided to try making T-shirts. The first shirt Andrew created for himself said, turkeys get up. It depicts a figure doing the CrossFit exercise known as Turkish get up, lifting a turkey in place of a kettlebell. Now, quick side note, if you don't know what any of that means, that's kind of the point. It's some insider language for both people in the physical therapy world, as well as people who do CrossFit, all right.

So you have to really kind of be into this stuff to get it, but again, that's the point. These early shirts captured the interest of his friends and fellow PTs. It was then that he knew physio_memes had some side hustle potential. His lack of experience in graphic design or copywriting was not a hindrance. In fact, he never considered himself to be a creative person until he stumbled upon his hustle.

To start turning his memes into merchandise, Andrew used a free and simple software to design the shirts. He taught himself how to set up an e-commerce site. He got serious about growing his Instagram following, creating memes consistently, and trying to be strategic. Initially, there was some doubt as to whether people would actually buy the products he was creating. But that first sale came in, then the second, and then the 10th, and Andrew was running around the house in celebration.

By the end of the first year, in fact, he had brought in $22,000, while spending about $3,200 on ads. Now that he's busier, Andrew has started delegating a lot of the designs to freelancers he hires online. He still comes up with most of the concepts himself, but Andrew has also recruited an intern to help with his blog. At first, the Instagram account was the primary driver of sales. Then he realized that not everyone in his target audience was on Instagram, so he added a Facebook page.

A majority of physio memes purchases still come in through Instagram, but those Facebook ads have also been an effective way to attract new customers. We asked Andrew if he had any advice about doing this, and he said, he gave us a warning, actually. He said, "Don't throw money at Facebook ads without a plan and expect it to magically give you money back. What works best is continually testing your ads and don't include your emotions with your decisions. Facebook gives you all the metrics that you need to determine if something is working or not.

You may think it's the best ad ever, but let the market decide. I've had ads and even products I thought weren't that good, but others love them." He now plans to strengthen his side hustle so he's not reliant on patient work to pay the bills, but can keep doing that because he believes in it. And that way he can keep life humorous, as he likes to say, which is another kind of inside joke for a physical therapist, keep life humorous. He's also capitalizing on the lessons learned from his success by creating a course on how to start an e-commerce store. It's no stretch to say that Andrew's on track to achieve his goals.

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So key point for today. The point is that in your profession, or even if it's a hobby that you're highly active in, there is a vocabulary and a set of common experiences you share with other people in that same profession or hobby that outsiders don't understand. Outsiders don't get it. It's not funny to them. They don't understand the references, but within that profession or hobby or interest or whatever it is, you have this circle of people and they do get it.

And they get the jokes, they understand the references, the affirmation, the mutual recognition, et cetera. And as illustrated in this story, there might be a way to profit from it. There might be a way to turn that kind of mutual language, shared experience, et cetera, into a money-making project, such as the merchandise that Andrew is selling. We didn't actually talk a lot about how he's actually doing it. He's using print-on-demand.

So he's not stocking inventory. He doesn't deal with manufacturing. He doesn't have to worry about any of that stuff. Now, that means he has a little bit of a lower profit margin than if he managed all that himself, but he also has a lot lower risk and a lot less complexity as well. So he can focus on doing his actual practice, his PT practice, as well as building this business without having to think about all those logistics.

So interesting approach, secret language. Ask yourself what it is that you know about, that other people in your field know about, but nobody else does. There could be something there. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. To find the show notes for today's episode, just go to sidehustleschool.com/875.

That's episode 875. Thanks so much, my friends. I'll be back tomorrow with a weekly recap. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

- From The Onward Project.