Second Grade Teacher Earns Second Income

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

[Music]

How can you go from one extra income source to two? Does your side hustle lend itself to some kind of complimentary business? In today's story, a second grade teacher draws on her organizational skills to start a wedding planning business. She does it in her own way, figuring out what's best for her, and before the end of the first year, she finds another way to make money, essentially through an add-on service. So this can be a good thing to consider.

Once you've got your hustle up and running, is there a way that you can do something pretty simple, that's kind of natural and organic, that adds to your monthly income and security? I'll give you a few ideas for that at the end of the episode. I'll also give you a cautionary warning, 'cause you wanna make sure you do it in the right way. So with that in mind, welcome to Side Hustle School. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Here's a quick message from our sponsor, and then I'll tell you all about this second grade teacher turned wedding planner. [Music]

When Nicole Gaskin got married, she organized everything herself, designed the centerpieces, arranged the flowers, and handled dozens of other important details. It was all the more complicated because hers was a destination wedding. Getting a group of guests organized in a place far from home is like herding sheep, albeit very well-dressed, sometimes slightly intoxicated sheep. The wedding took place in the summer.

It was the perfect time to take a break because Nicole is a full-time grade school teacher. She had ample holidays at that time of year. When she came home, she still had a fair bit of vacation left and nothing much to do. Her husband returned to work, and with the wedding planning over, she felt a little lost. Nicole is an extrovert who's always on the go, and summers as a teacher can be mundane.

Rather than sit around with her feet up, basking in newly wedded bliss, she decided to hustle. Nicole was reminded of a small venture she'd had in the past, planning birthdays, family reunions, and baby showers. With her event planning experience, combined with her new wedding organization skills, she came up with a name, Weddings by Nicole G. The two skill sets were a perfect match, and no one objected to their union. Setting aside $2,000, she had a professional website built.

She also printed business cards. She knew this was important because a big part of planning a wedding is making things look visually appealing. But of course, a website and business cards does not a business make. So she spent the rest of her startup cash on advertising in places where she knew potential clients would be. She went to The Knot, a popular wedding planning site, wedding.com, a huge online directory, and Thumbtack, a marketplace for local services.

Nicole moved fast. Before the summer was even half over, she was off and running. Within just two weeks, she had her first client. Through her online marketing efforts, a soon-to-be bride found her website and booked her service. The wedding was in August, just a month away.

Nicole would be responsible for making sure the whole day ran smoothly. She decided the best way to charge clients was based on the specific services they wanted. Potential clients could choose a package that was right for them, ranging from wedding day coordination all the way up to full-blown destination wedding management. And as the next few months went on, new clients kept trickling in. In addition to leads coming through websites, she began to receive referrals.

She also occasionally worked to assist other local wedding planners to help get her name out there. After the first few clients, she got more intentional about the kinds of people she wanted to serve. She realized that an ideal client for her was someone who knew exactly what they already wanted. They just needed a professional with an eye for detail, who could carry out their vision and create the perfect ceremony. By using certain pictures and language on her website and social media, Nicole has figured out the best way to attract those types of clients.

It almost became a sixth sense. Then as time went on, Nicole spotted another opportunity she'd been missing, honeymoons. The planning for the actual day was great, but she learned if she could also arrange a dream honeymoon for the newly married couple, she could earn a commission from travel companies. So she began offering this as part of her services. She liked the feeling of not leaving money on the table.

Weddings are known to be expensive, but for the savvy side hustler, this presents an opportunity. In Nicole's case, that opportunity has meant an extra $12,000 profit outside her day job in just the last 12 months. She hasn't made enough to quit teaching yet, and it's all been largely reinvested into the business. That's because she wants to make it even better. For her, the best part is that she's fulfilling her passion to create beautiful events and memories for clients on their wedding days.

Her side hustle allows her to design an experience they won't forget, and she's doing it on her own terms. [Music]

All right, so couple ideas here for a secondary complimentary income source. Once you've got your hustle up and running, just like we saw here with Nicole, she had this wedding planning business, and then she's like, "Oh, maybe I should do something with honeymoons," because that's kind of a natural extension. And also it wasn't just that she could plan the honeymoons, but she could earn a commission from travel companies. I don't know exactly how much it breaks down and how much she's actually getting for that portion, but it sounds like it's kind of a natural add-on that doesn't really take a lot from her.

So that's the point. Now, if you are a web designer or developer, or otherwise doing something with making websites, you can earn affiliate commissions from a web host. If you ever link to anything on amazon.com, if you've got a blog of any kind, a website, if you're ever linking to a book, or really anything that's on amazon.com, which of course is an enormous marketplace with something like 500 million active users in the US, you should have an associates account. You can sign up for an Amazon associates account, it is free, and you're gonna earn a small commission on anything that you refer people to. It's probably not gonna be a lot of money, but free money is good.

If you're an expert of some kind, broadly speaking, you can sign up for clarity.fm or a similar service, and you can then offer your expertise for hire by the minute. And there's some other platforms like that. We will link up clarity and anything else that we know about on the show notes page. But someone who is a wedding planner, for example, might want to look for something like that, where not everybody wants to necessarily hire a wedding planner for the full package, but what if you could earn some money for doing some consulting calls? And a platform like that will make it simple so that you don't actually have to go out and market yourself or spend a lot of time on it.

Again, just a little bit of an opportunity for the right person. Now, just a quick cautionary note as well, you should also be careful to not become distracted from your core offerings. You don't have a lot of time, side hustlers of the world, so your core offering is the main thing. This kind of stuff can be fun, and it can be good and profitable, but don't spend all your time on it, right? The main thing is to be focused on, like, what am I actually trying to do?

How am I trying to serve people? How am I gonna try to grow this existing business? So, I'm gonna leave you with that today. I hope you enjoyed the story. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

Today's notes are at sidehustleschool.com/880. Congratulations to Nicole. Thanks so much for allowing us to share your story with our audience and community. I'll be back again tomorrow. Don't go anywhere.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.