This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up my friends? Greetings and welcome to Satasil School. This is our weekly recap, here at the end of week number 41 of season three. This week featured a New Zealander who makes shoes for women with larger sizes, as well as the Mexican swine flu that led to a 1.5 million virtual language lab. In addition to our first ever look at the world of mobile notaries, I'll tell you what, after 1,000 episodes, are we running out of topics?
Absolutely not. If anything, the world of Satasils continues to offer more and more possibilities, some old things, some new things, some stuff I've never heard of. Listen, I am just as excited as I was when I first started making this show for you 1,015 days ago. And I'm so glad you're listening. And today I wanna share something with you that I found in our research for episode 1,012, just a few days ago.
In fact, about that virtual language lab in Mexico. Ray Blankney, the guy in that story, was very helpful and sent us a ton of notes, including a summary of what he calls the most boring superpower of all time. I didn't mention it in that story, but he actually has a bunch of other side projects as well, like including a couple of other businesses that he's running while he's also running this million-dollar business. So we ask him naturally, how do you get so much done? I always like to ask productive people those questions, what's your secret, how do you do it?
And he gave us a really cool answer that I wanna share with you. He said, let me tell you about my superpower. It might be the most boring superpower of all time, but I'll start with the origin story of how I discovered it. I was, as many heroes are, a mild-mannered glasses-wearing introvert attending a conference. And in one of the workshops, they gave us a bunch of post-it notes and asked us to write out a typical day, one activity per post-it note.
So I thought, well, this is odd, but sure, I can do that. And so I started making my list or making my post-its, and I wrote down, you know, 6 a.m., wake up. 6 a.m. to 7 a.m., drink coffee, eat a 200-calorie yogurt and granola mix, and watch the news. 7 to 8 a.m., go to the gym.
8 to 8, 15, meditate. 8, 15 to 8, 30, breakfast. 8, 30 to 9, 30, answer work emails, and so on. He says, I had my head down for about 10 minutes writing what I do every day. Ended up with 40 post-it notes.
I still didn't see the point of the exercise. When I was done, I looked up and around the room and was shocked at what I saw. Every one of the 50 or so other people in the room was stumped. They were chatting with each other about how each day was different, and they just couldn't figure out what a typical day looked like. When I put mine up on the board, everybody looked at me like I was an alien.
They asked, do you really do those things every day? And I answered truthfully, yes. You know, unless there's an unexpected fire, I wake up every workday and this is what I do. Now it was their turn to be shocked. And it didn't hit me right away, but after a few days, it sunk in.
That was my superpower, discipline. I wake up every day and do what I say I'm going to do. I plan my weeks, two weeks in advance using a simple app called Wunderlist, and every day I do what's on my list. I haven't missed the gym, martial arts practice, or meditation in years. I finish what I say I'm gonna do on the day I say I'm going to do it.
If it sounds intimidating, this gets easier with practice as you get a better idea of what you're capable of. So essentially, I wake up every day and take a step forward. If you do this day in and day out for 10 years, the steps forward far outweigh the times you're knocked back. This is what helped me build the business. It's what helps me constantly create other projects and make them successful, and at the very end, he says, let me just clarify, it's not all work.
On my list of the day, there's one hour of relaxing, playing computer games, reading sci-fi or fantasy, et cetera, and two hours a day of family time. I also never miss those either. So a bit of a long story there, but I wanted to share it with you because I found it inspiring myself. Like I said, I always respect productive people. I always want to understand what is their secret, which is not really a secret usually.
It is usually a series or sequence of habits, right? Habits, routines, rituals. And so it was fun to hear about this guy's most boring superpower, which is essentially creating rituals for daily discipline. Reminds me a little bit of Laura VanderKam's time tracking exercise that I've mentioned before, how every day she tracks every half hour of her time. She's got a spreadsheet, which you can download.
I'll link it up in the show notes. It's completely free. She's got a spreadsheet that she tracks every half hour of her time, and by reviewing those weeks, she's able to identify patterns and make changes. I did this myself for a little while. It was really cool to see, oh, here's actually how I spend my time.
I think this is how I spend my time, but how do I actually do it? Sometimes there is a gap between what we imagine and what reality is. So if these kinds of habits freak you out, if you're like, oh man, I could never do something like that. I wouldn't want to track every minute of my day. I wouldn't want to have the same ritual every day and be able to say, here are my 40 post-it notes.
Just remember, first of all, you can customize and personalize these things. You can personalize these tools to make them work for you. And then also, remember that the whole point of anything like this is to help you do more of what is important to you. It's not about trying to get you to alter your goals or become a different person that you don't want to be, et cetera, well, I mean, aside from the superhero transformation, of course, but who doesn't want to be a superhero? So again, this kind of stuff is going to help you do more of what is important to you.
So that's why I study it. That's why I'm passing it along to you. And feel free to join me on the notes for some resources about everything I just mentioned. All right, in a moment, we're gonna go on to the audio update. This one features Carolyn, who makes gourmet frozen pops in Texas.
I remember featuring her long ago and she's got some great updates, some good news all around. But first, I wanna give a shout out to our sponsor, Quick Little Message, just thanking them for keeping the lights on and allowing the program to be completely free to you. So, sponsor message and then audio update. [Music]
Hi, this is Carolyn, owner and chief alchemist of Alchemy Pops, gourmet frozen pop company in Fort Worth, Texas, and featured in episode 341. Since the recording of my episode, I'm excited to share that our brick and mortar pop shop is doing great on South Main Street.
And fun fact, two weeks before we grand opened, I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. And so we've added a lot of fun to the mix since then. This year, I was selected as a Tory Burch Foundation Fellow, one of 50 women entrepreneurs to be selected. And the day that I landed in New York to kick off the fellowship was the day that 100 Side Hustles book hit the shelves and also featured the Alchemy Pop Story, which I'm incredibly grateful for. The original title of my episode is about 25,000 pops that I had made to date.
And now that's pretty much the minimum reorder as we restock our popsicle sticks during production. So, growth has been great and really fun. And as my daughter is learning to walk, I'm constantly reminded how important it is to fail forward. And to that end, I have, of course, started another side hustle when I am consulting other female founders of how to scale and simplify the processes of their business to make sure that it feels like a fairy tale and not a burden as they live happily ever in business. Thank you so much for letting me provide an update and wishing everyone all the best.
[Music]
Congratulations, Carolyn. And thank you so much for sharing your story. So fantastic to see how far you've come. Indeed, 25,000 pops. That's the number you were at when we first did the story.
And now 25,000 pops is your minimum reorder. I love it. Hopefully I get a chance to see that in-person retail store in the Dallas, Fort Worth area. When I first met Carolyn, she came to an event. I did in Dallas.
And she talked about how one day she wanted to have a retail store. So that day has already arrived. Congratulations again. And the best is yet to come. Everyone, you can follow along with Carolyn at alchemypops.com or on Instagram, or if you're in the Dallas, Fort Worth area, if you go and check out her retail store.
More updates to come. And if you've got a question or comment, you can make a call at the Hustle hotline. That number is 844-9-Hustle, 844-948-7853. You can also just send me an email at podcast@sidehustleschool.com. Love to hear from you and know what you're up to and know what you're working on, as well as what your challenges are.
I've been working on the next couple of weeks of episodes. I'm gonna be doing some travel later in the month, which is nice. I used to travel like every week. And these days I'm much more domestic, but I am preparing to do a couple of bigger trips. I'll be going to London at some point, and then also to Australia, one of my favorite countries in the world.
But of course we got episodes coming out every single day, no matter where I am. So I look forward to bringing you those, including something about a mystery trip, something about campground booking, and something about the peach truck, which I'm especially excited about, but I'll tell you more about that as it arrives. So before we close out the week, I just wanna say thank you. First and foremost to you, our listener, you're the reason we make this show. Honestly, every single day I'm like, how can we make something that is helpful and interesting to the people who care to invest their time every day?
You know, I know it's just 10 minutes, but your time is valuable. So I want you to go away with something that you learn or something that gets you thinking almost every day. You know, like today I was talking about, you know, the super power of having a routine and, you know, writing down, here's how I'm gonna spend my time and just kind of being intentional about that. Hopefully that'll make a difference in somebody's life. Even if it's just a small tweak, those small tweaks really do add up.
So thank you. And also I'm not the only one working on this show. Let's give credit where it's due to producer Chuck Reed, other folks from Cadence 13, our network, including Nick, Sage, Serena, our community liaison, Jed Chang, our content manager, Tina Hart, and the official show cat Libby Gillibow. All of us at Team Side Hustle School are part of the Onward Project. That is led by bestselling author Gretchen Rubin.
Be sure to check out her show. That's the flagship show on the imprint. I'm happy with Gretchen Rubin as well as happier in Hollywood and the program from Melissa Urban called Do The Thing. All of these shows are free and listener supported. If you're enjoying them, especially this one, since you're listening to it, I'd be very grateful if you'd leave a quick rating and review on Apple Podcasts.
And also if you would tell your friends about the show. All of our growth has been organic. We don't have a strategic marketing campaign for all that I talk about marketing. I'm kind of busy making these episodes. So that's what I spend my time on.
If you know somebody out there who needs another source of income, send them to us. We will take care of them. I often mention inspiration is good, but action's better. That's because, as I said, I want you to take action. I look forward to hearing about you doing that, and I hope you'll join me tomorrow and each day next week.
Got more stories and ideas coming up. Our episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time every day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
[Music]
From the Onward Project.
