This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up friends, listeners, side hustle school community. I'm so glad you're here. My name is Chris Guillebeau. We've got a weekly recap here and something I'm really excited to share with you. We have just finished week number 48 of season three.
That's not what I'm so excited about, although that's cool too. This week featured a Tuscan vacation that inspires a leatherworking hustle, a book lover who ships out YA novels for fun and profit, an engineer who stumbles into a custom cartography business and more. Now, of course, I've got an audio update for you from a previously featured side hustler, but before we do that, let's jump right in to something big and exciting. Now I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I would have an announcement for you about the future of side hustle school as we were starting to approach the end of the year, been getting a lot of emails from people asking, hey, what's gonna happen? Been doing this for a while.
So I want you to be the first to know what's coming next. And this has been in the works for a while, lots of back and forth. I won't give you the long story, but I'll just give you some brief context because we are now at episode 1065 of what was originally an undertaking to do this 365 days in a row in 2017. So, you know, almost done with the third year. Long-term listeners may know that at the end of that first year and then the second, I was encouraged, inspired and challenged to keep going.
For me, it was really fun to know that there were lots of people out there listening, working on their projects. And so I just kept going and here we are now. So I want to first honor everyone who's been part of this community for a while. I do think of it as a community, more on that in a moment. You are amazing and I'm really honored to be a small part of your world every day or however you choose to listen.
So now we got some binge listeners out there and I respect that as well. So if we ended tomorrow, like if the whole show ended tomorrow or if it ended at the end of December, I think we could say that we've done a pretty cool thing. And one of my favorite things in the whole world is to hear from listeners who have drawn on the stories in the show to start projects of their own. Honestly love hearing that and it's very, very motivational. But does that mean it's winding down?
Well, until about a month ago, to be totally honest and transparent with you, I was torn because I liked doing it, but I also tend to do my best work when I'm pioneering something instead of maintaining it. I tend to do my best work when it's something new or at least somewhat new. And so I kept going back and forth because I was like, oh, it's a good thing here, but I always wanna give my best. I never wanna give less than 100%, you deserve my best, you deserve the best of whatever you give your attention to. So as I said, it was a long story, but I found what I think is not just a modification, but a significant improvement.
And the more I thought about it, the more I kind of outlined this idea, I got more and more excited. And then in talking with the team, people who work on the show, the network that I partner with, they're pretty excited too. All right, so are you ready? Here's what's gonna happen. In short, we want 2020 to be the year of interaction.
Now I have always said that the community is the best part of everything I do. Whenever I do a meetup or an event, I just try to acknowledge like, hey, the best part of this isn't just what I'm saying here, but it really is everybody else who comes out. And it can be somewhat of a challenge to do that virtually. I've always wanted to involve more people in the show without turning it into an interview format. So in 2020, we're gonna do real time coaching throughout the year.
This will take on a couple of different formats, most prominently featuring listener questions and answers several days a week. There'll also be a special classroom series that I'm writing just for this show. It's gonna go out once a week, kind of like the weekly recap, but much more specific, topical and focused. And that's gonna build from January to December 'cause I'm gonna be inviting a lot of our listeners to start their project in January. Let's work on it together throughout the year.
You as a listener can participate passively or actively. Now, as I said, this is all gonna be super interactive. We still have a month to go, but you can expect that starting January one, the show will continue to roll out every single day next year, we're not changing that. And it will still be short because I respect your time. We're gonna stick with that 10 minutes maximum every day.
Some episodes may actually be considerably shorter. But now in addition to the stories, which we'll still have just not as frequently, probably more like twice a week with those, there's gonna be a lot of that listener interaction, question and answer updates from people as we work with listeners throughout the year on their projects. So if you've got an Etsy shop, if you've got a website you're starting a service or product, fulfillment by Amazon, whatever it is, I would love to hear about it. In many cases, I'd love to share it with our community, give you a shout out for your Instagram or your website or whatever you're doing. So there will be numerous ways to participate.
I'll just tell you one right now, if you go to sidehustleschool.com/question, or if you just look at the website sidehustleschool.com at the top now, there's a little button that says ask Chris, you can go and begin the process of asking your question. We'll get some information from you. And then my Side Hustle School sidekick, Jed, will follow up showing you how to make a little recording for us. So if you wanna be part of some of the first questions and updates that go out starting in January, go ahead and do that now, sidehustleschool.com/question, because of course we're working on this throughout the holidays as the new year approaches so that everything is ready to go. Okay, I'll tell you more as we get closer and then January one will begin that all new adventure.
I really wanna invite you to just get more active as part of your 2020 goals. If you've been listening for a while, I wanna help you go to the next level. Thank you again for being part of my world and allowing me to be part of yours. I really do believe the best is yet to come. All right, let's now move to that promised audio update.
This one features Callie. And before that, we have a message from our sponsor. I really appreciate them allowing the show to be free to you. By the way, that's gonna continue as well, completely free. So message from our sponsor and then the update from Callie.
[Music]
Hey, this is Callie from Cincinnati, Ohio. My side hustle was my podcast, "The Gathiest Manifesto." Was featured on episode number 432 and a lot has happened since then. I rebranded my show, it's now called Queersplaining. When I started, I was very focused on the conversation about religion and its interactions with the LGBTQ community. But over time, my interests shifted to talking more broadly about LGBTQ issues.
I rebranded at the beginning of this year and I couldn't be happier with my decision. And my podcast isn't even actually a side hustle anymore. I got laid off from my day job at the call center back in February and I went all in with Patreon for my podcast and producing for other shows. I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but for now, I'm paying the bills with podcasting, living the dream. If I could give anyone advice on podcasting or pursuing something creative as a way to maybe pay the bills one day, it'd be to just pay close attention to the things you can't stop thinking about.
What keeps you up at night? That's the thing you wanna make. That's the thing you wanna do. At this point, I just wanna continue to grow my own show and I'm interested in getting into the world of launching brand new podcasts from scratch, taking people from start to finish and teaching them what I've learned. Podcasting has changed my life in so many amazing ways and I want other people to get what I've gotten from it.
Thanks, friends. - Hey, thank you so much for that update, Callie. And I have a note here that Callie prefers they/them pronouns. So I'll do my best to honor that. Congrats on the big changes, living the dream indeed.
And I also appreciate the honesty as well. Being able to pay your bills is great. A lot of our listeners would be very happy with that. Not every business is gonna make a ton of money right off the bat. But again, the fact that you're able to do this is fantastic.
I also really respect people who are passionate about what they do. Maybe in some ways that's why I like making the show. That's why I was figuring out, okay, what do we do next? How can we continue but keep it fresh? And I think that really comes through in Callie's update.
Pay attention to the things you can't stop thinking about. I say that often too. It's a guiding principle for me. It's actually what has inspired a lot of different projects that I've done, including going back to visiting every country in the world. I just couldn't stop thinking about it.
So finally I decided to do it. All right, everyone, you can follow along with Callie at queersplaining.com or support them at patreon.com/queersplaining. We'll link that up in the notes. [Music]
Okay, since I already talked about the show a good bit in the beginning, I don't wanna be overly self-referential. So I'll have an abbreviated sign off for you today.
But I do wanna say in addition to you, our listeners and our sponsors, I do wanna say I appreciate the folks who work on this program in addition to appreciating you, the listener and our sponsors. Some of those people include producer Chuck Reed, community liaison, Jed Cheng, content manager, Tina Hart and the official show cat, Libby Gillibough. Perhaps some personnel changes, some new folks coming on board in 2020. I'll tell you all about that at some point. And of course we are part of the onward project curated by bestselling author Gretchen Rubin.
Big fan of Gretchen's. She's got some stuff she's working on too. It's gonna be a big year for her as well. So I'll look forward to following along. If you wanna do something to help us out, just takes a minute, give us a quick little rating and review and tell other people, show them in fact, how to subscribe to the show, especially as we go into the end of the year and get ready for the year of interaction.
If you know somebody who needs another source of income, they need to be part of this too. Send them to us, we'll take care of them. All right, I hope you're keeping your head about you in the holidays. I know it can be a crazy time. Be sure to take care of yourself and reach out to anybody you know who might be having a hard time.
Okay, episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time. Consider this a short daily investment in yourself. My name is Chris Guillebeau and this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
