This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, welcome back. It's Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. I often mention the difference between a hobby and a side hustle. A hobby is something you just like to do.
A side hustle is something that actually makes money. Now it's totally fine to have a hobby, a passion, something you just do in life because you enjoy it. And not every hobby should be a side hustle. But quite often, something you do for fun or relaxation or to develop your creativity or just to kind of take a break from your job, one of those things can lead to the kinds of income generating projects that I talk about every day on the show. So even though not every hobby should be a hustle, it is usually worthwhile to at least consider those things when you're trying to figure out what to do for your project.
So today you'll hear a classic story of that. It's all about a social worker who turns a de-stressing hobby into a $2,000 a month side hustle. [Music]
Ruthie Youngman works as a licensed clinical social worker in Redlands, California. She also designs jewelry on the side. Having a side hustle isn't really a new thing for Ruthie.
As she puts it, "I always have more than one job." In fact, at one point in her life, she worked full-time as a psychiatric social worker, taught a class one day a week at a community college, worked in private practice on the weekends, and ran her jewelry business. Plus on top of all that, she's a wife and a mom of two. When she started the jewelry project, making money was a secondary goal. Ruthie is a lifelong crafter who began making jewelry as a hobby to cope with the stress of working in the mental health field. But when she heard about Etsy, she decided to open her own shop called Love Your Bling.
Before she knew it, she was making a few hundred dollars a month with zero marketing efforts. Now this was in the early days of the site when there was way less competition and social media wasn't what it is now. So that's probably why Ruthie didn't need to do much of her own promotion, at least at first. So aside from purchasing the materials to make the jewelry, she didn't really have any additional costs at all the first couple of years. When she got pregnant, Ruthie decided to see if she could turn this hustle into something bigger.
She spent more time creating and listing new pieces and soon found a niche in the wedding market, designing jewelry for bridesmaids and brides. This strategy was so successful for her that she was able to step down to part-time at work because she was making $2,000 to $3,000 a month from her Etsy shop. The only problem with this wedding-focused strategy is that she would have to make five to six sets of the exact same design so that an entire bridal party could match. After two years of doing this, she started to feel like a manufacturer, not an artist. So she deliberately scaled back a bit, which resulted in a decrease of income to an average of $2,000 a month, which is where she's at now.
And even though she's not making as much as she was at her peak, she says she's much happier, and this level of income still allows her to work part-time in her day job. Now, things have changed quite a bit since those early years when she didn't have to market herself. Ruthie says she now spends a fair amount of her side hustle time focused on marketing and promotion. Her biggest success was joining an invitation-only organization called the Artisan Group. Now, this organization focuses on introducing celebrities to handcrafted products.
And they were able to get Ruthie's jewelry into the hands of television stylists, and that eventually got her products on TV. Her jewelry has now been featured in seven network television shows, including Fuller House, Heart of Dixie, and The Vampire Diaries. And this was really exciting for Ruthie. In her words, seeing my designs on TV is one thing, but I never dreamed I would see my pieces on a show like Fuller House, which is a remake of one of my favorite shows when I was a kid. As far as social media goes, she's mostly on Instagram.
She likes how it allows her customers to get to know her better. She notes that social media can be a job in and of itself. And if you try to keep up with everything, it can definitely be all-consuming. So she just tries to do a couple of things well, which is usually the best social media strategy. Even with this changing dynamic, Ruthie loves this project so much, she's actually setting up two new Etsy shops to expand her jewelry empire and try something new.
[Music]
So let's go back to where we started. Not every hobby should be a hustle. You know, the opposite is also true. It's also okay to have a side hustle that's really just kind of something you do because you found a way to make it work and it brings you extra income. That's okay too.
Like in my life, I've had a lot of different projects. Not every single one has been thrilling, and that's all right. In the side hustle of workshops that I've been doing across the country, we've been talking about this concept of, if you see money lying under a rock, maybe you should pick it up, which basically means if you find an opportunity that's working, don't think too hard about it, especially when you're getting started and you're trying to find that first project or your second project. So not every hobby should be a hustle. Not every hustle needs to be a hobby, but all things being equal, like if you have a bunch of different ideas and you think more than one of them might work, why not try to accomplish both those goals?
Why not try to make money from something you enjoy? Because to a lot of people, that's the goal. And so that's why you should always ask yourself, not just what do I like to do? What are my hobbies? But also how can I learn to identify profitable ideas?
And if you've been around for a while, that's exactly what side hustle school is all about, trying to show you through example that ideas are everywhere. It really is all about learning this power of observation. And then of course, being willing to take action on it. Not just being inspired and saying, oh, that's awesome, or that's good for that person, but saying, wow, that's really cool. I wonder what I could learn and apply to myself.
I hope you have your own goals, of course, but that's my goal for you. If you regularly listen to the show, you kind of identify with the message. My goal is that you're gonna have a success story like this before the end of the year, if not sooner. And by the way, if you're already selling on Etsy, we're gonna start collecting stories of side hustle school listeners who are starting projects on the different platforms I talk about on the show. So at a certain point soon, I'll have a call to action for that.
I'll let you know where you can go to tell me about your Etsy store or whatever it is you're doing. But in the meantime, to find the show notes for today's episode, just come over to sidehustleschool.com/110110. As always, I thank you for listening. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]
