This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Greetings, what's up? Welcome back. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. If you went to college or university or graduate school, sooner or later, you had to declare a major.
My story about this is at first, I thought I'd be good at accounting. I realized pretty quickly, I was terrible at accounting. That dream lasted about two semesters, which was probably one and a half semesters too long. But then I discovered sociology. And I actually really liked it.
It was fascinating to learn about the interactions of people and groups, how societies and communities are formed. Now, I didn't really know what I was gonna do with it. It was just interesting. And I certainly didn't know at the time that years later, basically two decades later, I'd be working with groups and building online and offline communities, often reminded of some of those things that I studied long ago. So for me, it really does feel relevant to what I do.
It just took a while to get there. And I was thinking about that as I was writing the notes for today's story. It's about a guy who had a double major in English and chemistry. And back then he thought, wouldn't it be cool if somehow I could find a job that combined writing with chemistry? But he never expected it to actually happen.
I'll tell you the whole story right after this. [Music]
After earning an undergraduate degree in chemistry, James Aschenhurst spent a short spell in graduate school, but he didn't much care for it. The best part was leaving to go on a six month trip to the Middle East. When he got back home, he started applying for jobs, but nothing came of it. Frustrated with his situation and still having a bit of savings, he moved to Montreal to spend the summer.
He didn't know anyone there and he didn't have a job. So for those two or three months, he lived like a hermit. He could do whatever he wanted as long as it didn't cost a lot of money. So he started paying attention to how he liked to entertain himself. It turned out he spent a lot of time going to the library and doing the problems in organic chemistry textbooks.
It occurred to him, he should probably spend some time developing the skill because he enjoyed it and was good at it. He joined a lab at the local university, ended up getting a PhD in organic chemistry and then did a postdoc at MIT. At this point in our story, James Aschenhurst was on track to get a position in industry or academia, but the 2008 economic recession arrived and his job applications went nowhere. So he did another postdoc and he lived in Israel. Then he tried starting a business that also went nowhere.
So once again, he returned to the local library, spending more time writing out problems in notebooks. That's when he came up with the idea of tutoring organic chemistry online. This was 2010 and nobody was doing it then. In fact, not only was no one doing it, most people thought it was a pretty bad idea. People close to James, even some friends and family members said things like, who would ever want to be tutored online?
That doesn't make any sense. Well, thankfully James ignored them. Over the next few years, he was able to earn a good living doing online tutoring, which of course is great, but that's not really what our story is about here. The online tutoring was basically like a day job. It was a good day job, it was something he enjoyed, but in his free hours, he also worked on a related project, a free WordPress blog he'd created on organic chemistry.
He wrote articles and then used those articles to get search traffic. Two things happened next. First, over time, the blog was getting enough traffic that requests for tutoring came streaming in without him having to seek anyone out. So that was great. He now had this inbound source of business and could focus all of his work time on either tutoring or creating.
But then even better, after talking to enough students through thousands of hours of tutoring, James had a firm grasp on their common struggles as well as the unmet needs in the market. That's when he started creating digital products, writing e-books and developing a paid membership site for that free blog. His first guide was designed to help students remember the proper order and sequence for the reagents in organic chemistry. Now I know nothing about chemistry, so James told me to think of reagents like ingredients in a kitchen. You might have a spice rack in your kitchen.
That spice rack has oregano, basil, cinnamon, garlic, et cetera. Well, to cook properly, you have to know when to use those ingredients. And the same is true with the reagents in organic chemistry. So he created this very basic guide. It was a 68-page PDF.
He didn't even have a real email list at that point. He just had the names of 100 people who had signed up for updates through WordPress. So he sent an email to them. Out of 100 people, 10 of them purchased the guide. He said that opened his eyes to the potential and possibilities of this model.
After that, everything was fairly straightforward. He began to make different study guides for each course or topic. He'd make sure he understood the problems that students had. Then he'd create solutions for them in these guides available for purchase on his website. He got better at writing as he went along.
He got better at compiling the products. So the finished guides were more and more helpful to students. He built out this process slowly, organically, no pun intended. And over time, more and more people bought them. James is now 42 years old.
He has two young kids at home, and he speaks about his work as an oasis of calm. He used to work from home, but once the youngest child arrived, he began renting a small office at a co-working space. And he talks about being surprised. He's surprised first that he can make a living writing. That double major in English and chemistry he tried for a while worked out.
He gets to write and think about a subject he loves, and he doesn't have to answer to anyone except his readers. He's also surprised by the reports he receives from his students and readers telling him that they wouldn't have passed the course or wouldn't have gotten an A if it weren't for his website. He's also surprised that he can earn money while he sleeps. He can go away on vacation for several days. Meanwhile, that little website that he had started as a free WordPress blog, masterorganicchemistry.com, continues to grow.
Last month, the site was the number 10 most visited chemistry website in the world with more than 780,000 visitors and more than 1.2 million page views. Revenue is on pace for about 10% annual growth. It is a healthy six figure source of income. And indeed, much of that income arrives while James is asleep. So looking back, he is grateful for the forks in the road that led him to where he is now.
He was glad he wasn't able to get a job at first, moving overseas, traveling in the Middle East, and then having that summer where he lived as a hermit. It really allowed him to learn more about himself. And then later, after he had his PhD, he's glad that the job market was tight then too, because then he started exploring this world of online tutoring. And he was essentially a pioneer in that field. So he's really glad.
He didn't listen to all those people who said, that won't work, nobody's ever gonna want that. Sometimes in life, when you explore your curiosity and you're willing to try things that you don't know if they're gonna work or not, you're just kind of experimenting, which of course is what the world of side hustles is all about. That's when you make your greatest discoveries. And it was walking that path, making those deliberate choices that led James to this tremendous success. [Music]
Well, I don't know about you, but I thought this story is a great example of not just following a dream, but following the right kind of dream and connecting that dream to the aspirations and the needs of other people.
So whatever your dream is, whatever your aspirations are, I hope this story gets you thinking. And as always, I hope it gets you taking action too, not just being inspired, not just saying like, wow, that's great, but what is waiting out there for me to discover? What will my side hustle be? Or even my livelihood one day? How will I find that thing or discover it or forge it?
How will I make it my reality? Thank you for listening. As always, I am cheering you on. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
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