This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
For some reason, some people are still thinking it's not just business as usual out there. I don't know what's going on. I guess I missed a memo or something. Oh wait, that's right, the whole world stopped. I almost forgot about that.
We have all been trapped indoors, at least to varying degrees in different parts of the world. The constraints may be different depending on where you are, but I'm pretty sure you haven't missed this memo, right? Like this whole coronavirus COVID-19 memo, restaurants and stores are closed. In some places you get arrested or fined if you walk outdoors. Unemployment rates are higher than they've ever been, certainly in my lifetime, and I'm not that young, probably in your lifetime too, actually.
We've got millions of people working from home for the first time, in addition to millions of people who are unemployed or underemployed. So lots of people out there trying to figure stuff out. What does it all mean? Well, I've talked about it a few times, but like I said, for some reason, I keep getting questions about it. So, here to set us up for some further exploration is a long time listener from California.
We'll hear from him after this shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
Hey there, my name is Dane Wright from Laguna Beach, California, and I've actually been listening to Side Hustle School. I found you guys about three or four years ago, back when I was still at my nine to five, and since then I've actually started a Side Hustle, and it's taking off now. And right now I'm working in the life coaching space, helping young people become successful in life. And so my question now though, is with everything going on today, this crazy time, I don't even know what to call it, turbulent times, crazy times.
My question is, where are Side Hustles going? Like where do we think are gonna be the next opportunities coming up? I'm just curious because I know whenever there's times of shift and times of change, there's new opportunities. I just wanted to get your perspective to hear from your point of view, where you think some of the new opportunities for Side Hustles might be. Anyway, thank you so much and look forward to hearing back.
Bye. [Music]
Well, here's the thing, Dane. Thank you so much, first of all, for listening. Thanks for all you do. Having been out there for a couple of years now, that's awesome, always appreciate our long time listeners.
So, you know, here's the thing. New opportunities, yes. I've been talking a lot about this, how to adapt, how to respond, you know, what else can you do? What possibilities can you find in the time of uncertainty? And I did this whole YouTube series for 30 days, loosely based on that question.
And one of the things I kind of said from the beginning is, you know, understand that when this is over, whenever it is over, which, you know, there may not even be a point in which we can all say this is over, right? 'Cause there's so many different stages to it. But, you know, for the sake of this conversation, let's say when it's all over, we're not gonna go back to the normal that we knew before. We're gonna go to a different kind of normal. And some things I believe will have changed, you know, if not permanently, at least for a very long time.
And I think you're gonna see that in lots of industries, certainly in the world of remote work, you know, so many folks are not going to go back and work the same way they were working before. Certainly also in the industries of live events, in the travel and tourism industries, I think a lot less business travel is going to take place, even if it was 100% safe to do so, just because, you know, times have changed. We're in a bit of a recession. I don't know if we're formally in a recession or not, but it's pretty clear that the economy is not great. So all of those things are true.
And we could get into it in more detail. Like I've done before, we'll probably do so again. It's definitely a relevant topic. However, what I thought when I was listening to Dane's question is, let's be careful that we don't overstate as well, because yes, some stuff has changed, it will change, et cetera. At the same time, you know, Dane's business, you know, he says he's in the business of helping young people succeed at life.
Well, guess what? I think young people are still gonna need to succeed at life, you know, three months from now, six months from now, one year from now, whatever it is. So maybe Dane has to change some of his tactics. Maybe there's a different model. You know, he mentioned life coaching.
Like I often say, you're gonna be more successful if you're more specific, you know? So helping young people succeed at life, well, yes, young people need to do that, but you know, that's pretty broad. You know, I wonder what specific need, you know, Dane is solving or specific, you know, solution he's providing to a specific problem and so on. So, you know, I don't know exactly what to say about that. It's just that, you know, that's always going to be there.
A lot of stuff that you are doing, it's still relevant. You know, in some ways, this is just a pause. Like for some people, it's an opportunity to completely transform, to start something new. In other ways, this is a pause. And so if your business is not seeing the same demand as before, that's not really abnormal, because pretty much every business, or let's say at least a lot of businesses, I would say 70, 80% are experiencing that.
So you shouldn't necessarily think you have to reinvent everything. If you know that you're offering something good, if you know that it has helped people in the past and it will likely be relevant again, it may just be a matter of, okay, what can I do during this time so that I can keep paying my bills? And then before too much longer, hopefully, the desire or demand for that thing I was doing before is gonna cycle back around. So the answers to that is gonna be different depending on what you're doing and such, but that's just what I thought when I heard Dane say, well, he's trying to help young people. Well, there might be some new way to help them, but they're still gonna need help just like we all do.
So you may not need to change course completely. All right, that's my two cents for what it's worth. Thanks, Dane, and thanks to everybody else for listening. If you've got a question or comment or update of your own, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Love to know what you're working on, how you are adjusting, or how you are staying the course, whatever the case may be, whatever's best for you.
Let me know, we're gonna continue to feature lots of listener content throughout the year as people develop, launch, and grow their projects. All right, once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
