This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau. I have the privilege of bringing you these episodes every single day, as I have now done for 1246 days in a row. Welcome to all of our new listeners.
Shout out to all of our long-term listeners. We are approaching the end of May, 2020, for those listening in real time. I try to keep the show completely timeless and relevant, at least for the most part. So you can listen to a bunch of archival episodes or you can catch up if you're just joining. But as for where we are now, end of May, 2020, are you getting stuck trying to find the right idea?
Lots of people are always looking for ideas. It's one of my most frequently asked questions. I sometimes mention a couple of things you can do in that situation, but today's caller has already tried them and she's still feeling stuck. She's looking for what she calls her aha idea. How can she proceed when she really wants to move forward but isn't sure how?
That's what we're gonna talk about in this episode. I also wanna give a shout out to the podcast "Life Skills That Matter." I was recently interviewed by the host, Steven, and we had a good conversation. The whole point of his podcast is imagine building a business in alignment with your values, needs, and abilities. So I can get on board with that. Again, it's called "Life Skills That Matter." You can check it out wherever you listen to podcasts.
And let's jump in to this question. Help, I'm stuck trying to find my aha idea. First, I'd like to thank our sponsor for making all of this series completely free to you. [Music]
Hi, Chris, this is Monica from Los Angeles, California. Thanks for this show and sharing so much valuable information on starting a side hustle, especially in such an unsettling economy as the one we were currently facing during this pandemic.
My question is about starting that side hustle. I really know I want a side hustle but I can't find the side hustle to start. I think about it, I keep my eyes open for opportunities. I've inventoried my skills, but nothing has crossed my path that gives me that aha moment. The concept of do what you love and the money will follow is not a guarantee, but certainly you have to at least value or be interested in the thing about which you're hustling, right?
So my question is, what do you do when you really want a profitable side hustle but you just can't come up with that aha idea? Thanks, and I hope you and your team stay safe. Monica, what's up? Thank you for listening in Los Angeles. Hope all is well, hope you are keeping safe as well.
What a crazy year it has been for all of us. And also what a good time to start a side hustle. And that's not completely an abrupt segue, I think, because everyone realizes in this day and age we need to create more security for ourselves. So let's talk about this question. Here's the situation.
So Monica has done the skills inventory. And I talk about this in numerous episodes, making a list of your skills, focusing not just on your education and your vocation, your career experience, but also anything that you're good at. We could talk about it in more detail, but I've done it a couple of times. And the point is she's already done that and she still hasn't found the right idea. She's also learned about paying attention, focusing on that power of observation, which I've also talked about and that's not working, okay?
So I guess my first question is, does it need to be an aha idea? Do you have any idea at all is what I would say to Monica or anybody else in the situation? If you can't find the wonderful, glorious idea, can you just find the next idea or the first step towards any idea? So I agree that you have to value or be interested in the thing that you're doing, like she said, but couldn't part of your motivation be, I value this process and I'm interested in figuring this out, right? So it's not so much about the specific topic or the thing.
It's like, I value trying to figure out how to advance myself and invest in myself, the same way that I might learn anything else, the same way that I might, you know, listen to a podcast to learn something, the same way that I would learn a language or whatever else it is that I'm interested in studying, Photoshop, you know, it could be anything, right? So you're interested in figuring this out to improve yourself. Here's one example just from my life. A few years ago, actually many years ago now, it goes way, way back, probably 13 or 14 years, I was learning about online advertising, specifically relating to Google. So like all the little text ads you see on Google when you search for anything and that was very new back then.
And so when it was new, there's a whole industry of people like buying ads and trying to drive traffic to different websites and then profit from those websites when people clicked other ads, kind of a random little business, right? But I got really into it just because I tend to geek out and stuff like that, or at least I used to. And the key point is I wasn't passionate about little text boxes of ads that show up on Google, but the idea of, you know, spending a dollar and then making a dollar 20, you know, spending a $1 and making $1 and 20 cents was motivational. You know, I just love the idea of figuring it out. And I spent hours each day working on it, making these spreadsheets, experimenting.
And I was actually overseas for a lot of that time. So my hours didn't overlap with North America where most of the traffic came from. So every morning in my part of the world, I would wake up to see what happened during the busiest part of the day. Again, it was just a fun little thing that I did for a while. Wasn't super passionate about it, but it ended up paying my way through grad school so that I could go to, you know, get my master's degree without debt.
And I was passionate about that. So to come back to the point of the question, you know, you might think, well, that example itself is an aha idea. But the point is it wasn't anything life-changing or terribly exciting to most people. When you're exploring or trying something new, it often is exciting just because it's new. So if you don't know what else to do, what is the first step?
Is there some service you could offer? Is there something you could list up even on a third-party platform, like a starter platform? We've talked about many different times, you know, on the program. It's not the best long-term thing for most people, but is there something you can do on Fiverr right now? Is there something you can do on Upwork?
Is there, you know, something that you could sell? Of course you could make for Skillshare or, you know, one of those companies. There's a whole lot of them. Also, is there something you could resell? Reselling is often a great entry point, as I mentioned.
It could be something totally different, but whatever it is, like what is your next step? What is the next thing? Whether it's the aha thing, the perfect thing, even a really good thing, maybe even if it's just a decent thing or a mediocre thing, it will get you to the really good thing. So I guess I just always have a bias toward action. Of course, you want to be strategic.
You want to try to make the right decisions, et cetera. But when you are stuck, which is the problem we're facing here, when you are stuck, sometimes it's best to just move forward one way or another. So that's what I thought when I first heard Monica's question. Monica, take care of yourself. Let us know what happens.
We'd love to hear an update at some point. And listeners, if you have a question of your own or a problem, or if you are feeling stuck, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Let me know what's on your mind. We're going to keep digging into these things as the year goes on. And I look forward to sharing it with you.
Do come back tomorrow. There's one more episode coming up and probably the next day as well. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
