This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, what's up? Welcome to Sada School School. It is a brand new month here today. At least the day this episode is going out is the first day of June, episode 1248, 1248. If you are listening later, I hope you had a good first day of June.
I do my best to keep all this stuff timeless and relevant. Yet also I appreciate everybody who's listening in real time. It does feel like a community. I always enjoy getting lots of emails from folks, emails, social media, et cetera. So let us talk today about being your own superhero.
This is our weekly Monday classroom episode. So being your own superhero, maybe you didn't realize it, but actually you were born on an alien planet. You were bestowed with incredible abilities and the calling to help a lot of people. But you also had much to overcome along the way. There was a challenge.
There were a series of trials. There was, well, okay, let's just back up a little bit. What is an origin story? That's what we're talking about today, how to create a powerful origin story. All right, so what is an origin story?
Well, the phrase origin story comes from the world of comic books whose artists construct histories of how superheroes or villains, or sometimes they go back and forth, but how these mystical beings gain their powers and turn into the unique characters they're known for. A good origin story usually features a turning point or a moment of transformation in which the character evolves in a significant way or receives a mission he must complete. He, she, they, let me just be inclusive with my superheroes. So unless you are selling a completely generic product, and you probably shouldn't be, it's very difficult to sell a commodity, unless you're doing that, you're gonna be much more successful if you provide your customers with some kind of story, some kind of history about how your hustle came to be. People make purchasing decisions based on emotion.
We've talked about that a few times already in the classroom series. And a lot of times they want to feel an emotional connection with you. So yes, they are buying your product or service because of the benefit, because it's gonna make their life better. But having this emotional connection, having this strong origin story certainly doesn't hurt. And in fact, it can be a big help.
So like a comic book superhero, your side hustle needs a history. And whenever I review about pages on websites, I just did this YouTube series for 30 days in April and May, where I was looking at various websites. I'm still doing it whenever I go live on YouTube or elsewhere at other platforms. I always go and look at the about page on somebody's website. To me, that's the second most important page after your homepage.
And I often look closely at the story being told, like, what's this all about? Why does it matter? Why should I care? Why should somebody who doesn't know you care about your offer, your product, your service, that thing that you have put a lot of effort into? So conveniently, you're like, this sounds great, Chris, but how do I do it?
Well, that's what the classroom series is all about. And I'm gonna show you. There is a formula you can use to make this easy. And if you have the book "Side Hustle," "Side Hustle from Idea to Income in 27 Days," it's on day 10 in a simple fill-in-the-blank format. But if you don't have it, or if you don't have it with you, that's okay, because I'm gonna talk you through it.
I'm gonna explain how to use this formula to make an easy origin story. So there are a few different versions of this. I'll go through and give you a couple of examples. The first version is about something that you have always been interested in, okay? So basically the formula is, I've always been interested in topic X, whatever that is, that's your fill-in-the-blank.
So I decided to try, and then that's answer or solution Y, you fill-in-the-blank. I've always been interested in this thing. So I decided to try basically turning it into a product or a service, creating a solution for someone, et cetera. Last week, we did a throwback episode about Hoboken Girl, this woman in New Jersey who really loved her town and wanted to create this local resource, telling readers about activities, events, things to do, new restaurants, et cetera. So for her, it's like I've always been interested in things going on in my city.
So I decided to try creating this resource to share news, tips, shopping lists, whatever it was. Okay, so I've always been interested in this thing. So I decided to try action, okay? That's your first one. Second one is, I was frustrated by fill-in-the-blank and I knew there had to be a better way.
So I made, and here's your second fill-in-the-blank, to help other people with the same problem. Okay, so I was frustrated by something. I knew there had to be a better way. And so I made, here's your product or your service, your solution to help other people with the same problem. I was just working on a story that's gonna come out in a couple of weeks about this guy who was working in a resort town.
I think it was Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And he was responsible for hiring a lot of transient labor. And so every year, you'd have to hire 100 new people. And they kind of went through the same process over and over and it was very tedious. And he's like, there has to be a better way here, basically.
So he ended up creating a software solution for that, which I'll tell you more about in the story. But here you can say, using this formula, I was frustrated by the process of repeatedly hiring lots of people every season, every tourist season. I knew there had to be a better way. So I made my program to help other people with the same problem. Or in his case, it's a B2B business.
So I made this software program to help other businesses with the same problem. Now here's the third one you've got, I've always been interested in. You've got, I was frustrated by. And the third one is, I started this hustle because I noticed, fill in the blank, there didn't seem to be anybody else doing anything about it or the existing businesses were missing something important. So I made, and here's your solution.
Here's your product or service, okay? I started this hustle because I noticed something, there didn't seem to be anybody else doing anything about it or the existing solutions or answers weren't that great. So I made, here's my product or service. And to give you an example, with this one, last week we had the story of Natalie Andrew in Australia who created this practice around educating women about hypnobirth. I should say educating women and their partners, it's not just women, but specifically mothers, expectant mothers.
I started this hustle because I noticed that there was this practice that made my birthing process a lot easier and less stressful. And there didn't seem to be anybody else doing anything about it. So I went from just educating myself to doing a lot more research, getting certified, et cetera, and then offering this course to other people across Australia and maybe beyond now that it's virtual. So I started because I noticed this problem. Nobody else was doing anything about it.
So I decided to step up and here's what I made. So there you have three formulas. And of course you can get much more detailed. You can go into those backstories like the kryptonite thing, all kinds of stuff. But just to keep it really simple, even just having a reason, like a simple reason I decided to do this out of all the projects I could have done in the world, I chose this one because, like whatever the reason is, just having a reason is a good start.
Okay, so let's take a little break here, sponsor message. When we come back, I'm gonna give you a few other examples from recent side hustle school features along with your assignment for the week. [Music]
All right, so let's look at a few recent side hustle school features. Consider what their origin stories might be. And just a note, I will first summarize them in the way I might mention them to you, our listeners, which is a bit different than how they might mention their origin story to a potential customer.
But I'll explain that more in a moment. So first up, Oliver Aces. We're gonna have a throwback episode about him in three days. But if you don't remember, well, you probably don't remember 'cause we've had 1200 episodes. But Oliver is the Craigslist photographer.
He actually got his start when a friend of his asked him to shoot her wedding and he was nervous about it. So he wanted to get some experience. And he placed his ad on Craigslist and a whole lot of stuff happened after that. So we might say his origin story is, I was worried about messing up the photos for my friend's wedding. So I placed an ad on Craigslist offering my services as an affordable wedding photographer.
This led to me shooting more than 100 weddings and building a sustainable side business. And also as a side side note, a number of people have heard Oliver's story. It was one of the first ones we featured on the program. I actually wrote about it in the "Saddestle" book as well, I think. And a number of people have followed that model themselves and either contacted him for advice or just kind of gone off on their own to become their own Craigslist or something similar photographer.
It's been really interesting to see that. So kudos to him for leading the way and kudos to those who have followed as well. So that's Oliver. Yesterday's episode, 1247, Melissa Casara. When I read a book that promised to make screenwriting easy, I decided to give it a try.
I persevered and now three of my shows have premiered on "Lifetime." And you can hear that whole story in yesterday's episode, 1247. Let's see one more. Brooke Thomas, episode 1235. So for Brooke, she was a body worker and not able to practice during COVID-19. So she ended up putting a lot of emphasis on this project she'd been doing on the side, all about virtual meditation, a whole community of people doing virtual meditation.
So we might say her story is, shut out of my wellness practice during the pandemic. I went all in with my virtual meditation business and signed up $3,000 a month in new clients. Now here's a quick note. I alluded to this a moment ago. You probably want to make your origin story more about your customer than your success.
So I wrote those three examples based on our goals for side hustle school. So in the case of Brooke, for example, like if I'm telling her story, I want to inspire listeners. I want you to think, wow, that's really cool. I see $3,000 a month in a pretty short period of time doing this thing like virtual meditation on Zoom. How does that work?
So that's what I want to do. But when it comes to her business, it's probably more important to focus on the benefits that meditation provides, 'cause her customers don't necessarily care that she's making $3,000 a month from it, or at least that's not the important point. So she might say something like this, shut out of my wellness practice during the pandemic. I went all in with my virtual meditation community and helped hundreds of people find peace and connection in a difficult time. Okay, so you see the benefits there.
It is about her, it provides a reason, but it's also benefit focused for her potential customers. So sometimes just finding a reason, some reason at all, like why did you do this? Out of all the projects you could have started, why did you choose this one? That alone can be an origin story. Something is better than nothing.
Okay, so your assignment for the week is to add at least two relevant interesting facts to your origin story, whether you have an about page somewhere, or whether you share it in some other fashion. If you're just starting on a project, if you're just thinking about an idea, add at least two relevant interesting facts to that origin story. You can read notes for this in every classroom episode this year at sidehustleschool.com/classroom. And this has been episode 1248. So the notes for this one are at sidehustleschool.com/1248.
We've got a lot of stuff coming up, so be sure you're subscribed wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
