Wichita Native Gets Paid to Show Off His City

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

When his friends all leave town to move to cooler cities, an engineer creates an Instagram account to highlight local attractions in his hometown of Wichita, Kansas. Shout out to everybody in Wichita or Kansas or the Midwest or hey, wherever you are, I guess it doesn't matter wherever you are, I'm glad you're listening. Now today, this is the story of an Instagram account that earns money through local business advertising. It also grows into several other outlets, including a podcast, some other stuff I believe. So if you appreciate your hometown or your local area, you wanna show it some love, while also perhaps doing well for yourself, you might be able to learn something from this model.

And if not, you might still be interested in what this guy's doing. I always encourage you to listen to these different ideas and stories and not necessarily go out and do the same exact thing, but ask yourself, what can I learn? What can I take away? How can I apply the same power of observation, perhaps if the person used in the story to myself, in my life, in my circumstances, maybe it'll help me get a little bit closer to that goal that I have. So today's story is called, Wichita Native Gets Paid to Show Off His City.

Now the story is coming up after this message from our sponsor. [Music]

Landon Hustling and his wife, Candice, were high school sweethearts who grew up in Andover, a suburb of Wichita, Kansas. When it came time to go to college, the two decided to stay in town and attend Wichita State University. After graduation, the couple moved away for nine months. When they returned, they found that most of their college friends were gone.

Those friends went in search of a new place to start their lives because according to them, Wichita just wasn't cool enough. As a native, Landon believed that the city had much more to offer than what most people noticed. So he started an Instagram account called Wichita Life ICT to highlight all the fun attractions and places he enjoyed in the city. Now at first, he didn't tell anyone, not even Candice, about his new project. He wanted to wait until the account got bigger to share what he was doing.

But she knew that he hardly ever used his personal Instagram account. So when she saw him on his phone working on a post, she asked him about it and the secret was out. This was May of 2017 and Landon had somewhere around 3,000 followers. By November, that number grew to be just under 5,000. And at that point, local businesses wanted to pay Landon to advertise on the account.

All of a sudden, he was holding a check for $75 in exchange for a post from a local salon. Over the next year, he continued to post on Wichita Life ICT. He also began to repost other people's photos of Wichita, which was welcomed by many Instagram users now that he had a large following. He attributes the growth to his consistency in posting. He made it a point to post two to three times a day, every day.

While this only took him a few minutes, he says that most people are just not willing to do it. That's what made his account stand out. He also focused on engagement, which meant liking and commenting on other people's posts and asking questions on other accounts. Not only that, but Landon started messaging businesses directly to ask if they'd be open to advertising. All of these actions helped to grow the income further.

By June of 2018, Landon had close to 7,000 followers. He also had another idea of how to expand his platform. He loved listening to podcasts and wanted to create his own. So he downloaded the free editing app Audacity and got to work. He interviewed local business owners, musicians, and even professional athletes like football player Barry Sanders.

This was a great way to have fun, meet new people and expand the Wichita Life brand. As a bonus, he worked full-time as an engineer and says that having the podcast allowed him to break out of some of the antisocial tendencies surrounding his profession. A little over a year later, he decided to try earning some more money through ads on the podcast. He priced the ads at just $50 per episode. And when local businesses signed up, his only regret was not introducing ads to the podcast sooner.

Finally, after doing this for two and a half years, Landon began to run other people's Instagram accounts at the end of 2019. What was once a fun passion project to highlight the wonderful parts of his hometown is now a side hustle with three different income streams. Currently, about 50% of his earnings come from running other social media accounts. 35% is from advertising on the podcast. And the last 15% is from Instagram posts.

He says he can't wait to grow the Wichita Life brand even more. He just started an online talk show and is building a weekly newsletter, all while continuing to do Instagram and the podcast. Eventually, he'd love to start hosting some events. Landon says that even if he wasn't making money from Wichita Life, he would still be investing his time and energy into the platform. [Music]

Well, it's great that Landon loves his project so much, Wichita Life, that he would continue to invest his time and energy into it, even if he wasn't making money.

But of course, this is side hustle school, and I want people to be able to make money. Money isn't everything, but it's nice to be rewarded, and it's nice to build that financial security for yourself, acquire new skills, and put them to use. So he doesn't have to worry about investing his time and energy without getting paid, because he's able to do something he likes and get paid. Now, I also thought this was interesting about how when he got started at first, he didn't even tell Candace, his wife. He wanted to wait until the account got bigger.

So obviously, she saw him working on a post, and then she figured it out. But it reminds me of this model that I talk about from time to time, the dress rehearsal model, about how you don't have to share every detail about your side hustle, every idea you have with your friends and family. Like maybe once you get it going, then you're like, "Hey, look at this thing I've made," or "I am making." But that way, you can kind of have a little bit of freedom to experiment on your own without feeling the pressure of somebody checking up, or in case the project doesn't work out, you don't want to have to say over and over, "Oh, I tried this thing and it failed." So the idea is that you invite people to open a night, not necessarily to the dress rehearsal. And also, a quick tip from Landon. He said he uses a social media scheduler, does it once a week, and he plans several days worth of posts.

And that way, he doesn't actually have to think about it several times a day to do those two to three posts a day. All right, I will leave you with that today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1305 1,305. We are gonna keep rolling along.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you are subscribed. More is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From The Onward Project.