This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School, friends, listeners, and community. Welcome to episode 1405. That would be 1,405. Welcome as well to Throwback Thursday/Where Are They Now, where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them.
One of my recent favorites of these episodes was 1391, a physician who makes plush toys in the shape of human organs to teach kids about the body. She calls it Nerd Bugs. You can check that out at episode 1391 or nerdbugs.com. And today in our latest feature, we'll hear from the co-founder of Other Life Lessons, two Canadians working together at an advertising agency and who were also both moms of young kids. They decided that children's books need to be able to deal with real issues, in a sensitive way, of course, but without skirting reality.
And that's the mission that serves as the foundation for their project, children's books about real life. We first featured them way back in episode 600. I was a big fan of their project at the time. Their first book or their one that kind of did well was called "Why Mommy Works." And they went on from there to develop titles about death. Sometimes people die, which of course is a hard thing to explain to kids, but it's very important.
So dealing with that in that sensitive way, but without skirting reality, I love that. And I was glad to see that they are still going strong. So what's happened since? Let's hear directly from the co-founder. Her name is Nikki, and I will be back at the end to wrap us up.
[Music]
My name is Nikki Syngarik. I'm from Toronto, Canada. And we were featured in episode 600. And my side hustle is Other Life Lessons, Inc. We create and publish honest children's books and digital tools to help parents start honest conversations with their children at an early age.
My business partner, Megan and I, were creative partners in advertising for about 10 years, me being the art director and Megan being the copywriter. And we actually came up with the idea when we were on "Mat Leave" together a few years back. We felt that the world needed more books for children that were honest and addressed topics that were not so typical like death, entitlement and resilience. Our goal was to help parents open the doors of communication at an early age. Since I had a graphic design background and work closely with print production, and she was a copywriter, we had the background experience to create our own brand, self-publish our own books the way that we wanted to do it.
So we developed the brand, the look, the design, the logo, the characters, the tone. And then we actually developed the book, the prototype, the finishes and the stock. And we work closely with the printers. We had full control of our brand. Parents' reactions at events that we're at are always so thankful.
We've had people cry because they've loved our books so much or they've impacted them in a way that they were thankful for. So it's a lot of positive feedback and a lot of thank yous. Since we've last been featured, we published and created another three books. The titles are "Sunshine" and "Screen Time," which is about screen time. "New Baby Sad Mommy," which is about postpartum depression.
And then "Don't Be a Quitter," which is all about resilience. We also did our first national TV news interview last fall. And we moved into developing more online digital tools and resources for parents. Before COVID, distribution was one of our main difficulties because we were self-published. We had limited distribution opportunities because we weren't partnered with a major publishing house.
After COVID, all our major events that were scheduled were canceled for 2020. We had to cancel our book tours that were scheduled throughout the spring and summer. So those were all canceled. We had lower sales because people are not purchasing like they used to due to the financial impact of COVID. And I guess the whole retail industry has suffered.
We are moms, so suddenly we were homeschooling our children and we didn't have the same amount of time we had before COVID to spend on our business. However, during this pandemic, we collaborated with a psychologist and created a free digital workbook called "From Fear to Hope," a parent's guide to supporting children's mental health during COVID-19 pandemic. And this was translated into four languages and generated thousands of downloads around the world. There are a lot of things now that help people produce their ideas and bring them to life. You can build websites now on your own without having to get someone to do it or design it.
There's templates. I would just say do your research because there's a lot more tools and resources available out there to bring sort of your passion or your idea to life. You don't necessarily have to have a background like Megan and I did. Everything is definitely possible to create it just because there's just so much now out there. - Thank you so much, Nikki.
I'm really glad to know that you and Megan are continuing to move forward with this business, producing new titles and such. Now, I remember in the original episode, we had some notes about how when they first put out their first title, "Why Mommy Works," they actually got some backlash to it. They got some negative comments. And at first they were kind of worried about that. And like, is this going to be common?
Are we gonna deal with this all the time? And they do sometimes still encounter people who feel polarized by these topics or think, oh, there shouldn't be children's books about these kinds of things. But they believe, and I do too, that these are needed topics. They have another book called "Life's Not Fair." And this, of course, new download that she mentioned "From Fear to Hope," which is all about helping parents help their children or understand mental health issues during the time of the pandemic. So this is real life.
And again, I believe in the side hustle model because you can do this in a way that is benefiting you as well. Like you can actually put forward this message that is ultimately positive, even if you're dealing with a difficult topic, it's going to help people. And of course you can profit as well. 2020 is our year of interaction. If you have a question, if you'd like to update us about your side hustle, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions.
You can also visit otherlifelessons.com to see some of these titles that I've mentioned and that Nikki mentioned, including that free download "From Fear to Hope." And last but not least, our show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1405. One, four, zero, five. Thank you for listening. Wherever you are in the world, take care of yourself. Be sure to do something for yourself and also something to check up on someone else.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
