This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Do you know that old question about how, if you could go back in time and talk to your younger self, what would you tell them? It's always interesting to hear people's answers to that question. And I heard one recently that I really thought was quite interesting. It was one I had never heard before. Somebody said, if I could go back in time and give one piece of advice to my younger self, it would be to tell myself, my younger self, that is, to take better notes or to learn to take better notes.
This is from somebody who is a doctor and also really interested in research and learning. And I was like, man, that's a great answer. Like, isn't that so interesting? Like improving your note-taking skill, specifically your knowledge retention skill, because we all go through life learning things that we then promptly forget, you know, for the most part, at least a lot of us. Most of us don't have the knowledge retention of someone like Bill Gates.
I saw a documentary on him recently where they were like, Bill Gates has 90%, you know, memory recall. He can read a dense textbook and he will remember 90% of the information in it. I think a lot of us were like, man, I'd be happy with 20%, you know? So anyway, being able to retain what you've learned and then recall it later, whenever you need it, is a hugely valuable skill. Note-taking is a key part of it.
So today's caller hopes to monetize his ability to help people learn. Intriguing idea for sure. What might be the best opportunity? So that's what we're gonna talk about. His name is Craig.
His question's coming up after this message from our sponsor. Don't go anywhere, take some notes. [Music]
Hey Chris, this is Craig from San Antonio and I've been listening to the show since season two. Thanks for all the helpful advice. I've spent a lot of time studying the most effective way to take notes, which a lot of people really have no idea about.
This is incredibly helpful for students, test takers, or really anyone who wants to better retain what they learn. What I'm missing is the business model. How can I profit from what I think of as a highly valuable yet underappreciated skill? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. [Music]
Craig, thank you for the call.
No doubt this is a big market these days. I guess it's always been a big market 'cause it's always been a problem. It's always been something that people need to improve upon. What I mean when I say these days or recently, I call this whole kind of interest in this topic productivity 2.0 because the first wave of productivity, at least in terms of its popularization, was all about getting things done. And that phrase of course comes from or became a popular book and method by David Allen, but even just the broader concept of how do I get all the things done that I want to do?
How do I keep up with projects and tasks that are in my head or maybe they're written down or maybe they're in an app somewhere, but how do I organize that? That was the first wave. And the second wave was all about knowledge retention and recall. So this is an ideal information product or online course. I mean, there are a lot of information products in online courses.
There's certainly room for more. Learning how to learn is the number one course on Coursera. It has millions of participants. You can actually go through this course for free or I think you can pay $50 per certificate. So lots of interest, what to do, how can Craig transfer his ability, how can he take advantage of more and more people interested in this at the same time that he has developed his skill in it?
Some next steps. Number one, jump into that community, right? Because it is a whole community. See what other people are doing. Like so many topics, most people who have monetized, they're usually sharing some kind of content freely while also selling a course of some kind.
That's the classic freemium model. I would say also the popularity of journals, so many kinds, which we've talked about here on the show. I'm like, how can there be so many specialized journals, but yet apparently there are people keep buying them. I think this also connects to this whole productivity 2.0 thing. They're probably podcasters working in this field as well.
So I would just immerse myself and make sure I knew who are the personalities, who are the thought leaders, what is the language and vocabulary that's being used, what are the trends, et cetera. Secondly, there are also a lot of tools, apps and digital aids. So I would want to familiarize myself with that and also as part of it, ask myself, is there something I could create? For example, something that helps with spaced repetition. That's an important concept in this whole conversation around productivity 2.0 or learning how to learn.
Spaced repetition historically has been things like flashcards. So now there are various digital versions of those. So depending on Craig's technical skills, there might or might not be a good option there. But whatever happens next, we need to go from a really big, although highly relevant topic into the specific solution that Craig designs and offers. So in this situation, what I would encourage you to do, if you're in a similar situation, I would encourage you to solve one part of the problem for one of the groups.
For example, student note takers, like he mentioned, for example. Now this really could be relevant to so many people, but if you're just focusing on student note takers, we had a story long ago about a guy who created this memorization system to help medical students learn parts of the anatomy. And this became passive income that, you know, he made five or $600 a month from years into the future with no updates whatsoever. So that's a good example of like, you know, one part of the problem for one specific subset, one specific small group. That's the way that I would approach this challenge.
I don't know exactly what Craig should do, but I think this is the thought process you follow to come to answer that question specifically, whether it's him in this topic or you in this topic, or you in some other topic, whatever it is. Whatever develops, I look forward to hearing what happens next. I've been working on my own note-taking abilities as well. So it's fun to have this kind of synergy come along. Listeners, if you have a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions.
We'll be featuring them throughout the year, along with updates. We'll hear what happens with various product launches, courses, apps, maybe some other completely different idea, journals, let's not forget journals, whatever it is. Anyway, much more to come, and I'm so glad you're part of it. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
