This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up everybody? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Happy April 1st as well. This episode, I promise you, is no joke.
Neither is your financial freedom. It's important. It's something to work on, even if you're busy, even if you've got a lot of stuff going on. Just asking yourself, what's one small thing I can do? What's one small thing I can do today to invest in my future, right?
So that in the future, I'm not as stressed. I'm not as worried. I'm not as burdened. That's what it's all about with all these different stories and tips and kind of looking at people and saying, well, how have they been able to do it? Regular people with day jobs who are also busy, but yet also find a way to do, just as I said, invest in themselves.
So this is our Throwback Thursday segment, Where Are They Now? Where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them. Last week, we heard from a house plant expert who opens a retail location right before the pandemic. It's a store that has adapted to challenges and is now in full bloom. Today in our latest feature, we'll hear from a multilingual insurance agent who creates an online course on the art of translation.
Her name is Jennifer. What has happened since we first featured her? Well, let's hear it directly from her and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name is Jennifer Tomase. I live in Los Angeles, California, and my side hustle turnkey translator was featured on episode 830.
So to put it simply, my side hustle is that I help foreigners and immigrants get stuff done in English. My very first translation job was translating door placards for a government building in China. I had met Linda, a Chinese woman who was studying English and who was the daughter of an official while traveling. And her dad asked her to translate this and I got roped in. It didn't pay anything at all.
It was surprisingly difficult, but it made me realize that I love translation and that I could figure out how to do it as I went along. Over the years, my Chinese improved and I started taking on a number of gigs in different fields from law to medicine to anything that would come my way. But then when I moved back to LA, I found a brand new niche and that was helping Chinese immigrants get stuff done in English. So imagine you're in a foreign country. You speak the basics of a language, but then you're sent a crazy complicated insurance bill or you have to fill out a college application or you have to have an insurance dispute.
These are all things that are really hard for Americans speaking English, let alone people who don't speak English as their native language. And so how my side hustle started in my new side hustle was that I would help people figure out these things and help them do it. And originally this is something that I would do for people as favors, but then so many people were asking me but a friend suggested, "Why don't you just ask them to pay you for your time?" And I did and that's how that side hustle was born. So my business boomed for a while and I was able to scale by networking with companies who helped my clientele do other things. And then in 2016, things changed in America, right?
Immigration slowed dramatically and so did my business. Not only that, but other people had seen what I was doing, thought it was a great idea and started doing it too. And so there was a lot more competition. And so I pivoted and I created an online course where I teach people everything about monetizing their second language. The course is also called Turnkey Translator and it's actually gotten a lot of really positive feedback.
So having a second language is super common. And what most people don't realize, probably because it's so common, is that there's so much that you can do with it. Everything that happens in English happens in other languages and often between two languages. So interpretation, transcription, social media marketing, virtual assistant work, negotiations. These are all things that you can do, even if you're not a master in both languages or even if you don't have a degree or expertise, right?
It's all stuff that you can figure out as you go. Right now, the biggest challenge I'm facing is scaling up the course while working from home with two young kids. They have been home now for nine months and between my regular work and the kids and the dishes, at the end of the day, it's just really hard to find the energy to work on an online course. I think there were so many times where I didn't scale when I had the opportunity because I was nervous about would I make a mistake? Would I be perceived in a certain way?
Would people think that I'm a fool? And I wish that I had been more aggressive in the beginning and just said, look, if the side hustle works, if this course works, great. If it doesn't, that's okay. I can start something else. I can just go back to doing what I was doing before that or before that.
So the number one piece of advice I would give people is get started. Now, I also have some more specific advice because that is what you're really here for. I think get started is really generic but really important. So I would say my number one piece of advice for people who are interested in this line of work or in starting a similar side hustle is that you do not need to have the experience to get started. I had zero experience when I got started.
Admittedly, I did go later and get degrees in my field but when I started, I had no idea. The only thing that you really need to do is to be able to figure out how to solve a problem and do it well. So if you're thinking about it, ask yourself, is this something I can actually do? So for a translation, if you speak a second language, you can do it. For interpretation, if you speak a second language, you can do it and then do it.
You don't have to go land your first client because usually the client wants you to have some expertise. So rather than looking for a client and driving yourself crazy, create your own work samples. You can do a translation of something that exists. And the example I always give is, if you're applying for a translation job with Pepsi, translate a website from Coca-Cola and show it to them and say, hey, here's a translation I did of Coca-Cola's website, do you like it? I can do one for you too, right?
And then one, you build confidence in your actual skills and you also prove that you can do the work before you ever landed a job. [Music]
Thank you so much, Jennifer. Really appreciate that update. And I also admire Jennifer's creativity. You might say audacity.
When I say that, I say that in a complimentary way. I respect audacity. The idea of if you don't have experience, well, create experience and go and make something and show people, this is what I did. Just like she just explained about the Pepsi, Coca-Cola website, et cetera. I also appreciate her perspective on how, if you speak a second language, then you can do translation or interpretation.
I think in the past I've said something different about how it's not only enough to speak a second language because the art of translation, the art of interpretation is a skill of itself. But maybe the point is, you can acquire that skill if you have a second language or the third language in the first place. So good for her. Again, grateful to her. This was one of our most popular new features of 2020, Throwback Thursday.
So as you've heard now for several months, we're gonna keep it going this year as well. Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than 1,000 stories. I would encourage you to check out Jennifer's course at turnkeytranslator.com. Today's show notes, including links to that, anything else I mentioned are at sidehustleschool.com/15521552. As we begin a new month, I'll be cheering you on.
Remember, do one thing today to get closer to a goal you believe in. I hope you'll come back tomorrow as well. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
