This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey, what's up my friends? Welcome to Side Hustle School. I'm so glad you're here. My name is Chris Guillebeau. We've been having so many listener questions come in about all sorts of different topics from a global community of awesome people.
Awesome people such as yourself. And today we're gonna hear from an Australian listener who wants to start a consulting biz to help improve dating profiles. This is a desperate need for so many around the world as we know. Now, how can she automate her scheduling process to avoid a lot of back and forth? This is one of those classic problems in coaching, consulting, anything where you're required to make various appointments and such.
And the answer to her question, I was working on this episode, but before I could get very far, my side hustle sidekick came along, Jed Chang. And he said, I heard her question and I know exactly how to do this. So I actually turned to him for some resources and helping this listener figure out how to do her booking payment, all that kind of stuff. So we're gonna talk about that in this question. Also, if you'd like to check out Jed's online Italian cooking class, which we featured in episode 1464, just go to cookingintuscany.cc/hustle.
That is a free resource as well. He does it every couple of months or so. So if you'd like to get on the list for that, just go to cookingintuscany.cc/hustle. All right, how to automate an online dating profile consulting biz, that's coming up in just 30 seconds. First, a quick message from our sponsor.
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Hey Chris, this is Sarah from Melbourne, Australia. I'm a year long listener and a first time caller. I write for Australia's leading men's lifestyle publisher. And my content on dating and dating apps gets really great feedback. Some apps have even approached us for sponsored posts with really great results.
I'm thinking about starting a side hustle, consulting, swiping singles to improve their dating app profiles. My question is, with the luck of starting now with so many incredible resources out there, how can I best automate a booking site where clients can book, pay and upload files, like screenshots of their current dating app profiles, with minimal input from me. So all I have to do is prepare my content and show up. Thanks and keep up the incredible work. [Music]
Sarah, thank you so much for the question.
Wow, I miss Australia so much. I used to visit Australia at least once a year, usually twice a year. One of my favorite countries in the world, if not my single favorite country. So hopefully I'll be able to do that again at some point. But enough about me, let's talk about you.
So one of the wonders of modern technology is that these kinds of things can indeed be automated and simplified. It's much, much easier than it used to be. And so Jed here, my side hustle sidekick, he's got some specific recommendations. So he sent me this note that said, "Sarah could simply collect direct payments "through an online form platform, "like type form or form stack." And that would easily automate what she's trying to do, that form, the intake form, the payment, the file uploads. It would handle exactly what she's looking for all in one single tool.
So those resources are again, typeform, typeform.com or formstack, formstack.com. You can usually try these things out for free on a limited basis. And by the way, we don't have any affiliation with them, just passing on a recommendation. You can usually try them out for free. Of course you have to pay for it eventually on a recurring payment plan, but that's just how it works these days.
It's often a low cost when you're getting started, typically $20 a month or less. And presumably a single consultation is going to cover that and more. Now another service that can be helpful is Zapier, zapier.com. They actually have been a sponsor of the podcast in the past, but not currently. And what they do is they connect multiple online tools so that they all automagically work together.
So if you have multiple tools or resources, you might wanna take a look at that, but you're probably gonna be able to do quite a bit with just typeform or formstack or something similar. Now I do have a tip of my own that I want to add to Jed's comments about those two resources. My suggestion is that you collect the payment first and then have your customers upload the file or complete whatever questionnaires you have. You can do all this on a single page, but sometimes people get stuck on that process of uploading screenshots or, you know, answering some detailed questions. And so if they haven't paid, they might just give up.
But if they have already paid, then they're more likely to stick with it. So you don't want them to give up before they make that decision to commit. So basically have a two page order form. The first page is just some really basic information in their payment. And then on the second page, that's when they upload the file, answer detailed questions, whatever else you need from them.
Those resources allow you to do all those things. So Sarah, good luck. Let us know if you're able to improve those dating profiles. We will be cheering you on. Listeners, if you've got a question of your own, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions.
Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being out there. You're amazing. I hope you come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
