This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, hey, what's up? Welcome to a brand new week, episode 1584 of Side Hustle School for you here. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host. I'm so glad you're out there. I hope you do something this week to get closer toward a goal of freedom and independence.
Even if you love your job, even if you have no plans on becoming a capital E entrepreneur, we can all use extra income, not just money, but the security that comes from having more than one source of income, which is what this podcast is all about. And today we're gonna go back in time. Well, not quite back in time. It's not a throwback Thursday episode. We're gonna talk about something that is pretty retro, or something that is at least thought of as being kind of retro or old school.
I was making a list here of like vintage t-shirts, typewriter poems, and vinyl records, all these things that have kind of come back in terms of popularity. You've also got these weird mashups, right, of retro and present day culture. I saw this article recently of a Game Boy, like a Game Boy Advance. I had a Game Boy Advance when I was like, I don't know, 12 or 13 years old. And I saw this article about someone who had hacked a Game Boy Advance to mine Bitcoin.
And I was like, well, that is a mashup for sure. And it was a very slow miner, not very effective, but still pretty cool. Chess in particular has seen a tremendous pandemic time boost, with literally millions more people watching games online and playing chess with far away friends. There's a business battle being waged between chess.com and chess24.com, two rival platforms. Of course, you've got Twitch as well, which has emerged as a leading entertainment hub for this world.
But all that to say, in our question of the day, a Cytosol school listener enjoys playing Bridge. And as he mentioned, he's the youngest in his local club by several decades. Bridge has not yet joined the ranks of chess and vinyl records as being the thing that the cool kids do. So how can he get paid to pass on his love of the game to a new generation? My Bridge Club gets no respect.
That's what today's question is about. That question and my answer is coming up in just 30 seconds. Stay tuned. [Music]
Hi, Chris. This is Calvin.
And I've been listening to the show for a couple of years now. I'm 22, but I like playing Bridge until my local club had to stop meeting due to the pandemic. I was the youngest person by something like 40 years. It's time to make playing Bridge cool again. Unlike lots of other hobbies, including knitting or chess, it hasn't had a proper resurgence yet.
But if I have my way, it will. How can I increase awareness of how awesome it is as well as turn it into my side hustle where I get paid for it? Thanks. And looking forward to hearing your thoughts. [Music]
Calvin, what's up, man?
Thank you so much for the question. I always love it when somebody's doing something a little bit different or Calvin even begins his question by saying I'm 22, but I like playing Bridge. Like it's a contradiction, you know? But it kind of is because I don't really know a whole lot about Bridge and I'm much older than 22. So what do we do here?
I think this is similar to a question we had about learning shogi, also known as Japanese chess. And in that episode, I mentioned that the caller had two issues, basically. You've got the lack of awareness and possibly interest in the topic itself. A lot of younger people don't know much about Bridge and we can probably also say they're not that interested in it. So it's an evangelism question, like how can you evangelize the love of Bridge or whatever the topic is.
And then number two, how to profit from it, which is monetization. So sometimes it's good to kind of separate these a bit, even though hopefully eventually they'll come together. So what does Calvin want? Well, Calvin wants to make Bridge cool again. So he has to make it interesting somehow.
He has to be able to reach a lot of people. It sounds like an educational mission where, he goes and teaches about Bridge and proselytizes for it on a platform like YouTube or Twitch. I mean, that seems like the most logical approach. There's no guarantee it's gonna work, but it seems like that's what would have to happen. And maybe there's a dearth of new media educational resources for Bridge.
What I mean here by new media, like no doubt there are plenty of books, like historically, anybody who wanted to learn to play Bridge, 100 years ago or whenever they did that, they would read a book. But does the definitive Udemy course for Bridge exist or Coursera or some other platform, or to make it relevant for our other listeners who are interested in other topics, is there a definitive course for your topic? Your kind of strange or unusual thing, or let's just say less popular thing, lesser known thing, is there a definitive course for it? And perhaps the answer is there's not a demand for such a thing now. So that's why Calvin or anyone else in this situation needs to answer the question, do you think there will be a demand in the future?
Like, do you think there is an upcoming Bridge Renaissance? And if there is, well, that can be perfect because maybe Calvin is the one who's gonna provide that resource and be that authority, or at least provide one of the leading resources and be one of the authorities. If not, I think it's a harder road to go down. Not to say that there isn't some niche solution or product that Calvin could create, but you have to have the interest. So I think that's kind of what it comes down to.
Awareness and interest in the topic itself, evangelism, and then how to profit from it, monetization. So good luck, I totally respect the mission, Calvin. Make Bridge cool again. And listeners, if you have a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll be featuring them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects.
That's all for today, but I hope you'll come back tomorrow. You can subscribe in Apple Podcasts, in Spotify, or wherever you'd like to listen. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
