This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, what's up? Welcome back. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. Got a great new story for you today.
It's about someone who was laid off from her longterm career and used a side hustle to sustain herself and is actually building a bridge to a new future with that side hustle. Now listen, if you're out there and you've been laid off or otherwise lost your job or are just out of work, my sympathies to you, I don't presume to know what's best for you. Whatever it is, I certainly hope you find it. But I do know from much experience, from many conversations with people really all over the world from different walks of life, these times of transition, even though they're hard, very often they lead to something better on the other side. And so if that's your situation, my wish for you is that you do find something better on the other side.
And I also hope that something with side hustle school will help you do that. And before I tell you that story, all week long we're looking at side hustle failures as submitted by listeners. I've been learning a lot from your calls and emails. Let's keep this series rolling along. Listeners, what didn't work out?
- Hi Chris, my name is Sarah. I'm calling from Canada. So about seven years ago, my dad got cancer and I got obsessed with raw foods and decided to start my own business teaching raw foods. In the end, it was a side hustle and I was also working part time as well because I had a small baby at the time. And I ended up sinking a lot of money into it.
I went to California to get raw chef training. I was making a part time income and I was putting in nearly full time hours. But I'd worked myself into so much debt about $20,000 that I finally had to call it quits and go back to work full time. So fast forward to today, I've paid off all my debt. And I'm at this point trying to think of another side hustle, but with using your approach in mind, I'm putting in a really small amount at the beginning and working on the skills that I currently have.
Thank you so much. - Sarah, thank you very much for sharing that. I hope to see you this fall when I'm touring Canada along with the US and other places for the side hustle book tour. And I think you said it best, like your story well illustrates the difference in what you hear from traditional entrepreneurship education and the side hustle model. And when you went into debt to start that business, it's perfectly natural you did that because that's what everyone tells you to do.
Like you have to make the investment, it takes money to make money, et cetera. And that may be true for some businesses, but as you and most of the listeners know, it's not true for a lot of other businesses. And the side hustle lifestyle is about not quitting your job, not taking a lot of risk, et cetera, et cetera. But as you identified early on from your experience with your father, raw foods is a huge industry. So there definitely are a lot of opportunities there.
And I hope as you embrace the side hustle approach, you'll find something that works amazing for you. [Music]
Canada-based professor of broadcast journalism, Mindy Williamson, has always had the acting book as well as a knack for playing around with her voice. She remembers growing up in London, Ontario, where even as a child, she used her voice to imitate celebrities. She's also always wanted more control over her career and time. So after she was unexpectedly restructured, as she puts it, from a morning radio show job she had done for 20 years, she began to look for something new, flexible and fulfilling.
Mindy knew she loved telling stories. And she felt that using your voice to tell a story could really bring it to life and make it pop. Having spent years in a radio studio and working on commercials, it seemed like a no-brainer for her to make voice acting her side hustle. Oh, and it's also no surprise that Mindy was willing to take the risk of jumping into something new. I love this habit of hers.
She has had her own version of a bucket list for years. And the way she applies this or lives it out is that each year she makes a commitment to learn something new and go somewhere she's never been. In past years, she's hiked mountains, learned to fly airplanes. This year she's going to Ireland and Scotland and taking singing lessons. And something else was checked off her list recently.
She officially started her own business called Speaking Matters with Mindy Williamson. She invested about $2,000 upfront, $500 for soundproofing material, $650 for a good microphone, and about $1,000 for various memberships, including one to voices.com, which is an online marketplace for voice actors. She then hired a local company to build and maintain her website. Mindy knew nothing about running a company, but she surrounded herself with people who had done it before. She asked lots of questions.
And she also asked for referrals from each new client, as well as a lot of people she had worked with over the years in that long career with the radio show. Mindy now provides the voice for TV and radio commercials, e-learning projects, telephone services, movie trailers, and audiobooks. She says it's different every day, which keeps it fun. And her fees range from $100 for a simple short project to more than $5,000 for long form narration. She also offers private voice coaching for $150 an hour, as well as workshop coaching courses to improve speaking and presentation skills.
And those range from $250 to $2,500. Her profit from this hustle varies a bit month to month. She says weathering the ebb and flow has been one of the most challenging aspects of it, but on average she's earned between $1,200 and $2,500 monthly, sometimes as much as $5,000. The time that she spends on it also varies. When she has lots of projects, she spends about four hours a day doing voiceover.
When the work is light, it's more like one hour a day. She also teaches part-time for a college journalism and radio broadcast program, and is on a short-term contract with a different morning radio show. Going forward, she wants to more efficiently grow the business so that she can rely on it for her full-time income. Already though, Mindy says that becoming a voice actor has changed her life. As long as she has an internet connection, the side business allows her to work from anywhere.
She's been able to spend time in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, and London, and to work as much or as little as she wants, which allows her to focus on what really matters most to her. [Music]
As I was working on Mindy's story, I was picking up on this concept of being able to work from anywhere, which is something I've talked a lot about in some of my other work. And you know this concept of being a digital nomad has gotten a lot of attention. I don't actually use that term very often. I think it's a bit trite and overused.
I think there's a lot of skepticism about it. And I also think people tend to have a stereotype or an image in mind when they hear that term. And a lot of us tend to think of like a young male backpacker who moves to Southeast Asia running his internet business. And there certainly are a lot of people who do that. But there are also a lot of other people who are not necessarily young male backpackers, single, et cetera, who are also kind of establishing their right to location independence.
And when I say location independence, it just simply refers to the ability to do your work from wherever you are. Doesn't necessarily mean you put everything into a suitcase and you leave home and never go back. You might not actually wanna travel that much at all. But for me, the greatest thing about building location independent work is that you can travel, you do have the option, you have the opportunity to relocate. You're not tied down to a physical location.
And a lot of people, including myself, find that to be a tremendous benefit and something that's definitely worth working toward. And how about you? Is that something that you're working toward? I would love to know. Send me a note on Twitter @chrisguillebeau or I'm also on Instagram at 193 countries, 193 countries, or of course, drop by the website.
It's sidehustleschool.com/160 for today's show notes. Thank you as always for listening. I hope you have a wonderful day wherever you are. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]
