This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up? Good morning, afternoon or evening, whatever the case may be, wherever you are in the world. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to Side Hustle School, the podcast that's all about helping you create freedom through the form of a money-making project. And you can do this without quitting your job, without taking a lot of risk, without going into debt.
Every day, I'm bringing you different case studies, ideas, questions and answers. Basically, a full-on exploration into this whole world in a brief period of time, because I respect your time. You're busy, right? You're doing stuff. Okay, today is Throwback Thursday, our weekly segment, where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them.
Now, last week we heard from a freelance romance novel editor who has gone full-time. Before that, a hydroponic indoor gardening system, a sex-positive blogger who reviews adult toys, and the co-inventor of a device that allows public restroom users to open the door with their foot, all in a month's work. What can I say? You guys are doing some interesting things out there. Now, today in our latest feature, we'll hear from Nathan Rossidi, first featured back in episode 991.
Nathan is an adjunct professor and data scientist who developed a product called Strata Scratch. It helps other data scientists prepare for interviews at tech companies. So what's happened since we first featured him, what was that, I don't know, 700 days ago? Let's hear from Nathan, and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name is Nathan.
I am from the San Francisco Bay Area. My side hustle is called Strata Scratch, and I am from episode 991. So Strata Scratch is a platform that helps data scientists prepare for their interviews using real questions from the top companies. So since the show, we've actually grown to about 3,000 users a month. So over the course of just the last, just the beginning of this year, we've already onboarded over 20,000 users.
So it's really just grown, and I wouldn't say, you know, it's been like a hockey stick growth. It's really just consistently grown 15 to 20% month over month. I have really like no idea why, like what exactly caused that to just kind of like, you know, go up. But I think it has to do really with just finally reaching a critical mass in terms of just exposure and awareness to some of the marketing content, the blogs that I create and word of mouth. So I constantly see Strata Scratch being mentioned on like LinkedIn, various like Reddit communities and other communities as like the go-to resource to prepare for interviews.
The biggest thing that has changed, I think, is just the focus on marketing that I started to put into it that I didn't when I was last on the podcast. And I didn't really, you know, know I had to do that 'cause I'm not a marketer. I had just no idea, right? I'm just more of a technical guy. And so just having that realization really kicked things off for me.
And then I went more into just SEO strategy and blogging. And I put a lot of focus on that. And so what was really challenging about that was it's sort of a black box, right? You don't really know what articles to write, what's gonna really go viral, what people are gonna really like. And I think I kind of sucked in the first few months trying to figure that out.
I wrote a few things and then I had hired like other writers to kind of like write a few things also. What I noticed was that all the articles were just more like SEO optimized. And when I looked at that, like I wouldn't even read it myself, right? I'm a data scientist trying to prepare for an interview and I wouldn't even read the stuff that was being put out. So what I decided to do was just write articles, like forget about SEO, just write articles that I would wanna read.
And what came out of that was just like long form articles, like in-depth research articles, either about companies that are hiring data scientists, like my favorite companies that I track that I wanna work at or like what the position is about, what sort of things you need to know and go really deep in the technical aspect of things. And I just kept like writing that a month over a month. And I think that's kind of when I started to see like kind of an increase in visitors and then just an increase in sales after that. So my advice for those that are in the thick of things right now is just to focus on one or two things that they can do that they think might move the business forward. And you don't need to know whether or not that's gonna actually work, but I think if you just focus and spread yourself too thin on various activities, you're not gonna do any of them well, and it's never gonna hit the critical mass it needs to hit for you to get traction with your business.
So I would say focus on one or two things and then iterate on that after a few months. [Music]
Awesome, thank you so much, Nathan. Really appreciate that. Focus on one or two things you can do that you think are gonna move the business forward. That's his advice for you.
You don't need to know whether or not they're going to work, just focus and don't spread yourself too thin and then iterate on that after a couple of months. Sounds good to me, I like that. Check out Nathan's website at stratuscratch.com. That's strata, S-T-R-A-T-A, scratch.com, or follow him on social @stratuscratch. Now this was one of our most popular new features of 2020, along with Failure Friday, which we just launched a few months ago.
So as you've heard, 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. If you have a question, if you have an update for us as well, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you so much for joining me today. This has been episode 1664.
I hope you will subscribe and follow and come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
