This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, greetings. This is Chris Guillebeau Foresight Hustle School, here with the weekly recap for you. We have just finished week number 25, almost halfway through the year. And at the time I'm recording this, it's just over two weeks to go until WDS, also known as the World Domination Summit. That is an event I've been hosting in Portland, Oregon for the past six, now seven years.
We have a lot of amazing people coming to town from all over the world, perhaps including some side hustle school listeners. Now, if you're curious about WDS, you can just go to worlddominationsummit.com to learn more about it. Our main event is sold out, but we have some academies, which are half-day workshops that are still available for registration. Those are at wds.fm/academies. And maybe I'll see you at one of them.
In other news, it is less than three months until this side hustle book comes out. Now, three months sounds like a long time, but it's really not considering all that needs to happen before then. I want to put an intention out into the world, or at least into this little world. Ever since I had my first book when I went to all 50 states and every province in Canada, I have really, really enjoyed going on book tour. It's been so great to connect with readers, hear their stories, have a shared conversation.
And I've been doing this all over the world, but I haven't done it in a while. And on the last book tour I had, I did about 30 cities, which was a lot of fun. But this time I'm thinking of doing something bigger. This is the year of the side hustle. And I have been thinking of going to 100 cities.
So this is my first time to say that publicly. I'm just kind of putting that intention out. There's nowhere to sign up yet. I don't have all the details, but I know it will start September 19th. And now I have to figure out how to do it.
So you can hold me accountable and see what happens with that. But hopefully I will see you somewhere in the world. And in today's recap, we've got two listener questions. I look back at a couple of things that we talked about this week and a brief look ahead to what's to come over the next few days. So let's hear those listener questions.
- Hi, my name is Audra For and I am starting up a project, hoping to turn it into a side hustle. My question is right now I'm in the development phase of the project and I'm not sure when I'll have an actual product to promote, but I want to know at what point in the life cycle of the side hustle should you start a website and start promoting to people and getting the word out? Is it too soon if you don't have the product ready to go? Thank you. - Audra, great question.
Thank you for listening. There are a couple of different ways to do that. But in general, I don't think it's good to wait throughout the entire development cycle before you have some kind of website or internet presence or however you're gonna eventually be sharing this project. I think it's usually better to kind of tease it out a bit, not necessarily as some kind of sophisticated marketing strategy, but just to recruit people who might be interested in it and might want to follow a bit of the development. And you can do that in a lot of detail.
You can just do that in a bit of detail. But generally speaking, I think it's better to have some overlap between that development phase you mentioned and whatever the ultimate promotion phase or distribution phase will be. I think people want to know what you're working on. So don't be afraid to tell them. [Music]
Hi, Chris.
My name is Darryl and like you said, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is even better. And I finally got an idea that I think I want to step out on and it's to write an e-guide book or an e-book. And the quick backstory is like I'm a vegan. I've been working for the last 18 years and my friends always ask me, what do I eat? I'm interested in becoming a vegan, but I find it so hard.
I don't know what to do. I don't know where to buy the food. So I want to put together a guide book of like how I live my daily life and the meals that I eat, how I prepare, and where I go grocery shopping. A lot of cool vegan restaurants in the city that you can buy food out of. You don't feel like cooking all the time.
So I just wanted to get some idea of like what platforms I can use, like how to go market it and publish it and you know how to go about writing an e-book 'cause I have no clue about this. So thank you so much for listening. It's like the school's dope. Keep doing it. Hey, Darryl, thank you for listening.
Thanks for your kind words. Really glad you're enjoying the show. So becoming vegan, well, yes, this is a potentially interesting topic to a lot of people. And as you pointed out, a lot of people have questions about it. They want to know if it's possible for them.
What do you eat for each meal? How to make sure you're taking care of your body? What are some good vegan meals that are also delicious, et cetera? And I think it's really helpful in a situation like this to think through all those kinds of questions. You've already identified a few of them, but you can actually create an outline for your guide based almost exclusively of questions like those.
And then of course the answers that you're gonna provide. Now, naturally there's a lot of other people who have done this in different ways. There are a lot of vegan resources out there, but that's okay. I just think it's helpful to find some kind of specificity or something about your guide that's gonna be different. So it could relate to your background, your experience, something specific about the kind of meals, how to be a traveling vegan, how to be vegan in the city, how to be vegan in the Midwest.
I'm not sure what it is, but something like that. I think it's gonna help you narrow it down a bit. And when it comes to actually putting that guide out there, couple of resources that make it easy. First one is E-Junkie. I don't use them anymore, but long ago I did.
It's basically a service that integrates with PayPal and allows you to deliver digital products to people. I think it's something like $10 a month. The other one is Gumroad, which I do use now. And both of these services are very intuitive. You don't have to have a tech background.
You can figure it out really quickly. And as I said, that will allow you to deliver the files to people once you have created that ebook. So good luck, it sounds fun. Please let us know what happens with it. [Music]
Now I did something a little bit different this week as I was reviewing the episodes we recorded the past six stories.
You know, I try to be somewhat intentional with the ordering of the stories, how we go from Monday to Saturday each week. But I also sometimes notice themes when I look back that are not entirely intentional. And out of the six stories from this past week, it's really interesting because three of them fit three very different goals that people tend to have for their side hustles. So I'm just gonna look briefly at episode 170, 173 and 175. 170 was the nomadic family who cooks up a $40,000 profit with a houseware import business.
And as I think I said then, it's actually more than a $40,000 profit now. It definitely seems like something that has a lot of potential. And they are operating this project using Fulfilled by Amazon. You'll have to listen to that episode to get more information. But in short, Fulfilled by Amazon is a program where amazon.com will stock your items and ship them for you.
So that you can have a physical product business without actually having any physical product yourself. Your garage isn't full, your closets aren't stuffed. And you have the ability to market to amazon.com's huge market base. There's something like 200 million customers that use amazon.com. So if you can kind of crack that system, like Bespacarelli have done in that episode, well, it has tremendous potential.
They took their kids on a year long, round the world trip for a sabbatical. And of course the kids love travel, they wanna go again. So they're using some of that money to set aside for future travel. But anyway, it has serious potential. And a lot of people want to have serious potential with their side hustle, which is great.
Now episode 173 was a bit different. It was about a wine expert who loses his job. He actually quits one of his jobs, gets another job, then gets fired from that one. He ends up becoming a house painter who earns more than $150,000 a year. But that's more of a life transition story.
And some people wanna get into a side hustle to do something different, to eventually step away from their job because they're unhappy or dissatisfied or just wanna do something different. So that story in episode 173 kind of walks through that process, at least how it was for him. I believe his name was Simon. And then lastly, 175 yesterday's story represents an entirely different goal. That story was entitled lawyer earns $400 a month with stock music side hustle.
And there we have a guy who's a young lawyer who had also been a musician, didn't wanna get famous as a musician, but he did feel like his creative outlet was missing since he had become a lawyer. And he also had this student loan debt. And so he wanted to find a way to get back to his creative outlet and do something that made money. And he's found that through the world of stock music. So three different projects, three different paths, all kind of relating to a different side hustle goal.
So I feel like I haven't reminded you enough recently that the first thing you should be thinking about is what is your side hustle goal? Like, why are you doing this? Why are you investing your time and listening to the show? Why are you thinking about this stuff? Why are you hopefully taking some experiments or beginning your research or actions?
Like, what's the point? Like, what do you want to see on the other side? Let's make sure that whatever we do kind of relates to that in some way. Well, hopefully the stories that we have coming up will help you think through that as well. Tomorrow, I have the story of a full-time mom who shipped $35,000 a month in frozen bread on Amazon.
This is not using FulfilledByAmazon.com. As far as I know, she's actually shipping out a lot of this herself. I look forward to telling you all about it. There's also a designer who creates personalized wedding products, ends up quitting her job, even though that wasn't her intention when she started. The side hustle just did so well that she finally realized, you know, I should make a choice here.
And this thing has really taken off. So I'm going to go for it. I think it's more than a half a million dollar business now. There's also a dentist who creates a coconut oil mouthwash. And I believe we have another story about a musician as well.
And of course, a couple others. Listen, before I wind down for the week, I want to say thank you to the people who work on this show, as well as you over there. As I said, I want you to think about your goals. I want this to be helpful for you. And since you're listening right now, I also want you to know you're the reason I make this show.
Very excited for what we've done in the first half of the year. Lots of fun stuff and other improvements coming the second half of the year as well. I record the show on location at World Domination headquarters in Portland, Oregon. It is produced in Brooklyn, New York at the Panafly Studios. Production team is led by A.C. Valdez,
also featuring Odelia Rubin and Jason de Leon. Show notes back in Portland are by Whitney Karinek. My cat, Liberia Gillibo, also back in Portland, still has not started a side hustle despite hearing these episodes every single day. So I have put her on notice. She needs to figure something out soon.
Life advice this week comes from Jay-Z. Difficult takes a day. Impossible takes a week. I like that. And we, Side Hustle School, are part of The Onward Project, led by bestselling author Gretchen Rubin.
You can check that out on Apple Podcasts or at theonwardproject.com. A very small and easy request. This is a free, listener-supported show for just one sponsor per episode. If you're enjoying the show and you want to do something small and helpful, give us a quick little rating or review on Apple Podcasts. It just takes a minute and it definitely helps.
Or if you listen somewhere else, you can also review us somewhere else. And you can tell your friends. You know somebody who needs a side hustle? Well, tell them to listen. Or better yet, show them how to subscribe.
We are all in this together. Inspiration is good, but action is even better. I want to hear about the action that you're taking. I hope to see you tomorrow and every day with more stories and actionable ideas. Those episodes go online at 6.01 a.m. Eastern time
every single day. Let's meet again soon. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]
