This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Friends, listeners, community, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host. So glad you're tuning in today. This is our weekly segment known as Throwback Thursday.
Every Thursday, we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. And in these segments, you get to hear directly from the Side Hustler. Recently, we have featured the founder of Mombox. She's gone from frustrated new mom to CEO of a growing startup. We also had the founder of MicroGains, a system that helps white lifters break plateaus.
The pandemic helped him bulk up his business. Finally, last week we heard from Michael Whitson, founder of a business that sells letterpress wall art for homes. And he recently had the chance to redesign part of the Mississippi state flag. Our Side Hustlers and listeners are doing some amazing things. Now, speaking of amazing, today in our latest feature, we're gonna hear from Bill Simpson, founder of howtotapdance.com.
You ever wondered how to tap dance? Guess how you might learn. You could go to howtotapdance.com and that's Bill's website. And if you think, well, that's a pretty interesting niche, you know, that's really tightly focused, it is. And he's done quite well with it from his home base of Melbourne, Australia, teaching students virtually all over the world, helping thousands of people of all ages discover the magic of tap dance.
We first featured Bill approximately 800 days ago. So let's hear from him for the update and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name's Bill Simpson and I am in Melbourne, Australia. The name of my side hustle is just tap. And the episode number that I was featured on is number 982.
My side hustle is basically a series of video courses designed to help adult beginner tap dancers learn how to tap dance from home. So my side hustle formed basically just naturally out of over a decade of teaching experience. I realized that tap dance actually can be communicated really well over video and that there were many people who didn't have access to quality tap dance tuition where they happen to be in the world. And I really just wanted to allow a pathway for people to discover tap dance for themselves. That was really the impetus that kicked it off.
And now it has very much become my main hustle in life to keep creating new offerings to share with these tap dancers. It's allowed me to build new products and it's allowed me a platform in which I can kind of share with these people and connect with them. So yeah, it's effectively become my life's work now and I'm really proud of it. So for me, for my entire adult life, tap dance has been my path. I fell in love with the art form in my teenage years and knew very early on that I just wanted to do this for as long as I possibly could.
And so I moved through teaching and performing and choreographing. But then once technology really allowed us to reach students all over the world, I saw such potential here and such an opportunity to connect with these people and to again, to offer tap dance to people who may not necessarily have had access to it beforehand. So the courses that I created for Just Tap, they are kind of the pathway that allows people to get started. But obviously there's so much more possibility for what I can offer through the business. And I've really managed to run with that and create some new products.
One of which is a six week tap bootcamp where I work with a kind of small intimate group of tap dancers to really kind of supercharge their tap skills, which wouldn't have been possible without the Just Tap courses that I created. I think my biggest challenge is trying to get out of the mindset of doing everything myself. I'm very much a solo entrepreneur. I love working on my own. I love working for myself, but realistically I can't do everything myself and I shouldn't do everything myself.
And getting out of that head space and allowing other people to share this journey with me I think is something that I really need to embrace and really want to embrace for my benefit and for the benefit of Just Tap and for the benefit of my students as well. That would be my biggest challenge at the moment. I think for me, one of the most exciting things every day is receiving emails from people all over the world telling me about how I've helped them start their journey in tap dance. What was previously only a dream for them has now become a reality thanks to the courses. And this is exactly what I set out to do.
And it's just incredibly heartwarming and it makes me just so inspired and so invested to keep on creating for this audience. I'm just, I'm so grateful for it. [Music]
Thanks so much to Bill for sharing his updates with us. Check out his website at howtotaptance.com. What a great domain, right?
Howtotaptance.com. Listen, if you ever wanna teach something and it's something new, let's say, because you're probably not gonna be able to get howtostalsadance.com, but something new that comes out, howto, whatever that thing is, .com would be a great domain to get, okay? Especially if you're gonna build it up over time and have YouTube videos like Bill has done. So anyway, that's his website, howtotaptance.com. You can also follow him on social at justtaptance.
Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of well over a thousand stories. If you've got a question for us or an update about your side hustle, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Today's show notes, lastly, are at sidehustleschool.com/1776. Thank you again for tuning in today. You're awesome.
I hope you'll subscribe or follow and come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from the Onward Project.
