New Year, New Season! Let’s Make This the Best Year Yet

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

Oh hey there, what's up? Thank you for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Welcome to a brand new year and season six of Side Hustle School. That's right, we have turned the clock and the calendar. So if you have been around for a while, never did I imagine

we would still be going strong. All these episodes in more than 1800 episodes every single day, consecutive streaks since January 1, 2017. But it's largely because of you and the community at large. And if you're new, that's great too. It's all very organic.

Most years we get a new group of listeners joining in January and perhaps some people who are rejoining, who listened for a year or two and then life got busy. But now they're like, "Hey, I want to take this seriously. This is my year." So if that's you, or if you fit any of those categories in this short inaugural episode, I'd like to spend just a couple of minutes today reorienting us. And it's pretty simple. You know, the mission of Side Hustle School is to help you create a new source of income without quitting your job. And to be specific, this isn't about the gig economy. This isn't about just working

two jobs, nothing like that. It's all about creating significant revenue, also known as money through an asset you create. So I don't want you to just work harder. I don't want you to moonlight for some other company. I want you to create something for yourself.

And we have featured hundreds of real people over the years, not full-time entrepreneurs, not people who are on Shark Tank or who are taking huge risks, just hundreds of real people who have done this over the years, making, as I said, very significant money. And in the show, we look at the practical nuts and bolts of how you can do this for yourself. Very specific, including numbers, trying to look at how much it costs to get started. You know, in many cases we have $100 startups, like a book I wrote a long time ago. In many cases we have $0 startups. And so when we're looking at all these details, it includes

everything from generating the right idea down to the full implementation and marketing of the idea. Our values are being frugal and resourceful, but also being willing to invest in yourself, okay, because you want to achieve a positive return. And one of the ways you can invest in yourself is so simple. It's just by spending 10 minutes a day listening to these daily episodes that go out, maybe spending another 15, 20 minutes thinking about ideas, maybe taking some small steps toward making one of your ideas a reality. And that is very much my hope. I'll say more about that at the end before we wrap up. Just in

case you were curious about me, if we haven't met before, I'm an author and entrepreneur. I have pretty much always worked for myself since the age of 19. I was an aid worker in West Africa for several years. That changed my life. I loved everything about that experience.

And then coming out of that and returning to the US, I started a blog called The Art of Nonconformity, which also documented my journey to every country in the world. So I went to every country in the world before I was 35. And all along the way, I kept meeting interesting people. And these days, I feel really fortunate to connect with a global community of awesome people doing interesting things. That's just a bit about me. Of course,

if you want to learn more, you can. But I want to make this show about you. And just in case you're wondering, how much does it cost? Well, it's all free. There's literally no way to give me money on the Side Hustle School website. We might have a course or two for

sale. But the majority of it is just like, here's all this content for you. And any course I sell there is going to be really low cost. I've got books that are very, very low cost. But it's all about free or low cost resources. More than 1,800 episodes are freely available

in the archives. They're not locked up. There's no membership model. And how is this possible? How can we do it for free? Well, it's because we have sponsors. And I appreciate them. We've

tried to balance this a lot to where the sponsorship is not overwhelming. You just get two sponsor messages per episode, one at the beginning and one partway through. And we also try to choose partners who are kind of on brand and that are also making valuable offers to you. So I really appreciate our sponsors and partners over the years. I hope that you will find some of them helpful. But of course, there's never any pressure, right? I want you to get

something out of this. So speaking of sponsor messages, in a moment, you'll get an example of one of them. And when I return, I'm going to tell you about a special $1,000 giveaway that I'll be doing for one listener this year. So stay tuned. All right. All right. As I said, I appreciate our sponsors. Thanks as well to Jed and Chuck,

two guys who work with me daily on the podcast, as well as a broader team working on ad sales, distribution, sourcing, and writing. So I'm the voice you hear, but it's not a one man band. I really appreciate everybody who makes this possible. And so here's what I was saying moving for you at the end, listeners, two things specifically, you know, number one, you know, I really want you to be able to take action, not just enjoy the stories and other content. Like if you just listen for the stories and the tips and such, that's totally fine. But my greatest hope is that a lot of our listeners are going to actually

go out and start projects and make some money and maybe even quit their jobs or explore something totally different in life as a result or a consequence of the action they take. Okay. So every year we hear from a number of people, you know, who want to make it their year of the side hustle. And a lot of the stories that we feature on the podcast now are coming from our listeners, which is cool, but I'd love to do something to kind of motivate you a little bit further. So coming up in the days, weeks, and months to come, we're going to be featuring lots of listener stories. And we are also introducing a new segment called

first thousand dollars. Now, as you might guess, this is all about how someone made their first thousand dollars, not their first hundred thousand dollars. You know, that's cool, but it would be a much longer story. We're looking at how someone made their first thousand dollars. And as part of that project, we're also going to give away a thousand dollars to the best listener side hustle that begins this year. So if you start a project this

year, pay attention because you might win a thousand dollars. You know, I'll tell you how it works as we go along. The cool thing about starting a money making project is even if you don't win the prize, you know, you still kind of win, right? Aside from winning the thousand dollars, how else can you participate? Well, you can listen every day. My commitment

is to be here for you. I hope you'll join me. As I said, 10 minutes a day. You can leave us a quick five star rating review. That's always appreciated. It helps other people

discover the show and you can also tell your friends. But mostly I want you to do something for yourself this year, not something for me or for any other person. You know, all of us face tremendous pressure to be someone that we aren't and to carry other people's burdens for them. And I hope that this year you're going to rethink that a little bit and consider what you'd like to do for yourself. Those are my closing words on this opening day of the new season. I can't wait to share this journey with you. Make it part of your

routine wherever you like to listen. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host of Side Hustle School.