This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, thanks for tuning in today. Wherever you are in the world, whatever you're up to, we've got people out there who are all over the world and having all sorts of experiences. I think it's so cool. One of my favorite things about hosting this podcast, which I think of as an ongoing conversation, an ongoing conversation for the past five plus years, is just hearing from people and knowing kind of where they're at, what their situation is, what they're working on, what's gone well, what hasn't, and so on. Now, I often think of this quote, everyone's fighting a hard battle.
Be kind because everyone's fighting a hard battle. But it's also true, some battles are harder than others, right? So today's caller, it might be one of those, she has an autoimmune illness that severely limits her energy and requires her to often rest for long periods of time. And she's wondering, how can I start a side hustle? Because she hears the stories of what other people are doing and she thinks for all kinds of reasons, it would be great to have some reliable income that I can therefore rely upon when I'm not able to work as much.
But of course, that also presents a challenge because when it's hard to commit in advance to a schedule of tasks, you're not sure when you need to rest or not, what kind of side hustle should you consider? This is such a great question. I'm so glad to have the chance to talk about it a bit. So we're gonna have a quick thank you message to our sponsor, and then we'll hear from Carole and I'll do my best to provide a helpful answer. [Music]
Hi there, Chris, this is Carole.
I've been listening to your show for a couple of years now. I have a unique challenge that I haven't heard you talk about before. In short, I have a chronic autoimmune illness that requires me to rest for long periods of time. Sometimes I have more energy than I expect and I can get several things done at once, but other times I have to be very careful and not overdo it or else I end up bedridden for a week or more. It is not fun.
The unpredictable nature of it is especially difficult, which is why I'm wondering how I could start a project like the ones you talk about. I wouldn't wanna sell a service that requires me to be available at specific times. So is there something else that might be better? Thanks for any advice you can share with me. [Music]
Hey, Carole, thank you so much for leaving this message.
I feel like there's probably some other listeners out there with similar challenges or those who have family members or friends with similar challenges. So I really appreciate you leaving this question. Hopefully that can be helpful. First of all, let me not presume to understand everything that you deal with in relation to this illness or how it affects your life. I'm gonna restrict my comments just to the practical part of when you have a limitation of not being able to commit to time-based events or even a specific list of tasks on any given day, but you still want to earn extra income.
Okay, that's the problem here. What do you do? I think it's helpful to think of it as a constraint. And constraints can be helpful in some ways because in this case, it kind of gives you some direction. What it means is that you need to purpose build a business model that doesn't require your active participation or engagement, at least not on a scheduled basis.
It needs to be the kind of thing you can work on for a while and then walk away from for a while if you need. That still leaves us with a lot of options. As Carol said, she wouldn't wanna have that on-demand service, but throughout the archives of the show, we've had lots of different projects that people have worked on for a time and left for a time, still made income, and then gone back to to improve it or whatever. But the point is to not have it designed as an on-demand service. So I was thinking about an episode we did early this year, 1830, self-published Kindle books produce full-time income.
This is a guy who's making a six-figure income on the side from these Kindle books he's been writing specifically about families and connection and memory and such. But the point is he can work on those projects whenever he's able and then they go up and then he doesn't have to do much for them after that. I mean, Merch by Amazon in general, we've had people selling T-shirts on Amazon and other items, all kinds of personalized items that you can customize. It's the kind of thing you work on it for a while and then you can stop working on it. Again, anything that doesn't depend on direct customer relationships, making something that stands on its own.
I mean, that's the key point. That's the principle that you kind of evaluate or filter different ideas and projects through. Now I do want to say this doesn't mean that there isn't work to be done on an ongoing basis. You know, with most of these projects, it just means that you can do it when you have the time and energy. And so that's the key point.
You would not choose anything that requires, you know, on-demand attention or scheduled calendar appointments, you would choose anything else. And that still gives you a lot of options. So Carol and anybody else with that situation, I am thinking of you. I wish you well. I hope you have a lot of success and let us know how it goes.
Listeners, if you have some experience with this or just a question, comment, unrelated of your own, sidehustleschool.com/questions. I'd love to know what you're working on, what you're going through. Let's see how we can support one another through this continued ongoing conversation. All right, that's it for today. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
