This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Wouldn't it be cool to fly around the world as a messenger and not for a drug cartel, but for companies that needed materials delivered quickly? This is not an ad, by the way. This is an introduction to a question from a listener. They're wondering about the promise of being an airline courier. I think they've seen some ads or heard something about this idea of, as I said, flying around the world as a messenger, delivering important documents or materials, perhaps in your checked luggage, again, all totally on the up and up.
This was something I saw ads for myself and wondered about a long time ago, going back many, many years, when I was first beginning to travel and thinking, how can I travel for free? Or how can I get the money to travel? Are there tips, strategies, tactics, tools, secrets and such? And of course there are. And this was one of them, at least for a time.
And so today's caller is wondering, is this a viable business opportunity? Is it a scam? Is it perhaps something else? So let's see if we can unravel the mystery. Can you in fact get paid to fly as an airline courier?
And if the answer is no, what else might you be able to do? It's all coming up in this short episode after this short message from our sponsor. [Music]
Hi, Chris, this is Carissa and I've been following the show for a couple of years. I've heard there are people who get paid to be airline couriers where they fly from place to place delivering sensitive documents and maybe some other goods and items, but nothing sketchy. It's totally legal and as a service that corporations doing a lot of international trade need.
Where can I find out more about this opportunity? I'd love to go to Paris for free, maybe Venice too, but that brings up another point. I don't suppose you get to pick your destinations, do you? If not, where are the most common ones? Thanks.
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All right, Carissa, thank you so much for the call. So for your second questions, like do you get to pick your destinations? Where are the most common ones? Unfortunately, there's not really great answers to those because for the most part, this whole thing is indeed a thing of the past, all right? So, there just aren't that many documents that need to go around the world via hand delivery.
Like now we have DocuSign, we've got secure video conferencing. There are doctors in far away countries who are able to consult on surgeries happening in different countries all the way across the world and so on. And as for learning more about this opportunity, well, there are companies that are selling access, what they call access to it information or some sort of membership model, but you're really not gonna get much from that, okay? So just because this whole industry doesn't exist, or if it does, it's very, very small. I was actually looking at some websites as I was researching here, just to make sure that this wasn't actually a thing.
And I found one service that for their requirements, it lists, ideally you will hold a valid driver's license and credit card, which I was like, okay, well, that's not very much in terms of requirements. Ideally, you will hold a valid driver's license. Okay, so maybe let's say what's better than this idea because unfortunately we're a couple decades late for it. What other ideas might this produce? That's what I always like to think.
If your goal is to travel for free, well, that's possible with lots of other strategies. You could go to Paris or Venice or wherever you want to go. The whole field of travel hacking still provides so many opportunities. I used to be very active in that world, but now there are lots of other resources you can learn from. If your goal is to get paid, well, we've got 1800 episodes in the archives of all kinds of different business ideas.
I wrote a book called "100 Side Hustles" that featured many of them. You can steal any of those business models. So I would say it's best to just, you know, let go of this airline courier opportunity. It doesn't really exist. Decide what you want, like what are your goals, then narrow down your focus a bit, and plan to travel because you can do everything that you just mentioned, perhaps just in a different way or with a different approach.
All right, Carissa, good luck. Let us know what happens. Listeners, if you've got a question of your own, sidehustleschool.com/questions, love to know about your ideas or what you're working on, what's going well, what's not, we will continue to feature them throughout the rest of the year. And of course, you can tune in every day for a brand new episode. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from the Onward Project.
