This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
We've got an amazing listener question for you today. I was so excited to hear about this. One of our listeners is undertaking a major quest. She is preparing to run across the United States. That's right.
Wow, I mean, a lot to say about this, you know? The question reminded me of a friend named Emily Rudow. And Emily is a Canadian who, among other things, has set the women's world record for most days running consecutive half marathons. Couple of years ago, she ran 74 half marathons in a row, 74 in 74 days. If you're not familiar with the distance, a half marathon is 21.1 kilometers or 13.1 miles.
And anyway, she's got a book coming out called "Find Your Stride." I'll tell you more about Emily's book when it's out. For now, I thought of her as I worked on this episode because I actually had to make sure the person calling wasn't Emily because our caller Rebecca has a similar spirit. And again, as I said, she wants to run across the United States. What an incredible, audacious goal. But of course, she needs funding and she wants to think creatively.
So what are her options? That's what we're gonna tackle in this episode after this quick shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
Hey, Chris, this is Rebecca from Atlanta. And I discovered your show last year on Apple Podcasts. I have a life goal that simultaneously excites and terrifies me.
I'd like to run across the United States. I won't be the first to do it. Every year about 10 other people join the list of finishers, but it's a very short list and a long difficult mission. I want to raise money for charity, but I also need my own funding. Do you know how I'd go about asking companies for support?
In an ideal world, I wouldn't just be looking for a handout, but a real partnership where they get some publicity and everyone wins. What do you think? Thanks for any advice you can share with me. [Music]
Rebecca, I think this sounds amazing. That's what I think.
Please let me know when your start date comes along so we can do our best to cheer you on and follow along the journey. I would love to follow it myself. So I think first things first, like you're doing this because it's amazing. Like you're doing this, it's not a money-making project by itself, like most likely with the dedication it takes to even think about attempting a challenge like this, there could be lots of other ways that you could dedicate yourself to making money. So obviously you're doing this because it feels like a mission, it's a quest, it's a calling.
And I think in the long term, you're gonna get much more value for yourself. Like in the long term, you're gonna be building, I don't want to trivialize it and say a brand for yourself, but hopefully along the way, you will attract lots of people who will follow your journey and support you in your current projects and future projects. And then there's a lot you can do from there. It's just a long-term vision as opposed to like the next three to six months. But on the part of partnership, like those brand sponsorships, they tend to come along as you build profile.
Like if you are posting a good amount and more and more people are following and sharing, it starts to become more of a thing. You know, that's when brands want to sponsor basically. So you really need a strategy going into this. You know, you need like a really good presentation, a good little slide deck, really nice looking PDF that shows like all the details of the journey and why you're doing this and so on. And then, you know, you want your daily job to be making progress on the actual quest.
Like when you're out there running across the country, somebody else needs to be fielding emails or direct messages, you know, or potentially making some calls, you know, to companies making posts on your behalf. Like you need to be able to fully focus on that. So hopefully there'll be some volunteers who want to come alongside and help with that. And then also speaking of long-term, the people that I've known who have done really well with this, like I think of this guy, the Iron Cowboy, who did 100 full distance triathlons in 100 days. You know, he had a previous quest of doing 50 full distance triathlons in 50 states in 50 days.
And so like as you build profile, like your next project gets even more successful and therefore more valuable to brands. You know, by the time that guy did his second really big quest, he was very known and was able to plan for those sponsorships a lot more, you know, from the get-go. So just a couple of thoughts there, but most importantly, it sounds like an amazing project. Let us know how it goes and what we can do to help. Listeners, if you've got a question, even if you're not gonna run across the country, sidehustleschool.com/questions.
Let me know what you're working on. We will feature them throughout the year, along with updates from listeners like Rebecca, as they launch and grow their projects. That's all for today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from the Onward Project.
