This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Welcome, welcome. So glad you're tuning in today. Thank you for joining me. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host of "Side Hustle School." It is the last day of February, at least that's when today's episode's going out, episode 1885. You could be listening at any time.
We try to keep things evergreen, but if you're listening in real time, I hope your first two months of the year have gone well. If not, well, you got 10 more, okay? Plenty of time to turn it around. Now, today's episode is part of a new feature we've been doing for the past, I don't know, six to eight weeks. It's called your first $1,000.
Now, as you might logically surmise correctly guess from the title, it's all about how someone made their first $1,000. How did they get to that point? Not how they get to $20 million, you know, or even their first $5,000, whatever it is. Bigger numbers are cool, but it would probably be a much longer story. Also, perhaps not as relatable.
So one thing I have noticed, and we've seen this in many stories as well, is that, you know, once you begin to earn a bit of money, you know, the steps required to go to the next level are often easier than that first real paycheck. So I hope to get listeners, you know, to that first $1,000 level, if you haven't been there already. With that in mind, today's feature comes from Sabrina and Garrett Ricci. You actually get to hear from both of them. Pretty cool doubleheader.
And together, they oversee a modern day prehistoric empire. What do I mean by that? Well, we first featured "I Know Dino" back on episode 1725. Big Dinosaur Podcast generates dino-mite profits. Their business grew to become much more than its original fan-based, non-monetized idea.
It was just this cool, fun thing they wanted to do. Turned into a, you know, now a full-time business. So in fact, let's hear about that. How did Sabrina and Garrett go from, let's make a cool podcast, to let's get paid for making a cool podcast? And they've actually moved on to, let's get paid for helping other people make cool podcasts as well.
But I don't mean to get ahead of myself. Let's go back to the prehistoric ages first, or at least let's hear it from Sabrina and then Garrett. I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap-up. [Music]
Sabrina and Garrett here from the "I Know Dino" podcast, a weekly show about dinosaurs. Well, our podcast started from our love of dinosaurs.
We launched our show in January, 2015, a few months after we had a dinosaur-themed wedding. And at the time, there were some great paleontology podcasts out there, but no podcasts that focused solely on dinosaurs on a weekly basis. And as dinosaur enthusiasts, we knew there were new dinosaur discoveries almost every week. We got a lot of great positive feedback from our listeners almost right away. Our timing helped a lot.
The movie "Jurassic World" came out in June of that year, and being a dinosaur podcast, we were able to get featured in Apple podcasts. At first, we didn't feel comfortable monetizing our show, but after hearing other creators' stories, we decided it wouldn't hurt to ask our listeners for their support. "I Know Dino" was a passion project at that point, and we would have been thrilled to earn enough money just to cover our hosting expenses and upgrade our equipment. That summer, about six months after we started the podcast, we set up our Patreon account. We did a lot of research to see what other podcasters were offering their supporters.
We came up with our initial tiers and perks, which have since evolved, and started to spread the word about our Patreon page. It took a couple months to get our first patrons. We earned around $50 that first month that we got paid, and we were so happy and excited. It felt like proof that we were doing something right with our podcast and that over time we could grow. I think we jumped up and down.
We thanked all our patrons and we brainstormed more ways to offer even more value to our supporters. Our Patreon membership did grow over time, and about a year after we launched our Patreon page, we got our first sponsor for the show while on a road trip. We drove up to Alberta, Canada to go to a new museum, and also to parts of Montana to visit dinosaur museums and go on a dinosaur dig. While on the trip, we interviewed a lot of paleontologists and museum staff, and we figured we could mutually benefit with a sponsorship partnership, so we decided to ask each museum we visited if they'd like to work with us. The worst that could happen is they could say no.
The first museum we asked, they said yes. We worked together to develop a script that both we and the museum were happy with, and we ended up running multiple campaigns. The early patronage and that first sponsorship brought us up to our first $1,000 of earnings, and as a bonus, a few of our listeners even thanked us for having such a relevant promotion in our podcast. It wasn't seen as an ad because it was very relevant. Last year, after six years of podcasting, we're happy to say that both of us are able to work on I Know Dino full-time.
We've even expanded so we can share all we've learned with people who want to start a podcast today with our online program, Complete Podcasting Course. We've learned a lot since earning our first $1,000. The first thing we learned is never be afraid to reach out to people and ask. Some of the best collaborations we've had came from us simply asking to work with someone. And the second thing is to build a community around your podcast.
Make your listeners feel like they're a part of your show and make them part of your show, and then offer ways for them to be even more involved in your community as a reward for supporting you. Our Patreon has grown a lot since our first year because of our amazing community of fellow dinosaur enthusiasts. What a great update, really appreciate that Sabrina and Garrett, thank you guys so much. I was thinking about this jumping up and down with their first supporter. Long ago, I learned to ask this question in our survey intake form for all the case studies that we feature.
I asked something like, do you remember your first sale and did anything happen? And I learned to do that because long before I had the podcast, I was going on tour and talking to people every night and I would hear the same stories over and over without prompting, people would have stories about the first time they got their first customer, first client, first supporter, and a lot of people jump up and down. And so if you hear that over and over in different stories, that somebody gets really excited when they got their first $40 or their first $100 client or whatever, it's because it's true. And it's also worth celebrating because it's often the start of something much more, which as you heard from Sabrina and Garrett, they are now full-time doing this. So well done, guys.
Thanks again. Listeners, I hope you found it encouraging. Check out their website, inodino.com. I'm a big fan, inodino.com and on Instagram @inodino. Now finally, they have a podcasting course that is not stuck in the prehistoric ages.
It's actually quite relevant to modern times. So if you want to learn about that, go to completepodcastingcourse.com. We're gonna link all that stuff up on the notes page, of course, if you've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Hope you'll subscribe or follow.
We've got much more coming up. New episode every day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
