This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, thanks for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host of Side Hustle School. Got a listener question with a business idea today. I love getting these kinds of questions where you're thinking about projects, looking at what you're good at, what you're interested in, and trying to figure out how to monetize it in some way. So keep those questions coming.
Today, we're talking about spaced repetition. Spaced repetition, what does that mean? Well, if you want to retain what you read or what you study, you need to have some kind of system to review and reinforce your learning. It's pretty shocking how quickly we forget all the different things that we read or learn about without some kind of system that reinforces that learning. And spaced repetition is a technique, one of the most effective techniques, I should say, for increasing your retention, so that you actually remember more of what you've studied.
I got into it myself last year, and today's listener has an intriguing idea to aid in memory retention using spaced repetition, but with outsourced tutors from other countries. So essentially using Zoom or other technology to connect with people in different countries who will help reinforce what you're learning, what you've been studying. She'll describe it better than me. I kind of think of it like Upwork meets Coursera or Udemy. So let's hear from her.
Spaced repetition practice with overseas tutors, that's today's idea. Quick sponsor message, then I'll give my feedback. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Kim from Tampa, and I've been listening to the show for a couple of years. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but if you wanna learn something, spaced repetition is the most single important habit you can use. It's essentially the flashcard technique where you review a series of items over and over until you're confident you've retained the info.
Ideally, you vary the times that you do the review and once you finish a particular deck, you return to it every so often just for a refresher. Anyway, here's my side hustle idea. I'd like to use overseas tutors to help people with flash study sessions using this technique. It's a lot like Spanish or another language with a foreign speaker by video call. Didn't you have a story about that once?
My question is, how would I validate the need for this idea and how could I put together a working model? Thanks for any advice. [Music]
Hey Kim, thanks for listening. Thanks for this intriguing idea as well. So let's talk about a working model and I'm so glad that Kim referenced this previous story.
I had actually started thinking about it even before she mentioned it and I looked it up. The story is episode 1012, so just sidehustleschool.com/1012 if you'd like to hear it or read the notes from it. That would be good to listen to or as I said, read those notes. The guy in that story, he built a Spanish language learning platform called LiveLingua, livelingua.com to just take a look at it directly. And this platform connects learners from the US or other countries with tutors in Mexico and other Spanish speaking countries.
And so I think that is the working model essentially for what Kim is trying to do or what she envisions. Now this is a big project. So when I say it's an intriguing idea, I think it actually does have potential value. I think it's worth exploring. My only caveat is to do this well, it's the kind of thing that does need to scale a bit.
You need to have a good number of these tutors. You need to have, well, more importantly, a good number of customers of people who are interested in signing up for the service. So I think some strategic planning, rather than just like a ready, fire, aim model, which I often advocate for some things, strategic planning is probably gonna be key here. This is the kind of thing that once it goes out, like once you publish it, you want it to be in Hacker News. Ideally, you want to get other PR coverage, some coverage in Reddit or similar because that could definitely help build an initial user base.
But it has to look good, it has to seem complete. It has to at least do one thing very well. So that's my other advice here. There's lots of different directions you could take this. I would pick one very narrow hyper-focused direction, like this does this exact thing.
Maybe it's even for med students or for law students or doesn't have to be that market, but some other specific market of people who are trying to learn something. So I would get really specific. I would definitely spend some time planning. I would ask myself, is this the right project for me? Because it has a lot of potential, but it's also going to be a lot of work.
There might be something else that I'm also excited about that has better odds of success, at least initially. Those are the kinds of questions I would ask when trying to figure out, okay, where do I go from here? But again, I like the idea. So Kim, let us know what happens. Listeners, if you've got a question or an idea, sidehustleschool.com/questions, let me know what you're up to.
Let me know what you're trying to figure out, what you have figured out, what's gone well, and what has been a struggle. We'll continue to feature them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch and grow their projects. That's it for today. More tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from the Onward Project.
