This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Welcome to Side Hustle School. Greetings, friends. Thanks for tuning in today. My name's Chris Guillebeau. Today's episode is part of a feature we're doing called Your First Thousand Dollars.
Your first $1,000. How did someone in fact make their first $1,000? Not their first $100,000 or million dollars, but their first $1,000. How did they get going? What were those concrete steps they took?
What was their origin story, essentially? And apparently, it is Las Vegas Month here on the podcast because last week in this segment, we heard from a guy in Las Vegas who starts a tutoring business focused on the ASVAB. That's the US Military Entrance Test. And today we're gonna hear from another guy. His name is Brian Ruff.
He has a second job as a ghostwriter. He's been very successful, wrote his own novels, and kind of branched out to write for other people. So he's done all kinds of different projects. Several of which he'll mention in his update. And he is also from Las Vegas.
So in honor of this unexpected Las Vegas Month, let's turn it over to Brian. I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap-up. [Music]
My name is Brian Ruff. My side hustle business is Mr. Words.
It is a ghostwriting service for people who have great stories but don't know how to turn them into books. I've always been a writer. In the early 2000s, I decided I wanted to try my hand at writing a novel. That's the holy grail for writers to become authors. I'd lived in Las Vegas for many years.
And so I decided, I knew the town. I knew where the bodies were buried. So to speak. And I thought, well, I'll take a shot at a mystery based in Las Vegas and see if I can do this. The result, after about 18 months, was a novel called Dice Angel, which did reasonably well amongst people who really enjoy reading about Las Vegas.
Locals and visitors alike. About six years after the book came out, I get an email. I had put my email at the end of the book. And I get an email from a fellow who was a retired casino owner. And he had an idea for a Vegas novel but didn't know what to do with it.
So we started talking and ultimately he hired me to write this up. That was my first ghostwriting job. It just happened as a unintended consequence of me writing the book. At that point, I was continuing to write my own stuff. And for other people as well, his project turned out to be huge.
A massive undertaking. We spent over a year doing it. After it was done, he hired me to do a sequel. It was really nice money. In fact, it was the best money I've ever made ghostwriting.
And then I thought, oh, this is easy. And I've been grinding it out ever since. Ghostwriting, not only novels for other people, but memoirs, business books, how-tos, including one fellow who had invented his own sexual technique. And then somebody else who came up with a can't lose technique for betting on horses. So there's been a variety of different opportunities, not only to hold my interest, but to keep the money flowing in on a fairly regular basis.
As I say, the name of my company is Mr. Words. It's kind of an inside joke as my wife always calls me that. Sometimes sarcastically. And maybe one of these days, if I get to retire from my day job, which is managing partner at an advertising firm called Imagine Communications, if I ever get to put that aside for a while, I think I'll be able to do the Mr. Words full time.
So that's my side hustle. I would say recommendation is to take whatever you're good at, whatever you love doing, and see if you can monetize it in some way. For me, it's been a combination of luck and hard work. [Music]
Awesome, thanks so much, Brian, for telling us about your first $1,000 listeners. I hope you found it encouraging.
Sounds like he has had some interesting clients and lots of experiences of all kinds. Check out his website, brianruff.com. That last name is spelled R-O-U-F-F.com. We'll link it up on the notes page. You can also pick up his books, including "The House Always Wins" and "Dice Angel." If you have a question or an update for us about your hustle, let me know, sidehustleschool.com/questions.
You can subscribe, follow, wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you'll do so because we've got a new episode coming up tomorrow. That's all for now. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
