This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Oh, hey there. Thanks for tuning in today. This is Chris Guillebeau, your host of "Side Hustle School." Welcome to the podcast. Welcome as well to "Throwback Thursday." This is our weekly segment where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. We get to go back and do a little update here.
What's happened, what's gone well, any challenges they've had, and so on. Last week we heard from Trevor Rappley. He's the founder of FranchiseFilming.com, and he has had a tremendous amount of growth in his business. Since we first featured him, he has increased his team and his business 10X. I think that means something like 10 times, like a lot.
Okay, just like a lot of growth. Okay, so today in our latest feature, we're gonna hear from a Toronto yoga teacher. She's also an author. She offers classes to people with chronic illnesses. Her name is Kayla Curran.
We first featured her long, long ago in episode 828. So what's happened since? How has she been? How has she changed and evolved in her business? Let's hear directly from Kayla.
I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap up. [Music]
Hi, my name is Kayla. I'm currently in Toronto in Canada, and my side hustle is a Roga Yoga. It was featured on Side Hustle School, episode 828. My hustle is teaching yoga online to people living with chronic illnesses.
I got started when I started doing yoga myself for my own health, and it was super helpful to me. So I knew it was something that I wanted to do going forward. So I did a teacher training and did a lot of study on how yoga and meditation and mindfulness can impact our health, specifically for people living with chronic illnesses who might not have as high quality access to care in traditional medical systems. So my day job is freelance writing, if that can be considered a day job. But that is, yeah, where the majority of my income is coming from now.
There is a lot of overlap. I do do a lot of health writing, including writing about yoga and mindfulness, but yeah, a much wider breadth than that. Since you last featured me on the show, we had a pandemic, and this drove a lot of people online looking for health resources online. And it's, yeah, really made me rethink about who I wanna be reaching or who I can be reaching and helping with this. Definitely I had new students coming in who were looking for online options, who have stayed with me now.
And then just, yeah, in terms of also the other pieces of health writing that I'm doing has grown a lot, as well as since we last spoke. How many students find me is a really good question, because another thing that has changed since we last spoke is that I deleted all of social media, and I'm completely off social media. So I am not even 100% sure how people find me. I think people stumble across old blog posts or stumble across my website or my books are for sale on Amazon, so I think a lot of people find me through there. One of the biggest challenges I'm currently facing is thinking about hybrid models of online and offline.
I still travel a lot, I'm still moving around a lot, and I love having these online options, but it has always been a tougher thing with yoga to not be in the same room as somebody. And previous to COVID, I would occasionally do workshops in different places I landed in, but that has all been on hold because of COVID. So I think a challenge is just thinking about what kinds of ways I want to be there for people in person and work with people in person and what that setup might look like in the future. I think something that's been really important for me over the last few years is just thinking about this less as a side hustle and thinking more about how it fits into my life. And as I mentioned, I'm a freelancer as well for my day job.
So just, yeah, rather than thinking of it as a side hustle in addition to a full-time job of just being able to like mold all of the pieces in my life in a way that like really makes sense and really works with my energy levels and what I want to be doing and what messages I want to be getting out. So I think I would encourage people who are maybe in a more traditional role or maybe working part-time or freelancing who want to start a side hustle to really think about how that fits into your life. So you're not just working one and a half jobs, but being able to take care of yourself and live according to the goals that you want to achieve. [Music]
No social media. She has, as you heard, deleted all of her social media.
So you can indeed be successful without it. I often get that question from listeners who are like, I'm not that great at social media or I don't really know how to start because I've got my Instagram account, but I see all these people posting stuff all the time like the influencers, what do I do? Well, you can go down that path or you can go down a different path. So also, as you heard, Kayla has some insight into managing all of your projects, just thinking about them holistically while also taking care of yourself. That's a perspective that I know many of us have just kind of come to appreciate more over the past couple of years.
So anything in that department I always find helpful to myself. So I hope something is helpful to you as well. Thanks Kayla for sharing your updates with us. Listeners, check out her website, Kayla Curran.com. That's K-A-Y-L-A-K-U-R-I-N.com.
You may also want to check out her books, Yoga for Chronic Illness and Where Can I Find Wi-Fi? I love that title, Where Can I Find Wi-Fi? I'm always asking myself that question. So let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than a thousand stories, questions, updates, comments, sidehustleschool.com/questions. This has been episode 2,091, 2,091.
Thanks for joining in today. Take care of yourself out there. I hope you'll subscribe, follow, come back tomorrow. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School.
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