This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello and welcome back once again to Side Hustle School. I'm Chris Guillebeau. I have the privilege of being your host and telling you stories every day about people who start income generating projects, a second income, a third income, whatever it is, all without quitting their day job, doing something to create more freedom for themselves, often through some creative outlet that has nothing to do with what they do for their day job. Now, today's story certainly fits that bill, but the way we received this story was unconventional. First, I should explain where Side Hustle School stories come from.
A lot of them now come from this community, people who are listening and working on their side hustle. We've had a bunch of episodes in recent months of people who started since January and are making a lot of progress on their projects, which is awesome. And this reminds me, we are looking for stories. Please send them to me. I would love to feature you or somebody you know on the show.
If you go to sidehustleschool.com/about, you scroll to the bottom, there's a little link that says submit a side hustle story. You'll never guess what happens when you click that link. You can, in fact, submit a side hustle story. Now, I mentioned that today's is a bit unconventional because the person who's featured not only sent us a ton of info, which is great and definitely makes it easier on our side, but he actually went above and beyond and wrote the first draft of his script himself. Never seen that before.
My assistant Whitney goes through all the submissions and she emailed me and said, "You'll never guess what we got today. "Somebody wrote his own story for the show." And I said, "Well, is it any good?" And she said, "Yeah, it's really fun. "Check it out." So I did, and I made some small edits, but for the most part, this is his story as written. It's all about an injured Australian who hustles his way to recovery, and that story's coming right up. [Music]
In July 2015, Matthew Harding, a 40-something husband, self-confessed, embarrassing dad to two teenage daughters, IT professional and musician from Melbourne, Australia, hurt his back.
In February 2016, he did it again, but this time went down for the count. Spending a large proportion of the first half of 2016 lying on the floor, being unable to move, and wondering how long his sick leave payments would last, Matthew had plenty of time to consider his family's financial future, and it felt discomforting. The discomfort he felt was caused not only by his lower back injury, but also by the realization that his payments would likely run out before he fully improved. Matthew had dabbled in the online world of side hustling for several years, but aside from learning opportunities, he didn't have a lot to show for it. By September 2016, he had managed to regain some form of verticality and return to work part-time, but the realization that he was reliant on his full-time job in IT in the financial sector of corporate Australia continued to haunt him.
So in October, Matthew made the conscious decision to up the ante. He decided he would go out of his way to investigate, learn, and take action with this whole side hustle thing. Then in early January, Matthew discovered side hustle school. Now at first, he tried to invent a forward-facing time machine so that he could get tomorrow's episode of the podcast a day early. And even though he lived in Australia across the international date line, this idea still proved to be challenging, so Matthew took the next logical step and he picked up his saxophone.
See, Matthew has been playing the sax in bands across Melbourne for more than 30 years. And when he heard episode 23 of Side Hustle School, where a guitarist put up an ad on Craigslist and began teaching guitar, he had an idea. Not being able to play the guitar himself, Matthew decided that the next best thing was to offer saxophone lessons to students in the local area. More than two and a half decades ago, he had done this at university, but not since then. And in that episode of the podcast, the guitar teacher who was featured ended up making a much higher wage than all the other guitar teachers in the area because he put a unique spin on his offering.
And in that case, he built his lessons as the most awesome guitar lessons in the universe. And there was more to it, but that was the headline. And so Matthew decided, I should make my saxophone lessons fun. Because for some unknown reason, most sax lessons are tedious and boring. Students learn scales, boring songs from boring music books, more scales, little black circles and horizontal lines on sheet music.
And then when they're done with that, they get to practice more scales. So Matthew put out his offer of helping students play whatever kind of music they wanted to play, any style with any volume up to and including 11, as well as playing by ear and improvising. He made some backing tracks on his iPad using GarageBand. And with a combination of word of mouth, plus the local suburbs music teacher's online directory, Matthew soon had his first student, his second, his third and his fourth. Students ranging in age from nine to 59 began to come out of the woodwork, or perhaps the woodwinds.
Since he began, this has grown to a nice little side hustle of about $500 a month so far. But Matthew didn't stop there. He noticed that while the musical needs of a nine-year-old, who has never played an instrument before, differ from a 59-year-old who played music back in high school, there are still certain similarities. As a result, Matthew has begun planning and filming an online course of beginner saxophone lessons with the same emphasis on fun as his one-on-one lessons. Listening to more side hustle school episodes has further inspired Matthew.
And by the way, he wrote that part, not me. Episode 175, the one where a lawyer uploads his music to stock music sites, Matthew remembered that just before he heard his back the first time, he had done a similar thing. The ongoing pain over 18 months had made him forget that he'd uploaded some songs he'd composed and recorded, just like the lawyer in that episode. Now that he remembered, he logged back into his account for the first time in 18 months and was pleased to discover he'd been earning a consistent $20 to $50 a month over that time period without doing anything at all for it. Naturally, over the coming months, he plans to compose, record, and upload a few more.
But wait, there's more. Continuing on the saxophone theme, Matthew then recalled side hustle school episode 73, which was about print-on-demand t-shirts. So at zero cost, other than a bit of time, Matthew set about putting a few saxophone-themed t-shirt designs on the online crowdsource t-shirt platform, Teespring. Again, to his surprise, a few sales were made pretty easily. This led to the purchase of a domain name, saxophone_t-shirts.com, for $12, and a simple website that costs $6 a month.
Matthew has also discovered that this print-on-demand t-shirt concept is largely a numbers game. The more designs he has, the better the chances of making a sale. He's also applied to merch by Amazon to get another foot in the t-shirt door. And I'll link up Teespring, merch by Amazon, all these resources on the show notes page. [Music]
Now, none of these three saxophone side hustles have resulted in massive, passive megabucks, at least not yet.
However, they've opened Matthew's eyes to the possibilities of what side hustling can do, from both a monetary and an enjoyment perspective. He says hours fly by when a saxophone is involved. All I have to say is congratulations, and I can't wait for him to write me another script. Well, as mentioned, I love the creative submission process. Probably about 80% of what I just told you came straight from Matthew.
And this reminds me, as I said at the top of the show, we are looking for more stories. We'd love to feature more people on the show. The link for that is sidehustleschool.com/about. And you scroll to the bottom and click submit a side hustle story. Aside from the creative submission process, Matthew's story also really illustrates the side hustle process in general.
It's all about creative experimentation. I love how he's been able to make $500 a month with the lessons, and he's thinking about making a course, and he's experimenting with the t-shirt designs. And maybe one of these things will take off more than the other, and so over time he'll choose to focus on it. One of the great things about having a side hustle is you can kind of dip your toe in the waters and try a lot of different things without taking much risk. I hope you are doing that too.
I hope you are experimenting. Hope there's a few things you're thinking about and working towards, or at least one. Today's show notes, including links to all of those different things I mentioned, are at sidehustleschool.com/210. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. If you have a comment or question for the show, or if you want to write your own script, like Matthew, give me a call on the Hustle Hotline 8449 Hustle, or record a quick little voice note with your phone, and email it to podcast@sidehustleschool.com.
I'm Chris Guillebeau, you are a rock star, and I hope to see you tomorrow. [Music]
