This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello and greetings. Side Hustle School listeners, this is Chris Guillebeau. We have just finished week number 30, 3-0. I have been back on the road a bit. I was actually in Mexico for several days this week.
I actually got the chance to record several episodes of the show on my balcony, overlooking the pool and the Pacific Ocean. So no complaints there. And also for the record, no tequila was consumed prior to recording or during any episode of the show. Can't speak for what happened after that. And then after I left Mexico, I went to California.
I was in San Francisco for an event speaking to content producers for the online platform Udemy. And so the whole week I was kind of on the road, but of course I was still working, producing the show, doing my other stuff. And this has kind of been my lifestyle for, I don't know, the past 10, 12, maybe more than that years. And I just feel so fortunate. Like I feel happy and proud because in some ways I created this for myself and that's what I want to help other people do.
But in other ways, I just realized how fortunate I am. I don't take it for granted. And that's why I tend to work from wherever I am. So when I was in Mexico for a few days, I probably spent about half the time working on my stuff. And that's totally fine because I love what I do.
And that's why side hustles have been so great for me in my life. At least it's one of the reasons why side hustles have been so great. That's why I'm on this mission to encourage you and to help you however I can to have this kind of benefit in your life, even if you don't wanna be like me and travel all the time, even if you're happy where you're at, even if you love your job, having additional sources of income can only increase your opportunities. And you might end up doing the same thing you've always done and that's fine, but you never know, you might end up doing something different. Well, anyway, in other news, it is 50 days to go until the side hustle book is published.
Man, I have to admit to you, true confessions, I feel really behind. Over the past few weeks, my focus has been on producing "World Domination Summit" in addition to this daily show, of course. So now I'm excited to kind of shift my second focus to everything I need to do for the fall, to get ready for the book launch, to get ready for my hundred city tour. I think we now have 20 to 25 cities confirmed. I realize that is considerably less than a hundred.
So I'm working on it. And I'm also working on side hustle society, which a number of you have asked about. This is gonna be a community of side hustle school listeners and people who are just trying to build their project. And they want some accountability, they want some handholding. Well, I don't wanna say handholding because you can do it yourself, but you just want some guidance, maybe some additional teaching, something to help you along the way.
So that's what this community is gonna be about. And I'm now planning to debut this in the fall alongside the book launch. Thank you for your patience with that. As I said, I'll now be able to fully focus on that. And if you keep listening to this show, you'll be the first to know about how it works and how you can be part of it.
And I would love you to be part of it. In today's weekly recap, a few different things. Gonna do a look back, a look ahead. But first, let's hear from two listeners, one in the form of an email and the other in a voicemail. This first message comes from Paul Goutier in Canada.
He says, "Hey, Chris, I listen to you every morning while doing my stretching. I have just retired last month at age 48 and look forward to starting a hustle. I have lots of ideas and just need to focus. I really wanna take advantage of the free time I have right now. The format of the show and all the stories keeps me motivated." That's awesome, thank you, Paul.
I hope you're able to focus and choose one of those ideas to move forward with. And now let's hear from someone who called into the hustle hotline. - Hi, Chris, my name is Lindsay. I'm from Asheville, North Carolina. First, I wanna say I've been listening since the very beginning of the year.
Awesome show. And I always love the takeaways from each episode and the inspiration, so thank you for that. I am calling because my husband and I are thinking about, and have been thinking about for a while, starting an import business. And all of the episodes about drop shipping and fulfillment have been really great. My question is, before that point, what about shipping?
Because all the research that we have done has led us to really expensive options that seem to be pretty much cost prohibitive. So I'm asking for advice on where to find shipping partners, and our case is specific to North Africa, but I don't know if that's really relevant. Anyhow, again, enjoy the show, and hopefully we will hear ourselves featured on it in the not too distant future. Thanks. - Hey, Lindsay, thank you so much for listening.
This is a great question. Several other people have asked something like it, and there's actually a couple of things you can do. First thing in this situation, when you're importing something from, like you said, North Africa or from some other far away part of the world, you want to talk to an agent or a company that's known as a freight forwarder. And this is a person or a company in your area that deals with all kinds of shipping options. And for stuff like this, there's probably some options you don't even know about because it's a huge industry.
So you're probably familiar with couriers like FedEx, DHL, et cetera, but there are often a lot of other options. Depending on what it is you're importing, you may be able to send it by container ship, and then it arrives in a port in the US and then gets transferred to your hometown. You might be able to ship it by airline cargo. There might be something totally different, and a freight forwarder will be the best person to advise about that. Now, also, I mentioned FedEx and DHL.
Unless you've already fully investigated it, I wouldn't completely write it off because those companies often have huge discounts for repeat business. And if you can get a contract with them, which they contract with all kinds of small businesses, it's not just big companies, it really can be 40, 50, 60% off what you might see quoted elsewhere. So in some cases, that could actually be the best option. But whatever you do, you're absolutely correct that investigating this and kind of spending some time figuring it out is a pretty important part of this hustle. So I hope you're able to do that.
I hope that's somewhat helpful. Be sure to let us know what happens. [Music]
All right, so looking back on this week, a few things stand out per usual. And there is, in fact, a common theme that unites several of the stories that I brought to you. We started out on Monday with episode 205, the online coffee company that brings in $20,000 a month.
This is a clear target market with a clear differentiation. The coffee is called Mommy Coffee. You probably know right away who it's targeting. It is specifically for new mothers and expectant mothers. And the differentiation is it has these varying levels of caffeine so that those mothers and expectant mothers can still drink coffee but can choose what's best for them and their baby.
Now this is being done part-time. It's not a startup. It is a true side hustle. And I believe the two co-founders invested something like $15,000 each in it. So obviously that's not insignificant.
Those are real startup costs. But still, as you can hear, if you listen to that episode, they were pretty serious about this. And within a year, it's reached that level of $20,000 a month. So I really love that story. And that was followed by episode 206, the law student who creates a $6,500 a month morning routine journal.
This was actually another partnership. The Mommy Coffee is two partners, I believe. And this morning routine productivity journal is three partners, if I'm not mistaken. And they are very focused on building a set of productivity tools, almost following the definition of hustling and all the different marketing and reach out efforts that they're making. People often have a lot of questions for me about marketing.
We're definitely gonna focus on that a lot more in the fall. But if you wanna hear some creative ideas, go back and listen to that episode. And of course I linked up a bunch of resources on that show notes page as well. Then we had the Brooklyn photographer who gets paid to throw confetti at people. Pretty cool, who does that?
The busy marketing professional in Canada who fills a niche with biking wine tours. A Polish bartender living in the UK who makes money while drinking beer. Now to be fair, he doesn't actually get paid for drinking beer, that would be awesome. But still, it's pretty awesome that he gets paid while he's drinking beer. He said in that story more than once, he's been out with his friends and he checks his phone and realizes he's actually made more than a day's wages through the passive income website he set up.
And then lastly, a very creative submission from someone who started three side hustles at once and somehow still had time to write his own script for side hustle school. We called it injured Australian hustles as way to recovery. And as a result of the show, he remembered something he'd done long ago but had totally forgotten about. It turned out he'd been making 20 to $50 a month for something he had uploaded 18 months ago. And that money was coming in each month without him knowing it or without doing any work for it.
So Matthew, I hope you enjoyed that $600 bonus. Side hustle school will waive our commission from that income, it's all yours. And now in several of these stories, you can see how the person identified something that was missing or hadn't been done well. And I talked about this a couple of times through the week. Focusing on frustrations, focusing on problems is a great direction for side hustles.
So in that Viking wine tour story, for example, I believe Erin was her name and Erin was very familiar with this wine region a couple hours outside Toronto. And she knew they had wine tours but there were no bicycle tours. Now she knew in other markets and other wine regions in the US and Canada, there were such things. So she knew there was a demand for it at least in other places. And she assumed or she hoped that there would be a demand for it there.
And in fact, there was. And that side hustle is doing really well. That coffee story again, what an underserved market. Nobody was serving that market. No one was focusing on the needs of new mothers.
And so it seems mommy coffee is poised for great success. And even in a story like the confetti photo shoot photographer, that's not a huge business, but it's doing well. I think it's a couple thousand dollars a month. And she's found a really creative way to stand out in the marketplace by doing something that either no one has ever done before or at least was hardly popular. Like I'd never heard of it before.
So maybe it existed, but very uncommon. So once again, take this with you. Focus on something that is missing or hasn't been done well or frustrates you or just something that you think, hey, there's this group of people and nobody's serving them. At least not in this way that I think would be helpful. Maybe I should pursue that and see where it leads.
[Music]
All right, well, coming up this week, another set of great stories. Got something about baseball memorabilia. There's a story of a creative gadget that ends up getting funded massively through Kickstarter. Maybe even an animal story for you. So much is on the way.
And as I march toward that release of side hustle and the tour, gonna be bringing you a bunch of additional resources as well. And I think they're gonna be really helpful for a lot of listeners. So, hey listeners, as we wind up this week, I want to state or restate that you're the reason I make the show. Side hustle school is unique. It's not like other podcasts.
We don't have 90 minute long interviews with people. It is short, it is to the point. It is just a conversation between me and you. And I'm trying to teach through storytelling. I'm trying to tell you fun stories.
I hope it's entertaining, not boring. But my greater hope is that over time, this process is gonna lead you to having a success story. A side hustle of your own, an income generating project. Something that you can look at and say, you know, I made that. I did that for myself.
I never thought I'd be an entrepreneur. Maybe I still don't wanna be an entrepreneur, but look, I have this thing and it's bringing me extra income each month and that feels really good. That is the goal that I'm focused on every day with the show. I wanna give a couple of shout outs to other people who work on the show in various locations. Side hustle school is usually recorded on location in Portland, Oregon.
Although this week, much of it has been recorded in Mexico and San Francisco. It is then produced in Brooklyn, New York and Washington DC at the Panoply Studios. My production team is led by AC Valdez, also featuring Adelia Rubin. Show notes and trying to keep track of me is managed by Whitney Karinek. My cat, Liberia Gilavo is back from the meow house, ready to rock or at least sleep 20 hours a day.
Best alternate title of the week for yesterday's episode, which featured the injured Australian, who ends up teaching saxophone lessons and developing a saxophone lesson course. We thought really hard about calling it sax the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it. But sadly, that remains the runner up title. And this show is part of the Onward Project curated by Gretchen Rubin. By the way, if you don't listen to Gretchen's podcast, it's called Happier.
It is one of the best and most popular podcasts in the world, no joke. It has a similar mission or at least a similar value to side hustle school in the sense that she focuses on things to make your life happier and healthier, improve your wellbeing while also being fun to listen to. Be sure to check that out and subscribe in Apple Podcasts. In every episode, I mentioned that inspiration is good, but action is even better. I want you to take action.
I want to feature your story here. Or even if you don't want it featured on the show, I want to know that you have it. I want to know that you're working on it. I want to see you on the road this fall when I go to 100 cities and hear about your side hustle. Until then, I look forward to making this show for you every single day.
Episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time. Can't wait to see you again. I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
