This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
We've got all kinds of people out there in the side hustle school world. Thank you for being part of it. You are an important part of it. I was going to say thank you for being a small part of it, but it's not small. It is important.
And today's listener is an aspiring political lobbyist. At least this is their side hustle idea, which is kind of interesting. They want to get paid to lobby for causes they believe in. Lobbying, of course, is an entire industry. There's an average salary of $110,000 in the United States, at least, if you are a lobbyist.
And of course, there's a big range there. Some lobbyists get paid multiple six figures. And naturally, some are just getting started, so they make less. But there are more than 12,000 registered lobbyists in the United States. And of course, it's not just an American thing.
You've got lobbying going on between governments and industry all over the world. So our listener wants to get in on the fun. But of course, this isn't job school. I'm not trying to help people get jobs. You already got a job, right?
You're trying to do something else to create entrepreneurial freedom for yourself, to make extra money. It's side hustle school. So can she do it for passive income as a business, business/side hustle, instead of a career? How does that work? Well, I'm not sure I know entirely, but let's look at her question, see if we can provide some sort of helpful direction.
It's all coming up after this quick message from our sponsor. Stay tuned. Hi, this is Laura, and I love the show. Thanks for all the stories and tips. So here's my question. We all know there's too much money in politics,
and much of it goes to professional lobbyists. At the same time, that's how things get done. The lobbyists push for their cause, and sometimes they're able to deliver for the companies or causes who pay them. Long story short, I'm wondering about lobbying as a side hustle. My thought is to design it as an agency, not just a part-time job.
In other words, I compete for contracts with the promise that I could actually cost a lot less than full-time lobbyists. What do you think? Is it time for me to storm the capital? Just kidding. I wouldn't do that.
But let me know what you think of the lobbying idea. All right, Laura, thanks so much for listening. Thank you for the question. I do respect and love and admire creative thinking. And as Laura mentions here, most lobbyists do this as a career.
I don't know much about the industry of lobbying. I do know it is a full-time job in an entire industry, probably too large of an industry. But whenever there is a big industry like this, it's often ripe for disruption. There are all kinds of people and companies and startups that try to look at the problems of this industry and say, "How can we do it better, cheaper, more effectively, and so on?" Perhaps fairly, I guess, but that's a whole other conversation. So just thinking about the business side of it, what I would do is study up.
I would research a lot. The thing is lobbying, I would imagine, is perhaps the ultimate networking field, more than any other maybe, because your skill as a lobbyist is being able to get meetings with important people. So if you aren't able to do that from the outside, then you might struggle with the inside game. I think it's much more of like, who do you know and who can you get to know? How can you leverage your relationships to achieve the results that your industry or company or whoever is paying you is expecting? Now, I do probably think there's something to
be said for the agency model. But as for side hustling, most companies have high expectations from their lobbyists. So it seems like a pretty intense world to me. I'm not sure they're looking for something part-time. So in conclusion, I would just research a lot. I would talk to people.
I would go on LinkedIn and look for every person who's a lobbyist. I guess there's 12,000. So that's a lot of them. I might narrow it down first. But the point is I would try to get to know people and ask them questions and see where is the value at. Somewhere there is a value add that can,
of course, by nature, bring a good value to whoever is paying, but also be good for me if I'm in that position of trying to compete to do it as a side hustle or start some kind of agency. I think that is the opening path and there's much more to be done from there. But hopefully that gets you started. Let me know how it goes. And listeners, if you've got a question, you're trying to figure something out or work out your own side hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll continue to feature them every week throughout the holiday
season and beyond whatever you're up to out there. I am cheering you on and I hope you'll continue to listen. It's free. It's available every single day. And that's all for now. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
