This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey friends, thanks for tuning in today. I hope you are well wherever you are in the world. This is Chris Guillebeau, your host of Side Hustle School. Today we're gonna hear a question from Teresa in Omaha. She is passionate about democracy.
She's an activist and she's looking to inspire others to become more active in their local government. You know, often when we think about politics and creating change, you know, whatever your beliefs are, whatever you're passionate about, we often think about like these big federal things or international stuff, you know, foreign relations. And really, if you wanna create change, like the most obvious place and perhaps the most impactful place is, you know, in your local governments on the city council or, you know, just going to meetings and such. You know, some people do that and a lot of people don't, right, like most people are very uninvolved. So Teresa's idea, it's one part mission, you know, philosophy, vision, and another part, Side Hustle, which I love, I respect.
It's always cool to see like, you know, how can we find a mashup there if there is a good mashup to be found, sometimes there's not. But her idea is to sell a democracy and action subscription using historical stories to get people excited about creating change today. But she's stuck on figuring out the best way to execute her idea. Often in these situations, you're like, okay, here's the problem that bothers me. I want to do something about it, but what is the best solution?
What is the best? And then when it comes to business, you know, what is the best offer? How do I monetize this or create a commercial package of some kind around this vision? So I love challenges like this. We're going to hear a quick shout out to our sponsor.
Thank you so much, sponsors. Thank you listeners, really appreciate you. And then we're going to hear directly from Teresa. [Music]
Hello, my name is Teresa, reaching out to you from Omaha, Nebraska. I'm a history teacher with a passion for civic education.
I've come up with an idea to sell a democracy and action subscription. The idea is to share engaging historical stories while also empowering subscribers with resources and prompts to be more active in their local government. While the concept is clear in my mind, I'm not quite sure about the best way to package and sell this as a subscription. Should it be a newsletter, a podcast, an online course or something else? How can I make it accessible, engaging and effective?
I feel like I'm close, but I don't know where to go from here. [Music]
Teresa, thank you for calling in. I thought about this question a lot. In fact, I wrote some notes and then I ended up rewriting them because I was, at first I was giving you a lot of information and people don't always need a lot of information, right? Like my listeners often remind me of that.
So thank you listeners for keeping me on my toes. Often people want to know not just like, what are my 27 options, but what should I do, right? Because there's always a lot you could do. What should you do? And so just very briefly to go into some options, not 27, just a couple.
You know, when I think about, okay, a subscription, you know, there's some kind of content that's recurring that could be, you know, podcasts, newsletter, online course, to go with Teresa's examples. You know, those are common examples for a good reason because, you know, they work and, you know, it's relatively easy to figure out how do I do those things, right? At least if you know what you want to say, that's always the most challenging thing. Everything else is much easier once you know the answer to that. And then I had some thoughts about like doing webinars and workshops and well, how does social media play into this and all this?
But what I realized was what's most important are something like this that is designed to kind of share a passion, like, I don't know, start something or nudge people towards taking action in such a local yet powerful way. There has to be a community element. In fact, the community element should probably be front and center. So it's almost like, not just what is all the content I can share, but how can I bring people together so that they can share resources and collaborate and such. So, you know, then the first question I would have is, okay, what else is out there like this?
And let's do a little bit of surveying. Let me do some market research. And then I'm gonna see, okay, whatever is out there, what is it missing? What does it lack? And then how can I build a community around what I identify as the problem?
I think that is the way to approach this is to think, okay, you know, how can I bring people together to communicate this message? And also, I think Teresa said something about sharing historical stories. That's important. I don't mean to diminish the content. I just think the reason why someone's gonna be attracted to this is more for community and less for the content.
So I would be community first. And if you start with that as your focus, that kind of drives other considerations, like which platform is best, which medium do I use to then attract people's interest and attention in it. So there's a lot more to be done from there, but that I think is the path I would take. That's the starting point I would go down. And other decisions would relate to how I focus on community.
That's my take, Teresa. Again, good luck. It sounds like a wonderful thing. Listeners, if you have a question or an idea, something you're working on, sidehustleschool.com/questions, or just something you're trying to figure out, or if you're not sure what to do, that's like whatever you're at, wherever you're at. We'll be featuring them throughout the year, along with updates from listeners as they launch and grow their projects.
Thanks so much for being out there. I'll be back again tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
