This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
All right, all right, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name's Chris Guillebeau. Today on the podcast, we have Alex. Alex is an engineer from Alberta, Canada.
He's keen to start his own side hustle, but is short on time. Isn't that just about everybody? Like I don't mean to generalize, but don't we all want to make extra money? Aren't we all pretty short on time? I mean, that's kind of my target market here.
If you're listening to Side Hustle School and you fit that description, awesome. Every single day I make this podcast for you, entirely for you. Now, Alex specifically came across the concept of business boot camps at some point. Not sure if it was a different podcast or something else, but he heard about this idea of a boot camp. He found the idea of fully setting up a side hustle within a few days to be pretty appealing.
And in fact, a lot of people would like that, right? So he's wondering like, do these boot camps exist? How can I find them and so on? Now here's a little bit of a spoiler, which is not too far in advance because the whole answer is coming up in just like less than a minute, but still. Short version is I'm not sure I actually have a great recommendation for Alex, but I'm going to do my best to be helpful.
So when I don't always have a direct answer, I try to think, well, what else can I do to maybe add value to the question? And not just to the person asking the question, but perhaps to you as well, our listeners. Thank you for being out there listeners, you're amazing. I appreciate our sponsors as well. I got a short little message for them, or at least on their behalf.
I guess it's technically for you on their behalf. And then let's talk about business boot camps. [Music]
Hello, thanks for taking my call. My name is Alex and I'm an engineer from Edmonton, Alberta. I've always been interested in entrepreneurship and I've been toying with the idea of starting my own side hustle.
But between a demanding job and family obligations, finding time to set everything up has been a challenge. I thought of something that could be the perfect solution, a small business boot camp where people work online to do everything they need within a few short days, or maybe a number of evenings over the course of two weeks. The idea of getting everything ready at once is appealing. But now I'm wondering, does this exist? Can you recommend a good boot camp that I could explore?
[Music]
Hey, Alex, thanks for the question. Hope all is well with you. I respect the idea of trying to get your side hustle started quickly. In fact, I wrote a whole book about this. It wasn't side hustle in two days, but it was side hustle in 27 days.
Actually, the title was "Side Hustle" from idea to income in 27 days. And so the idea there was not 27 days full time. It was like, do one thing a day for the better part of a month and you could fast track a little bit. You could go a little bit slower depending on your situation and such. But that was the idea was like, everybody's busy.
How can we give them a plan to be up and running in a pretty short period of time? Now, as for the idea of doing it in this structured intensive period, I mean, the first thing I think of is startup weekend. So if you're not familiar with startup weekend, I have no affiliation, but they've been around for a long time and they're doing these weekend events all over the world. The only caveat I would have, and I know that they're good people, I've heard from people who've been through the program, but it is a very startup focused methodology. So if you know anything about side hustle school, we are kind of trying to provide a different perspective here.
So some of the concepts that you might learn in a program like that are not necessarily the same thing you would do if you're trying to start your own one person business, which I'm really focused on. So it's not necessarily about coding something unless you are a coder, if you are, that's one thing, but it's about how do you use a skill you already have to go from, again, idea to income? And so a process for creating a startup in a couple of days is a little bit different than the process of creating a side hustle. So maybe at some point somebody will do side hustle weekend. I did some workshops in the first year or two of side hustle school.
I haven't done them since. I just kind of focused on doing the podcast and trying to reach people that way. But maybe at some point. Just two more thoughts here really quickly. One, don't underestimate the power of a supportive community.
Locally, online, there are other folks out there who are trying to do this, right? So connect with them. And then second, you really just need a system that works for you, whether it is in this compressed period of time or it's more developed, more elongated, I should say. The bigger thing is to be thinking like, what is my idea? How do I turn that idea into an offer?
What are the practical steps to solve the logistical needs of setting up a website, if that's what you need to do, creating social media accounts, making sure you're signed up with a merchant account to take people's money, you know, that kind of thing. So my book might help with that. Some kind of business boot camp might help with that. But you can also kind of figure a lot out on your own. So I want you to feel empowered.
And we have lots of stories of people that are like, I never did this before. And I just started trying it and I realized it actually wasn't that difficult. So that's what I'll leave you with here today. Alex and everybody else, thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in.
New episode coming out tomorrow. New one the day after that. Next week, my book is out, Gonzo Capitalism. That's all about how to make money in an economy that hates you. I'm excited to share with you more.
It's available for pre-order now. Of course, I'll be on book tour next week and beyond. So I'll sign off for now, but I hope you'll join me again tomorrow and beyond. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
[Music]
From the Onward Project.
