This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
I'm worried my life story is boring. Well, that doesn't sound good. Oh, wait a second. This is actually the question of the episode. Okay, that's what we're talking about in a small business side hustle context.
I'm not saying that my life story is boring. I mean, it probably is. I mean, whose life story is interesting? That's the whole thing. It's like other people's lives or other people's lives.
What am I talking about? Well, a listener is asking a question. Perhaps a lot more bloggers should ask actually. And it's not just bloggers, but that's kind of where it started. If we go back a decade, two decades ago, people are kind of writing about their lives and building a little business around it.
And that turned into TikTok influencing and everything else kind of runs the gamut. So you've got this whole concept of like, follow my journey. Follow my journey as I take an RV across the country. Follow my journey as I become a minimalist. Follow my health journey or my exercise journey or whatever it is, it could be anything, like a transformation journey.
And the question you always have to ask, at least if you're interested in monetizing that is, like, why should people care? You know, like if I'm your grandma, I might be interested in your journey, but what about everyone else? And you really need to have a good answer for that question. If you're trying to build a business in this way, this kind of lifestyle business can be attractive under certain circumstances. Like there's probably people that you follow online because you're interested in their lives.
And maybe you have purchased a subscription from them or a product or something else. But there's lots of other people out there that are like, follow my life and you're not interested. So you need to think about what is the key to captivating an audience with a life experience. And I think it's not just in the stories themselves, but it's in how they're framed and connected to some sort of actionable insight and some sort of actual product. Actionable insight, actual product or service.
So let's talk about it in the context of Alex here. Alex wants to leverage his unique experiences as a backdrop for content, but what exactly do you do? How do you craft a course service or something else around it? Okay, that's the question. My answer after this quick shout out to our sponsor.
[Music]
Hello, I'm Alex in Dublin. I've always wanted to start a blog about my life experiences, travels and the lessons I've learned along the way. However, I'm hesitant because I'm not sure if my personal stories would be interesting to others. How can I gauge interest or make my life stories appealing to a wider audience? [Music]
All right, well, I kind of set this up a little bit in the beginning.
And I don't mean to apply too skeptical of a lens here. I just think it is really important whenever you have a business idea to think what are the objections to this idea? What are the potential problems? Why might this not work out as amazing as I hope? And as part of that, hopefully you can then identify the value in your idea.
And the value has to be kind of front and center. And so for a project where it's like sharing the lessons and experiences that you've learned along the way, what is the value? How is that helpful in a really clear and specific way for other people? Because the goal is to then transform whatever that learning is into some kind of product or service. And when you do that right, it can be very powerful.
If you don't do it right, then it's kind of vague. It's a little bit vague and nebulous, and that just doesn't work so much these days. Maybe in the beginning, if you were the very first person to take off in the RV, if you were the very first digital nomad, if you were the very first person to go to every country in the world, and I certainly wasn't, by the way, or whatever it is, then maybe if you're first, right? But assuming you're not going to be first, then you need another hook. And I think the hook is actually thinking about, okay, what is, again, that value?
How can I find a solution to a problem? Really, if you focus on solving specific problems, you're gonna do much better than focusing on my life lessons and what I've learned and such. I mean, life lessons are interesting. I just don't think they are monetizable in that way, unless they are something truly extraordinary. So I always think about that.
What is the product or service I can start based on my experience, not just sharing the lessons, but how do I productize this? And there's so many examples of this throughout the "Side Hustle School" archives or in the "100 Side Hustles" book of how people have taken their life experience and then turned it into a product or a service. So it's not to discourage Alex or anybody else in any way. It's more to kind of nudge them or encourage them to think about that value question, think about why other people should care and how they can create products and services, as opposed to just starting with the general ideas. That's my two cents, of course.
Take what lands, ignore what doesn't. If you have a question, listeners, or feedback, or your own story, sidehustleschool.com, much more is coming up, new episode every day. And we'll continue to feature questions and updates as listeners launch and grow their projects. Thanks for tuning in today. This is Chris Guillebeau for "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
