This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
>> Hello and welcome. You are listening to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this week is all about skills. Yesterday, you heard about Dan, the hospital administrator who became a high-end tutor teaching database lessons. Today is all about how an Ohio IT director earned more than $31,000 helping people set up their websites.
Now, I'm also going to share something really important at the end of the story. Over the years, I've noticed how people focus on the wrong things when they're starting their first hustle. This happens over and over. If you internalize what you learn here, it really has the potential to make a huge difference in your next steps. So stick around for that and it will be helpful for you.
Now, our story. Day after day, Shannon Madern found herself stuck working in a windowless office dominated by variations of beige. Beige walls, a beige desk, and what felt like a beige light. She often felt drained, depressed, and imprisoned by her job. Shannon needed a change and she knew she'd have to stop complaining and start taking action to make that happen.
One day, she was completing these dreaded monthly report filings she had to compile, and she noticed that a WordPress site she had built for her employer had pulled in more than $7,000 in profit that month. She knew that she could put together a similar site in under a week, but who would hire her? At her day job, Shannon had been the go-to WordPress guru, and she'd been building websites for the better part of eight years. She noticed that a lot of people had interesting business ideas, but they lacked the skills to put together an appealing website to drive clients to. A few days later, she was at the gym and got to talking with a woman who asked what she did for a living.
Shannon mentioned that she did IT work for a non-profit and freelance web design on the side, despite not having any actual clients. The other woman mentioned that her business was looking for someone to help them with their website and suggested that they meet up for coffee. That single conversation landed Shannon her first gig working on another company's website, and she began to think more about using her skills to make more money on the side. The only problem was that design work took a lot of time, and she already had a day job. That's when she decided instead of building websites for people, she'd show them how to do it themselves using the popular WordPress platform.
It was surprisingly easy to start. The very first day she put a link to a free course in a Facebook group for entrepreneurs, someone signed up for a mailing list that she'd created literally the day before. They then purchased a product she recommended, and Shannon earned her first affiliate commission. Right away, she knew she was on to something that people needed. She called her side hustle WordPress BFF, her best friends forever, and positioned it as an alternative to general consulting or all-purpose tech help.
I asked Shannon who her ideal customer was, and she ran through a list. Her ideal customer was a woman in her mid-20s or early 30s, who wants to have more control over her schedule and income. She may want to travel or stay home with her kids, or simply run a business from home. But she's not fulfilled with what she's doing, and she has more to offer the world. Now, here's the best part.
As Shannon finished the list, she said, "Oh, wait, that's me." She was her own ideal customer, and she understood their needs better than anyone. The first year of the hustle, she earned more than $20,000 working part-time, and by midpoint of year two, when I last spoke with her, she had already crossed $31,000 in profit. Have you ever heard the expression "fake it till you make it"? If you come from a traditional background, where you've always worked a regular job, you're familiar with the process of getting that job, and you know everything about getting your resume together, applying, interviewing. Well, none of those things are how it works inside hustling.
In a lot of ways, what Shannon is doing, she's essentially an advisor, or a consultant, or a coach to her clients, and there's no school for any of those things. There's no qualification process. There's no bachelor's degree in advising. There's no consulting school. You don't have to go through some extensive qualification process or training program to start doing these things.
Whenever I say these things, I get complaints, and people say, "Oh, this is dangerous." People have to be qualified, and besides, you can't be a surgeon or a police officer. You can't just decide to do those things. Obviously, that's not what I'm talking about inside a hustle school. If you go back and you consider the 30 episodes that we've had thus far, how many do you think required some sort of certification process, or mandatory training, or outside endorsement from some governing body, or anything else where the person couldn't start their hustle without someone else's approval? It's either very few or none at all.
Think about Jake the guitar teacher with the most awesome guitar lessons in the universe from episode 23. Think about Julia the caricature artist in episode 15. Do you think people want to inspect their degrees? Do you think people say, "Oh, Jake, he's a really good musician, he's a great teacher, but did he go to Berkeley College of Music?" This is true even with the very few stories I feature that do require advanced technological skills. Go back to episode 12 with Steven.
Steven Peterson is the developer who made Route C, an app that helps people access public transit data in the San Francisco Bay area. You might be listening to this episode on your phone right now, and on your phone, you have a bunch of apps. Now, when you decide to use an app, when you download it, start getting used to it, are you concerned about the education that the person who made that app has? Do you ask yourself, "Hey, this app looks pretty cool, but what was the degree that the developer had? Where did he or she go to college?" No one cares. You care if the app works, and if it helps you.
If you purchase personalized candy hearts way back episode 3, do you care that that person who started the business has no background in manufacturing or custom printing? What you care about is, does the service live up to its promise? I want you to take this with you today. You are already qualified, and just as you are already qualified, here's the other side of it. Nobody's going to come along and give you permission.
Nobody's going to nudge you and say, "Okay, now you're ready, now it's time." A lot of people in life are waiting for someone to give them that permission, whether it's to start their hustle or just to follow a dream, to do something that they've always wanted to do. That outside permission is never going to come. You have to take it. You have to take it for yourself. Remember, you are qualified, you have permission, and the next steps are yours.
Your hustle is waiting for you to take action. Your story is your own. It's going to develop in its own way. Probably not the same way as it did for Shannon today, but if you listen to these stories and you begin applying them to your own hustle, you will see results over time. Remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better.
If you want to find the show notes for today's episode, go to sidehustleschool.com/3030. I'd love it if you could share this with your friends on social media or wherever you hang out online. Use #Sodasleschool. I'm Chris Guillebeau. I will see you tomorrow with another episode.
