This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up, what's up, welcome back. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to a new week of Side Hustle School. Now I'm really excited because every day on this show I'm telling different true stories of people who create new sources of income, not just getting another job, not doing contract labor, but by building something for themselves using the skills they already have. And most of the time these people do it without quitting their day job, which is the whole point of the show.
I don't believe everyone should go and quit their job right away, if ever, but I do believe very much that everybody should have money coming in from different sources. So if you agree with that, this show is for you. Today we're gonna talk about Girl Scouts. Now in the Side Hustle book, I had this whole section called "Sell Like a Girl Scout." And I've gotten a lot of emails and questions about that. Best way to understand it is to actually read that chapter, but the short version is when I say sell like a Girl Scout, I'm talking about how during Girl Scout cookie season, which if you're not in the United States, you may not be familiar with Girl Scout cookies.
If that's the case, it is in fact a tragedy. You should go online and see if you can import them somehow because for a short period of time each year, the Girl Scouts, also called Girl Guides in some other countries, will set up shop on a table in the street, usually outside a retail location or some other place where there's a lot of people walking by. I think in some areas they also go door to door and they're selling these delicious cookies. Now it's not that difficult for them to sell these cookies because they're so delicious and everyone knows it. So when I say sell like a Girl Scout, I'm talking about making something that has a really clear benefit and finding the people who really want it.
Like I said, there's more about that in the book, but today we're gonna talk about a lifelong Girl Scout, someone who was a Scout herself for more than a decade and then a troop leader also for more than a decade, eventually steps away from being active in her local troop when she has a child of her own, but uses this lifelong love and devotion to the Girl Scouts to create her own side hustle. In fact, we're gonna say she earned her side hustle badge. And not only that, she's also earning $3,500 a month, creating resources for other troop leaders. Now there's several lessons for you today. We're gonna talk about eBooks and guides.
I know a lot of people have interest in that and questions about it. I probably said before that a lot of the market for that has shifted and people are interested in other kinds of media. And it's not nearly as easy as it used to be to sell eBooks and guides. However, there are clearly exceptions because this woman is selling these products at a very low price point, something like three to $5 each, which we'll also talk about. But because they're so helpful and because she's able to reach so many scout leaders, that's how she's able to earn up to $3,500 a month, which is pretty remarkable.
I'll tell you all about it, how she does it, and what it is meant to her in today's episode right after this quick little shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
For Jody Carlson, the Girl Scouts had been a huge part of life for over 25 years. During 12 of those years, she'd been a scout herself and then spent 13 as a troop leader. But when her son was born in March, 2015, Jody decided it was time to step down from her position and focus her time on her young family. She also had a day job working for a large auto insurance company.
Between those responsibilities at her job and her home life, she didn't have a lot of free time, but she still missed the volunteering and organizing she devoted so many years to. She knew she couldn't commit to a schedule with lots of fixed appointments, like she'd have to do as a troop leader, but she still wanted to find a meaningful way to contribute to the community and inspire young visionaries. Now the year before her son was born, Jody had created a website to share what her local troop was doing. That troop was number 80671, based in a small city in Ohio along the banks of Lake Erie. She also wanted to share thoughts and advice with other leaders around the country based on all of her experience.
She'd written a short ebook and she offered it for sale at just $5, simply enough to cover the gas for her to get to meetings. And she was surprised that after six months, people from the other side of the country were still buying and reading it. She felt that this site, if she could expand her products and the information on it, would be the perfect way to help the community and make a little money to put toward her student loans. So now that she was no longer active as a troop leader, but still had the desire to be involved and contribute in some way, she decided to upgrade. She called the revised project, Leader Connecting Leaders.
The initial startup costs for this project were a grand total of $16. That was just the cost for the domain name. She did all of the site's design herself. She was already paying to access Adobe products for her day job, and she had access to a free hosting service. As she upgraded the project, she didn't need to find more money, but she did want to find out a bit more about the people who were coming to her site.
She added a line of code from Google Analytics to that website and discovered that most of her visitors were coming from Pinterest. This made her think if she paid more attention to that platform, Pinterest, created some images for each of her articles and uploaded them, perhaps that would allow her to generate traffic even months after the article was initially published. Now, a lot of the information on LeaderConnectingLeaders.com is given away for free. She's got long-form articles, tutorials, and how-to guides, giving her readers a lot of the information they need to run a successful and entertaining Girl Scout troop. But Jodi puts a small price of between three to $5, that's all, on some of the specific resources like activity booklets, printouts, and games.
And troop leaders can purchase these with a couple of clicks and then download them immediately. And from these low-priced products, Jodi is now able to generate between 3,000 and $3,500 a month in net income. In fact, a lot of this is passive income because once she's created these guides and she's got those images on Pinterest, Girl Scout leaders from anywhere can discover the site and they can go there at any time and make a purchase. Now, to be clear, even though some of that income is passive, Jodi's still spending time on this project. She spends about four hours a month using some social media tools, including Hootsuite, Tailwind, and Board Booster.
I'm gonna link all those up in the show notes. And that helps her readers, site visitors, people who follow her on social networks, see content from her even when she's not on the computer. She also sends multiple emails a month to an email as she started, which provides extra information to her most loyal readers, lets them know about new articles, new ideas, and new products. She says that building this trust, building these relationships with people, has been a key component to her success. If there's any secret sauce, she says, it's understanding the Scout leader's pain points.
After 25 years in the Girl Scouts, 13 of them spent as a leader, she says she knows those pain points very well. She creates products that would have allowed her to solve her own problems. She writes the copy in an empathetic way that shows she understands the struggles of other leaders. And that's been a big part of creating that trust from other troop leaders who become customers and readers. $3,500 a month is pretty great, but Jodi says she also loves the feedback she gets from the leaders she's been able to help.
She often hears that something she's made has transformed a Scout meeting or an excursion for the better. She especially likes it when they come from towns and cities that are far away from where she lives. And she's also hooked on side hustles. Jodi now has the idea to start something completely different, which maybe we'll feature at some point, because she obviously isn't busy enough with her young family, her day job in this one. But she says even if she does, she wants to continue making useful products for Girl Scout leaders.
Now, if only she could solve my most pressing Girl Scout problem, how to get those cookies when it's not cookie season. If she could solve that, I'm pretty sure the solution would be worth a lot more than $3 to $5. [Music]
All right, so as I said, a bunch of lessons here. Some of them go straight to some core principles of side hustling, be helpful, be useful, think of something that other people want, and then don't just stay in the idea stage, but actually create an offer, create something that is for sale, so that people you're helping can say, "Yes, this is helpful, here's my money." It's valuable to me, I'm happy to make a small investment. Also that principle of passive income, of being able to create an asset, so that when she's busy with all of her other stuff in life, with her young family, with her day job, whatever else she's doing, her next side hustle, she can still log into her bank account and see money coming in from this project that she set up, which is of course pretty awesome.
I also like that she installed Google Analytics on that website in the early days. This is a really simple thing that you should do. If you have any kind of website, register on Google Analytics, it is free. You're gonna get some code you'll put in your website, and over time that's gonna give you a lot of data about the people who are coming to your website. It will show you where they're coming from, in some cases what they're searching for.
It can be really helpful, and as I said, there's no cost, you only set it up once and you're done, easy. I also love the example of this kind of content marketing, because e-books and guides are clearly not dead. I do think in a lot of industries and a lot of topics, it's a lot harder than it used to be, to just make an e-book and put it out there, and you're gonna make tons of money, but clearly in some cases it still works. I think in this case she's just hit on this very clear need, she is super qualified, she's clearly an authority in this space, and she's taken a lot of time to build relationships with all these troop leaders. Like you can clearly tell that her heart is in it.
Now on that last point, I do wonder something, and let me just explain this before I get complaints. Some folks who've been listening for a while might know what I'm gonna say next. I kind of wonder about that low price point of three to five dollars each. I do wonder like why can it be a bit more than that? Now I understand that this is for the Girl Scouts, I understand that she wants to serve these troop leaders, I understand it can't be really high priced at all, totally get it, but still for the kind of resource that's gonna make your life easier, potentially save you hours in planning activities, it might even help you have a better activity or excursion, isn't that worth a bit more than three dollars, I think.
So here's what I would suggest to someone in this situation, because I don't necessarily think the advice is like all of a sudden overnight, everything that's three to five dollars becomes $20. That's not what I'm suggesting. In this case what I would suggest is, okay keep those three to five dollar products there, that's fine, but also make a product that costs $20. Also make something that is a kit that includes like all of this stuff, and maybe that's like a $150 value with all the different exercises and activities and tips and lessons and stories from the trenches, but you're not gonna sell it for $150, you're gonna sell it for the low price of $67 or $49. The point is, why not build something that is a bit higher than that three to five dollar price point, and that way you do have an option for people who have maybe purchased one of the lower priced products and said this is great, like I want more, like what's next?
So that's my question, perhaps my challenge to Jodi and her abundance of free time, why not make something that provides even more value, and even if you want to sell it for less than its worth, I totally understand and respect that, but sell it for more than three to five dollars. Now if that turns out to be successful by the way, I'm not asking for a kickback, but I wouldn't say no to a box of Tagalongs, those are personally my favorite kind of Girl Scout cookies, peanut butter, chocolate, delicious, probably very bad for you, but sold by the Girl Scouts, they can't be that bad. Well congrats to Jodi on this big success, can't wait to see what happens next, and for you out there I hope this was helpful, every day I try to remind you that inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better, I hope that you'll take action on some of these ideas you hear about so that you can have a success story just like this one, and I mentioned a bunch of resources in this episode, if you swing by sidehustleschool.com slash three one seven, we'll have detailed show notes including links to everything I talked about, that's sidehustleschool.com slash three one seven, and this now concludes episode three one seven, thank you so much for listening, I'll be back tomorrow with another story, I am Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]
