This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Oh, hey there, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is the weekly recap. I am your host, Chris Guillebeau, and we have just finished week number 46. I want to welcome any new listeners who have joined us this week. I continue to hear from folks who just discovered
the show very often because one of their friends has told them about it. One of our longtime listeners who's been enjoying it and wants other people to know how to create a new source of income without quitting your job. If you are new, that's what the show is about. We have a single mission, an episode every day, all focused on that topic. How can you create more options for yourself? How can you build a little bit more freedom in your life? How
can you just make some extra money so that you can do the things that are important to you? And most importantly, how can you do that without stressing yourself out when you're already a really busy person and don't have a ton of time? And if you didn't hear the check in message I did this week, just a short little episode, a couple minutes long, I made an announcement that Side Hustle school will continue next year in 2018. Now, when I started back in January 1, I made a commitment to making an episode every single day for 365 days. And I said, if you commit to making this part of your routine, I commit to being here as well. I want to help you succeed in this process. All of these stories that I'm telling you,
I want to be able to have your story at some point. Or even if you don't want to be featured, at least I want to be able to say like, look, we did this together. We made this thing happen for you. This idea that you've been thinking about for a while, or maybe you just heard about the Side Hustle concept, but you think, yeah, that sounds good. Like how can I get that? So that was the commitment I made. And as the year came to an end, especially when
I went out on tour, people started asking me like every night, hey, what's going to happen? Like is the show going to continue? And I can be completely truthful in saying that doing the show has been one of the best things I've ever done. I've been connecting with people and writing a blog, writing books, doing meetups and workshops and events around the world for nearly a decade now. But this was my first year to do podcasting. And I
was greatly surprised myself at just how many people were out there interested in it. And not just a number of people, but the enthusiasm and the active participation of so many of you guys, like that is honestly what has led me to say, okay, I'm going to do it all over again 2018. And when I say do it all over again, I don't mean like going back to the beginning and telling you the same stories, like we are lining up all different stories for next year. There's some other tweaks and improvements we want to make. I want to continue to evolve the show in response to your needs based on what I hear from people at the events in my email every day on the voicemail, social media, etc. So if this is helpful to you,
and you've been enjoying it, you've been wondering, okay, what happens next? Well, I am not going anywhere. So if you're new, you're not missing out, it's still great to go back and listen to some of the archives to catch up a bit. They're all free, you can download them and listen whenever you want. But you can also look forward to depending on the show to be there for you going into next year. And in this recap today, I want to tell you two stories
that I've gotten in just the past week that kind of illustrate why I like to do side hustle – why it's going to continue – and the impact it's making. Now the first one comes from Audrey. Audrey writes in and says, "I just wanted to share my side hustle progress with you. Exactly the next day after I finished reading Side Hustle, the book, I decided to reach out to 15 companies to see if they would like to utilize my services, which is helping small businesses maintain an online presence by posting on their social media accounts. Within only 30 minutes, I got a call back. I was completely unprepared, but they ended
up wanting to move forward and I officially got my first client. Right now, it's just an additional few hundred dollars a month. We're on a month-to-month contract, but nonetheless, getting such a quick response was totally motivating to keep going. I'm still learning and making things up as I go, but I'm hoping to get at least a few more clients, so I'm no longer completely dependent on the income from my day job." Again, that was from Audrey. Audrey, thank you so much for that note. Congratulations. What you mentioned here about getting your
first client, your first customer, is exactly what I'm trying to do with all of the listeners of the show, making your first few hundred dollars, because as you experienced, it feels great. I'm so glad you're able to do that. Story number two comes from Devon in Vancouver, British Columbia. Devon writes in to say, "Hey, Chris, how's the tour going? I was at your very first Side Hustle School workshop in Vancouver, BC, and I listened to your podcast right from the beginning. Well, guess what?
It's all happening. If you don't remember, my side hustle is called Fluster. It's a social card game that uses unusual questions to inspire thought-provoking and hilarious conversations. Basically, it creates memorable and deeply connective moments between humans. I've been creating a prototype, making a video, and writing copy over the past few months, and we are now live on Kickstarter. Needless to say, we're pretty excited about this. We'd
love for you to take a look at flustergame.com/kickstarter. Thanks for your part in helping me get to this point where I can say it finally feels like it's on the horizon. All the best, Devon." Well, Devon, thank you so much. Congratulations to you, too. This is super awesome. I did
go and look at that Kickstarter. I shared it on Twitter. I'm going to put it in the show notes as well so other listeners can check it out. But at the time of this recording, Devon has already raised $5,000 for this project. He has a $13,000 goal, and so far he's got 109 backers. And yeah, it's also a side hustle. He wants it to be a money-making project.
After the campaign, the goal is to turn it into e-commerce sales or some kind of wholesale sales. He's still working on that, but it definitely seems like a great beginning. All right, so speaking of stories, I would love to hear yours. Do you have a side hustle story? Have you done something this year? Are you working on it right now? Has the book
helped you in some way? Please do let me know. I'd love to share more stories with the community, and I also just like to hear them myself, to be totally honest and selfish. It's really fun to hear what you guys are doing. You can always send an email into podcast@sidehustleschool.com.
You can also make a little voice note with your phone and send it to that same address. Or if you prefer to just dial a number, that's fine, too. We have this hustle hotline. It's called 8449-HUSTLE. That's 844-948-7853. Or always, of course, hit me up on social media,
hit 93 countries on Instagram. Chris Guilavo, my name on Twitter or Facebook. That's G-U-I-L-L-E-B-E-A-U. But in terms of stories, sometimes it's easier to send an email or do a voice recording just to make sure I don't miss it. Okay, so I'm going to do a quick little look back on the episodes of this week and a preview of what's to come. First, a brief shout out to this week's
sponsor. All right, I want to talk briefly about just a couple of the episodes this week. Of course, I encourage you to listen to all of them, but I know you're busy. That's why we keep them short. It's also why I do this recap. So a couple that I'd like to highlight
for you, episode 317, where we started the week off, Lifelong Girl Scout earns her side hustle badge and $3,500 a month. This is really interesting because it's just a simple content business. What I mean is content, she's writing ebooks. She's selling these ebooks for $3 to $5 each, super, super low priced. But she's clearly got a lot of volume because it's adding up to that impressive $3,500 a month total. And my encouragement
to her in that episode, my strong encouragement, in fact, is to create at least one higher price product or perhaps a compilation of all of her products. And when I say higher priced, I'm not talking about expensive, I'm talking about $20 for a higher priced product, or if it's a compilation of all of her stuff, maybe add up what the retail value of that would be, and then discount it for 30%. So perhaps it's the $47 bundle or something. If she did that, I would be amazed if she doesn't see a very significant increase in her income. It's not about trying to charge Girl Scout troop leaders a lot more money. She can still keep it low priced,
but $3 to $5 is really, really low. So keep those ebooks, but do think about developing something else. Her name is Jodi. So Jodi, if it works and you do increase your income, all that money is yours to keep. I just asked for a box or two of Tagalongs. Those are my favorite
Girl Scout cookies, just saying. I also really liked episode 319 from landscaper to podcast producer earning $4,000 a month. And there was a phrase in that episode that I've been thinking about over the past couple of days. This guy discovers his side hustle in what he called the trifecta of passion, skill, and opportunity. And I thought that was so great because not every side hustle has to meet this trifecta. You may just stumble on something that's a good opportunity.
And my philosophy with side hustling is you don't have to think too hard about it. Like if you see money lying under a rock, you should pick it up. And this is contrary to a lot of typical entrepreneurial advice or maybe things you hear on Shark Tank. Creating an extra income source for yourself without quitting your job is quite different from trying to create a startup or something that's huge in scale. But it is nice. And I think it's the kind of things that lead people to eventually
quit their jobs when they do find the trifecta. When it's not just a good opportunity, but it's also something they're really excited about. And it's something that they're good at. That's why it's important to have all three because you could be really excited about something, but not that great at it. Like I sometimes talk about my inability to fix anything mechanical. I have no
mechanical skills whatsoever. I don't know how to do any kind of car maintenance. The joke I say, which is sadly based in reality, is that I used to be able to put in light bulbs and that was it. But then light bulbs started getting complicated because now some of them, it's not just like screwing in. You got this other thing you got to take out and it's complicated. You got to make
sure you don't get electrocuted. Oh my God. So in this case, not only do I not have the skill, I'm also not passionate about it. I have no desire to get better at that. My life actually got a lot better when I just accepted that and said, okay, this is not something I'm good at. I'm going to
do the things I am good at. But just imagine if all of a sudden I became passionate about that and said like, I'm going to start a side hustle like going to people's remote offices and doing car maintenance or whatever. It doesn't matter if I'm really excited about it. I have no skill in it and I'm not going to learn that skill overnight. So with all three of these things, passion, skill and opportunity, you can look and say, okay, well, you can make something work if you have two out of three, maybe once in a while one out of three is okay. But honestly, the goal, and I think
the whole goal of your career vision actually, which is not something we usually directly address on the show, I think the goal is to find that trifecta or to work toward it. So it's pretty cool that this guy had the skill. He had this background in audio engineering. I think he even had a degree in it. He was super passionate about podcasts, listening to them for 50 hours a week on double speed. It's got to be a record. And of course, there's a tremendous opportunity with more and
more people starting podcasts and a gap in the market between people who want to just do everything themselves, complete DIY, which is totally fine. And then some bigger shows that work with networks that have a full time production team, lots of shows and potential shows in the middle of those two ranges. And that's how he was able to get to $4,000 a month in a pretty short period of time. And lastly, just to pull out episode 322, a marketing executive creates a coupon site. By the way, there's a bit of a divide over how to say that word. So I pronounce it coupon. But if
you say coupon, that's cool too. The point is it's a discount and deal site. And there are a lot of sites like this out there, you've probably seen them yourself if you've ever searched for a discount code for an online merchant. Literally, thousands of these sites exist, they earn a commission when you go to their site and you use their code, you go back to that merchant, whether it's Eddie Bauer or REI or Best Buy or any other number of companies. Some of these sites actually make a lot of money. But some of them also have a pretty terrible user experience, because they're all
about just kind of sucking people in getting their computer cookie so that when they go back to that merchant, they're going to earn the money. But the design is really bad. And a lot of the discount codes don't actually work, they're expired. So you as a user have a frustrating experience, but the site doesn't really care because they're still going to make money off you. So when it's done that way, it's kind of an annoying business model, right? Because it
creates value for them, but without doing anything for you. But of course, you can create a good experience for consumers with it, actually give them discount codes that work. So if they come to your site, they get that code, they save money, you have made their life better, they might keep coming back, they might, you know, tweet or Facebook or otherwise share your site with other people. Hey, I just saved $20 in my purchase, you know, from this site, check it out. So we actually haven't looked at this model before in more than 300 episodes. So if you're
interested in it, maybe go and check it out. And the person featured there had a pretty good strategy of paying for this feed that curates the deals and make sure that people actually have a good experience. So those were a few highlights from this week, of course, you can check them all out. I'm going to tell you just a little bit of what's coming up over the next week. Well, next week is Thanksgiving, at least in the US. If you live in Canada, you already had your
Thanksgiving, feel free to celebrate with us as well. If you live somewhere else in the world, well, feel free to celebrate with us too. Because I'm not usually one for holidays, but Thanksgiving is one probably the one that I usually look forward to the most. It's all about gratitude and pie. How could you not be happy with those things?
And just before Thanksgiving, I'm actually doing a super quick trip to the United Arab Emirates, to an emirate called Sharjah, which is right outside of Dubai. So I'm actually going to fly to Dubai from the States, be part of this entrepreneurship event that I was invited to speak at, and then return the next day, which is right before Thanksgiving. So I think my plan is to just not sleep at all. And then there won't be any jet lag. I'll let you know how that goes. More importantly, on the show, I've got an amazing episode coming
up for you tomorrow. And I do not say that lightly. Okay, if you've been listening throughout the year, you know that there are certain stories that you hear and you're like, I just can't believe that. That is amazing. That is incredible. I even get emails from people that are like,
I just don't, I literally don't believe it. And I'm like, well, go look at it. Like here's the website. We have actually verified this information. And I know it's a lot of hype to say this is an amazing episode, but I promise you it lives up to the hype. The topic is, are you ready for this?
It's bouncy castles, or bouncy houses for adults that are rented at parties. Do you ever see a bouncy castle or a bouncy house? You probably never wondered like, where does that come from? Like how much does it cost? How does it work? Well, there's a guy, one of our listeners who
investigates the world of bouncy castles, decides to get into it himself, does drop shipping, where he never actually handles the inventory, which is key. He doesn't have a hundred bouncy castles stacked up in his garage. He's drop shipping these bouncy castles. And he is making, well, just let me tell you tomorrow, he's making a lot of money from this. So you're going to hear about the bouncy castle empire that was started part time by a regular guy with a job and ends up making more money than the vast majority of us see in a couple of years of like a regular income.
So yes, you don't want to miss that one. Only on side hustle school can you hear stories like that. Of course, we got some other stuff coming up this week. That's just the one I'm most excited about, to be honest with you. I mean, how could you not be? And before I say farewell for the week,
I just want to say thank you as well to a number of folks. My list of credits begins with you, the listener. It's no exaggeration to say you're the reason I make this show. You're the reason we're going to continue into 2018. I want to hear more stories of what you're doing.
I'm going to keep my tour going. We're going to add 15 to 20 cities in the spring. We're going to finally launch side hustle society, which is an online community and training program for so many people out there who have asked me literally every day, how can I get some specific training and coaching to go through this process? And how can I connect with other people who are doing this so that I can have support from them and maybe help them as well? Well, that is coming soon as well. Also, thanks to you. And it does take a village and a cat to make the show. Production
is led by AC Valdez in Washington, D.C. We've got a new producer. I want to welcome Vera Caruthers to the show. She's in Brooklyn, New York. Welcome, Vera. Glad you're here. The wonderful show notes
that we have for each episode, as well as wrangling me, as well as helping to plan out the scripts and the stories and the scheduling, all kinds of stuff. That's by my assistant, Whitney Karinek. And of course, the cat, Liberia Gillipo, who regularly gets up at three o'clock in the morning Pacific time to make sure the episode goes online and often wakes me up as well, which is, of course, much appreciated. Side Hustle School is part of the Onward Project founded by Gretchen Rubin. She is the host of her own mega popular podcast called Happier. You can check that out on Apple
Podcasts. And while you're there, it would be super cool if you could just give us a quick little rating or review. That kind of stuff helps a lot. I work hard on the show and I hope it helps you. Those ratings and reviews and most important of all impact referrals. When you tell your friends
about the show, that stuff really helps us a lot. This is an organic process. We don't have paid advertising. We don't have a huge marketing campaign. The show has grown because of listeners.
In every episode, I always say inspiration is good, but action is better. Listening to this show every day and taking action, even small steps, is an investment in yourself. I want this investment to be rewarding and I hope to see you tomorrow and each day next week with more stories and actionable ideas. Those episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time every single day.
I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
