This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
The best guitar lessons in the universe. What's up, friends? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. So excited to welcome you back.
We are here in year 10 of the podcast, episode 3,295. Been going every single day since January 1, 2017. Some of our listeners have been around all this time. Some, of course, are new, new for a new year, and everybody's welcome, all right? We're talking about income-generating projects, things you can do to make extra money without quitting your job.
And we look at that through the lens of all sorts of case studies. Case studies, stories, real people out there who have jobs, who have like a real life, but they're trying to get out of debt or advance themselves or maybe work themselves away from a job, you know, whatever it is. Today, and by the way, today is part of Throwback Thursday. This is a very popular segment. We've been doing a couple years now.
Looking back at the archives, going back to talk to people again after their initial feature and asking like, hey, what's happened, you know, since then? Like how has your business evolved or changed? What have you learned? What's gone well? What hasn't?
So today in Throwback Thursday, we're gonna hear from a university administrator who creates a sustainable full-time income from teaching guitar. And now I know what you might be thinking. You might think, well, like most guitar teachers, that they're not earning a whole lot, lot of guitar teachers out there. But this guy, Jake, he has really found a way to next level it. I wrote about this in the book "Side Hustle" many years ago.
Guitar lessons are kind of a commodity in some ways, but he approached it systematically by applying some basic marketing principles, including good copywriting for one. He called his lessons the best guitar lessons in the universe, which is just kind of funny, but also memorable, and ended up surpassing the vast majority of other teachers in terms of their income, at least. So it's been a little while since we've heard from Jake. He's got some updates. He's gonna talk about the stress and anxiety of starting a small business.
I really appreciate just all of the behind the scenes. So let's hear directly from Jake. Gonna pass the mic to him. I'll have a few words of wrap up at the end. [Music]
My name is Jake Posko.
I'm from Annapolis, Maryland, and I own Severn River Music and severnriverguitar.com. I was in episode 23. After failing at a lot of other side hustle ideas, things like ebooks or online services, I kind of fell into guitar lessons. I wasn't really that great of a guitar player to begin with, but I've been playing guitar since I was maybe 14 or 15 years old, and I just needed to be good enough to teach beginners how to play. So if I had a seven year old student with no experience, I could handle teaching them.
I was a good teacher, just not a great guitar player. So I put an ad on Craigslist and maybe a few Google ads. And after a few weeks, I got my first student and just kept growing since then. Since I was last featured on the show, I've tried to remove myself from the actual teaching of lessons as much as possible. So now the focus is on passive income strategies.
I try to contract out my music lessons. I do affiliate sales on my website, that sort of thing. So I theoretically have more time to focus on other projects like my writing and my music. The biggest challenge is managing anxiety. When you run a business alone, it is tough and it is isolating.
I don't think enough current entrepreneurs or people with side hustles talk about the downsides of running your own business. It is not glamorous. It can be depressing and stressful, even more so for people starting a business because they're typically doing it on their own. They don't have colleagues or a staff that they can work with or bounce ideas off of. So it ends up being really isolating.
It's not a fun thing to talk about, but I think it's an extremely important thing to talk about. And addressing this is absolutely not meant to discourage you from starting your own side hustle. It's meant to prepare you for it. So when you hit a wall of anxiety or depression and you will hit one of those walls, probably multiple times, you're better prepared to deal with it and move on. So you will be successful.
As far as advice for anyone who is interested in starting a side hustle like mine, specifically anything that is a service-based side hustle, it is super easy to get started. Here's what you do. I'll give you three steps. Step one, figure out what your service is. For me, it was teaching music.
For you, it could be walking dogs. It could be personal training. It could also be teaching music. Step two, give yourself 30 days. That'll be your timeframe.
Step three, just advertise as much as your budget allows. Start with free stuff like Craigslist ads, Facebook groups or messaging. Email or call all of your family and friends, tell them what you're doing. Reach out to businesses that cater to your clientele. For me, it was schools.
I would reach out to music teachers and tell them that I was available to teach private lessons if they had students who were interested. You could do local options as well like flyers or Facebook ads or Google ads. The important thing is that you do it a little each day. Day one, poster credits on set. Day two, put flyers up around the office.
Day three, open your Google ad account. You don't even have to make an ad, just open the account. Just little steps every day and don't stop for 30 days. After 30 days, you will have your first client. If you don't, then your side hustle idea probably won't work, which is okay.
Now you know that you can move on to another idea. Just rinse and repeat the process until you find something that works. The whole point of the exercise is to validate whether or not your side hustle can work. If you find that after 30 days, you're coming up totally dry with no clients, you gotta stop and think whether or not your business idea is viable. Again, totally okay if it's not.
It could mean the market just isn't there. Not your fault, just move on to something else. [Music]
Well, Jake's update kind of speaks for itself there. He actually had a lot of good advice. I thought, but I did want to note it is interesting.
He says, "I wasn't that great of a guitar player to begin with." I mean, I'm sure he's probably underselling it a little bit, but I think it does show technical mastery isn't the main qualification of a successful music teacher. And this is true for lots of teaching and education of all kinds. Sometimes people who are really good at doing something are not the best teachers. So for Jake, what allowed him to grow his business and charge more and see his schedule fill up, all those good things, was by learning more about being a better teacher and by marketing his business creatively. So he had some really great practical advice there in that three-step plan.
And I also, as I said, really appreciate what he said about feeling anxious and isolated and such. If you're experiencing that in some way, just understand it is somewhat common, especially when you're making a transition from the world of structured employment and when you're responsible for other people as well. Like if you're a caregiver, if you've got a family and such. So just understand like, okay, this is part of the process and understand if it's situational in general, obviously get help if you need help, but also just kind of understand, this is somewhat normal in this type of transition. Again, big thanks to Jake Posco, big thanks to our listeners as well.
Thank you for being out there. Thank you for supporting Side Hustle School. All of these years, everything about the podcast is completely free, ad supported. I appreciate our sponsors and partners. If you wanna access the complete archives of the show, 3,200 plus episodes, all for free stream or download as you see fit, sidehustleschool.com.
Subscribe or follow for new episodes that drop every single day. That's it for now. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
the Onward Project.
