This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
I love today's question. The question in short is what separates small earners from big ones? And if you think about it, if you've been listening for a while, we've had 3000 plus episodes. Every side hustle school story features someone who earns at least $500 a month apart from their day job. And often we have people earning thousands of dollars a month, tens of thousands of dollars a month sometimes.
And in fact, some people earn a lot more. Six or seven figures from their side hustle. And so basically we've got a caller who wants to know what separates the small earners from big ones. And I think it's important for us to just acknowledge that people have different goals. Not everybody out there is like, "Hey, I wanna earn $200,000 a year from my side hustle." Almost always the work required to create a project like that is gonna be a lot more than somebody who makes a project earning $6,000 or $12,000 a year.
And that is also valid and meaningful, right? That can make a meaningful difference in your life. So people have different goals. But nevertheless, let's look at it from a business perspective. So I think that could be helpful if you're trying to figure out what's your next project, what separates small earners from big ones.
I'll do my best to provide some specific characteristics. You're gonna hear the detailed question from Kate and my answer right after this. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Kate. And I've been listening for a while and I've noticed that you feature stories with a wide range of results, including some that make a small amount of money and some that end up being a really big moneymaker. With so many episodes and archives, my question is, have you noticed anything that separates the big ones from the small?
Is it just a matter of choosing a project that has the ability to scale or is it something related to the fundamental approach? What are the skills that someone needs to go big? Thanks Chris for sharing your thoughts about this. [Music]
- Great question, great, great question. And as I said in the introduction, money isn't the only metric of success, right?
Lots of ways to be successful in life. Money is a tool that allows us to do more of what we want, et cetera. Still, it's fair to say we do have a lot of stories in the archives of people who end up doing very, very well. And I mean that monetarily. We've had multiple seven figure side hustles, seven figure side hustles that become businesses, a couple of them that even remain side hustles, which is just wild, right?
To think about somebody loves their job so much, they go to it, even though they've got this fantastic income from a little project that they have built up. I do think there are a couple of factors that separate, let's say small earners from big earners. That's probably the best way to describe it. First of all is the right idea, just because some ideas are better than others. We had a, one of the million dollar businesses we featured was cybersecurity training.
Well, security training is desirable and valuable and a lot of people need it for their jobs. It's also not cheap. That guy was selling courses that cost hundreds of dollars. We had the question last week about low priced courses and high priced courses. Well, if you're doing security training, it's probably not gonna be low priced, right?
Speaking of just a relatively high priced product or service. It's very hard to make a lot of money selling something that costs very little. Some people have done it, like absolutely. We had the story just two weeks ago of Tubshroom, this guy with this very simple tool. But I would say he's the exception.
Most people who are high side hustle earners are not participating in a race to the bottom or commodity pricing or just trying to be really, really high volume. Next factor is the right adjustments along the way, because most people who are really successful don't just have a good idea. They have a good idea that turns into great execution by making changes and responding to demand or other shifts as they go along. Next is spending a lot of time on marketing, 'cause good products do not just market themselves. If you wanna grow your business, you can't think of marketing as an afterthought.
It needs to be part of each step of the process or at least most of the steps. And then the last factor is luck. I mean, you know, like in life, whenever you do something that turns out well, you tend to think, "Oh, I'm a genius, I'm so smart." And when you do something that fails, you think, "Oh, I'm so stupid." And the reality is like neither of those interpretations may be correct, right? Sometimes there are variables outside your control. However, I think if you want to be luckier, there is one thing you can do, which is take more chances, take more risks, more swings of the bat, if you will.
If you wanna be luckier, take more chances. So that's what I think. The right idea, relatively high priced in most cases, the right adjustments, spending some focus on marketing and having better luck, which comes from taking more chances. Listeners, let me know what you think, what you're up to, sidehustleschool.com, the notes pages for every single episode, download or stream, the complete archives of the show, along with new episodes that come out every single day, seven days a week. Thank you for being part of the community.
My name's Chris Guillebeau, you're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
