This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Guess what day it is? Hello, Side Hustle School listeners. My name is Chris Guillebeau. It's my privilege and honor to welcome you to episode 365. That's right, it is the end of the year.
364 days ago, we began with a mission to bring you story after story of people creating freedom and options. Oh, and making money all without quitting their job. Well, I can hardly believe it myself, but it seems like we did it. We're gonna keep this weekly recap short and sweet because 2018 will start with a bang. I am so excited about all that's to come in our second season.
I'll tell you more about it tomorrow, but for now, mostly I wanna say thank you. What a joy it's been to bring you this show. I'd like to give a special acknowledgement to our year-long listeners, those people who've been listening from January 1 and have joined us for the journey the entire year. If that's you, I want you to know how much I appreciate you, how much our team appreciates you. I did events in about 40 cities this year, and pretty much every stop, I had at least one person come up and say, you know, I've been listening since January 1, haven't missed an episode.
You guys are rock stars, thank you so much. I hope you agree that we've improved as we've gone along, and I hope you join me for next year as well. Also wanna say a shout out to our binge listeners from time to time I hear from people who didn't know about the show back in January, but they just discovered a bit later. And then they go back and listen to the entire archives, which I think is one part awesome and one part crazy. I got a tweet from Arrow City Music the other day who just discovered the show this month.
And he said on Twitter, "In 10 days, I listened to 341 full episodes of Chris Guillebeau's Side Hustle School Podcast." That's got to be some sort of record. Yes, Arrow City Music, I think that's pretty awesome. Well done. I'll include a screenshot of that in the show notes if anybody wants to take a look, sidehustleschool.com/365. And if you're new, if you've just joined us recently, like I totally understand why you might not want to go back and listen to 50 hours of side hustle stories, as awesome as they are.
You really can pick up wherever you are and just join us every day going forward. And speaking of that, I had a note from Kim who writes in to ask, "Will your past podcasts from this year remain available next year?" In other words, can I listen to the 2017 episodes in 2018? I am way behind due to a job I took and I want to listen to them. Well, yes, Kim and anyone else, absolutely they will be available and they will continue to be free. You should be able to still access them in Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher, however you listen to podcasts, or of course the entire archive is available for download free on sidehustleschool.com.
We are indeed continuing all year starting tomorrow, a new episode every day, seven days a week, no exceptions. The show will be there for you. I want to give you a quick little rundown of some listener favorites this year. We took a look at our analytics to see which episodes were the most downloaded or the most popular in general. I'm gonna give you a top 10 list of sorts.
It might actually be 11. And I'm also gonna answer this question, what if you didn't take action this year? You know, I'm always talking about how you should take action. What if you've been listening, but you haven't taken action? Well, I'm gonna address that question in just a moment, but first I want to acknowledge our sponsors, all the sponsors of 2017.
We've been able to partner with some great companies who have made fantastic special offers for our listeners. And those sponsors are what allow the show to be completely free to you. There are several people who work on the show almost full-time now. We have production costs, we have to keep the lights on, we have a cat to feed, and those sponsors make it possible with these brief non-intrusive messages, and I do appreciate them. So let's do our quick last sponsor break of 2017, and then I'll tell you about some listener favorites.
[Music]
All right, here is a quick list of some episodes that were particularly popular with you guys. I'm just gonna go in chronological order. And if you want to listen to any of these, I'm gonna tell you the episode number, and you just go to sidehustleschool.com/thatepisodenumber. So for example, one of the most popular episodes of the year was episode number two, a British man earned $700 a month riding fish tank reviews. So there you can just go to sidehustleschool.com/two.
Episode 107, snuggling for dollars is not what you think. Also popular and somewhat controversial. Got some interesting emails from different perspectives on that one. Episode 150, diamond in the rough, an engagement ring hunt turned into hustle. So it was a really interesting affiliate sales model, and we actually got a good update from this guy toward the end of the year.
His side hustle has really taken off. So hopefully sometime in 2018, I can give you a more detailed update on that. Episode 156, 156, army veteran makes $650,000 advertising an app. That was a crazy story. And I seem to remember talking about luck in that story, because he freely admitted that the way he made more than half a million dollars was through this opportunity that just kind of showed up.
And so it was somewhat circumstantial. But the thing is he had to take some action to put himself in position to receive that opportunity. In other words, if he hadn't made a blog about building apps, which is where I think the whole thing came from, he never would have hit on that huge opportunity. So even if it was somewhat lucky, you could ask yourself what could you do to put yourself in a position to be lucky? Episode 255, lawyer creates online course for mothers returning to work.
Episode 310, 13 year old Australian creates schoolyard lollipop fortune. I love that story. It came from a listener. And Gretchen Rubin was actually kind enough to put that in her happier feed as well. So a number of our listeners may have joined from that story or from something else Gretchen did.
Thank you, Gretchen. The very next episode 311, a former construction inspector earns $200,000 helping students pass exams. Episode 317, lifelong Girl Scout earns her side hustle badge and $3,500 a month. That was one of my favorites. And then last but not least, just a couple of weeks ago, letters from Santa hustles down chimney.
That was about a woman who does this seasonal side hustle where she makes five or $6,000 every November, December, writing these personalized letters to kids, which of course the parents pay for. As I said, you can listen to all those episodes and many more on the side hustle school site or wherever you listen to podcasts. And there are lots of others too. [Music]
All right, I wanted to answer this question and I've heard a couple of different ways from different people. You know, I always say inspiration is good, but action is better.
What if you've been listening to the show and you've been learning, you've been enjoying the stories, you actually didn't take action. Well, here's my response to that. It's okay. It's fine. It's all good.
We go through different seasons in life. Sometimes we're in a season of learning. Sometimes we're just absorbing something. And then later it becomes more relevant. Later it's time to actually take action on something.
And we're like, oh yeah, I remember hearing about that. Oh, I think I know what resource to use because of an episode I heard a while back or something I read. So even though I do want to gently nudge you toward taking action, 'cause I want everybody to have the freedom that comes from more than one source of income. I would also say, well, tomorrow is a new day. So start over tomorrow, start over next week, start when you feel ready.
I want to help you make this happen. I want this to be a reality in your life, but I'll also be here whenever you're ready. And if you tried something and it just didn't work out, I guess the first thing I would say is join the club. Like we all try things that don't work out. And a lot of the stories you hear, the person doesn't succeed at first, or they only succeed after they make a change or a tweak of some kind.
So if you fall down, get back up. Again, tomorrow is a new day. One more quick announcement before I close out the year. Throughout 2017, I have said a few different times that Side Hustle Society is coming. That is an online training program designed to take you step by step through starting one of these kinds of projects.
And it's also an online community where you can connect with other side hustlers and make introductions and ask for pure feedback. Well, guess what? It's actually happening. And we're gonna introduce it for a limited time starting on January 9th. The initial signup is only gonna be available for a week.
And I'll tell you more about why as we go along. But if you're interested in this, you'd like to know more about it and be the first person to know when it goes live, you can join the waiting list at sidehustleschool.com/society. That's S-O-C-I-E-T-Y. In addition to the show, I'm also really excited about this training program and community. I think it's gonna help a lot of people and I think it's gonna connect a lot of people too, which I know is vital.
So more on that to come. Again, come to sidehustleschool.com/society if you'd like to know more. I am just about ready to sign off for the day, the week, the month, and the year. Before I do, I wanna say a few quick thank yous to everyone who's made this possible. I mentioned Gretchen Rubin.
The show is on her podcast imprint called The Onward Project. She has been a good friend of mine for many years. And this show would not exist, at least not in this form in this way, were it not for her calling me in the summer of 2016 and saying, "Hey, Chris, have you ever thought about doing a podcast?" To which I said, "Yeah, I'm actually thinking about doing something, but it's kind of a crazy idea. I'm not sure it's gonna be for everyone." And she said, "Well, tell me more." And we went from there. I'm also grateful to the wonderful Panoply team.
They are the folks who do the production, the distribution, the ad sales, all kinds of stuff. The production team is led by A.C. Valdez. We've had several other producers throughout the year as well, but A.C. has been solid.
He is our senior producer. I'm very grateful to him. And I would also say thank you to Andy Bowers and Sarah Bentley at Panoply. Back on the home front, Whitney Karinek is my star assistant and content manager now for the show. She's now working weeks ahead to plan out all of our content and stories.
Does all the wonderful show notes, fixes things when they break on the website, all kinds of things. I really, really could not do everything that's associated with the show without Whitney. So thank you, Whitney. It's also been great to work with Jed Chang, Shauna Noah, and Owen Haney on the Side Hustle School Workshop Series and the Side Hustle Book Tour. Will some of those things continue in 2018?
Yes, they will. Stay tuned. It really does take a village to hustle or at least a small village. And just as I started this recap, I want to conclude by saying thank you to you, the listener. I make this show to help you.
I want it to be an encouragement to you in some way. I want you to know that there's more than one way to live and work. My life philosophy for the past 10 years has been, you don't have to live your life the way others expect. And I hope to communicate that value in some fashion through this show. All right, that's it.
But guess what happens tomorrow? Tomorrow brings a new beginning, a whole new year, and of course, another Side Hustle School episode. We will be there for you wherever you are in the world. I hope you'll join us. I'm Chris Guillebeau, signing off and wishing you a happy new year.
