This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey there and welcome. You are listening to another episode of Side Hustle School. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. Yesterday, you heard the story about Jeff Parker's consulting that he does for families planning to move overseas. I mentioned a little bit of my own history, including when I lived on a ship that was mostly deployed to West Africa, places like Sierra Leone and Liberia. But twice a year, we would visit the Canary Islands. The
Canary Islands were pretty awesome because the aid work that we were doing in those African countries was really important and definitely worth giving up some things for. But that week we would spend in the Canaries was greatly looked forward to. That was our R&R time. We could also go to big supermarkets and stock up on supplies for the next six months. All kinds of things that weren't available in West Africa or, if they were, would be very expensive because they're imported. All that to say, I didn't realize until I was drafting
the notes for this week that today's story actually takes place in the Canary Islands. It's about a British software engineer who moves to a Spanish island, changes careers, writes a book, and becomes a tour guide. I'll tell you about that in just a moment. And now our story. By day, Sheila Crosby is a tour guide at an astronomical observatory in the Canary Islands, which is just off the coast of Spain and Northwest Africa. She shows
people around the telescopes and explains how they work in a way they can understand. Sheila is originally from Britain, but has lived on the island for more than 25 years. And for much of that time, she worked as a software engineer for the same observatory. So between that experience and the tour guide life, she had a lot of detailed knowledge. Her hustle idea came about because Sheila enjoyed the guiding work and was good at it, but it didn't keep her very busy. She started looking for something flexible to combine
with it. And as a foreigner, even one who's been there for 25 years, it's always a bit hard to find employment. So she decided if she could create a guidebook, the guide work she did would promote the guidebook and vice versa. And that's exactly what she did. Let's look at why she thought she could do that. In addition to her other skills and
her multi-talented background, she was also a photographer, not a professional one, but certainly proficient. And so notice these skills that were combining as we lead up to what she did. She had the detailed knowledge of a place. She had expertise and experience in showing people around and explaining things, as well as the ability to write well and document the written work with photos. That guidebook I alluded to got off the ground in large part thanks to the local tourist department. They had just begun a campaign promoting stargazing
tourism. Sheila went to ask for a grant, but they said she didn't fit the terms. It was kind of a don't call us, we'll call you situation. She thought that was the end of it, but then they did call. And they told her if she produced a book in Spanish as well as English, they'd buy enough copies to take most of the risk out of the first edition. So that was great.
Meanwhile, every day, plain loads of European tourists were arriving in the Canaries and many of them were going to see the observatory. And she described this initial tour guide as being for normal people, not Nobel Prize winners. That's actually the phrase she used in the copy for the site. That's actually the phrase she used in describing the book, which I thought was really smart because a lot of people are intimidated by subjects like astronomy or science in general. So right from the beginning, Sheila is saying with this project, "Hey, this is for the rest of us. You don't have to be a scientist. This
is not going to make you feel dumb. It will actually be enjoyable. So you'll learn something here, but it won't be dry and boring." The guidebook really was a side hustle and she continued her work as an actual guide. And just as she had hoped, the guidebook supported the guide work and vice versa. Now, here's something that Sheila and I have in common.
Sheila likes both the writing work and the guide work and she wouldn't want to choose between them. In fact, she said, "As much as I love writing, it's sedentary and solitary and the tour guiding gets me out meeting people. But as much as I love the tour guiding, it's irregular work and not very creative. So together, they're just about right." So I related to that very much myself because, speaking of my story, that's how I feel about the writing I do, even recording this show for you. I'm a complete introvert and I have no problem being on my own the whole workday, just creating and kind of doing the things that come naturally to me.
But I also like going on tour. For every one of my books, I've done a tour of at least 20 cities. The first book, I did 63 cities. And I actually really enjoy that. I love going out to meet readers. And later in the year, I'll be going out to do a really big side
hustle tour as well. So hopefully we'll get a chance to meet. When I think about things like that, the tour, or producing an event like World Domination Summit in Portland, I honestly wouldn't want to choose between these two different roles. I love the writing, I love recording the show, but I also love going out and doing the events. And so as Sheila found, often a side hustle can help to compensate for what you're missing and your work. And this is what's really key here. Most jobs are not designed around your personality.
They're designed around your skills. And so therefore, they're not designed around what's best for you. It's all about how you fit into somebody else's company or organization. And you may be able to find a good fit. And that's fantastic. But still, when you're creating
at least one of your sources of income for yourself, designing it around your personality and your preferences is exactly what you can do. It's often a really great outlet. If you work one way for your day job, you may very well want to do something entirely different for your side hustle. I often talk about the benefits of a side hustle, which you know very well by now, extra money, confidence, security, a backup plan. But here in Sheila's story, we can see yet another benefit. By writing and publishing the tour guide to compliment
her tour guiding work, she was able to have fun, use different skills, reach new people, and create a new source of income. So as I mentioned in Sheila's story, you can see a combination of different skills combining to create a mashup that then results in a product. And a lot of side hustles develop through a similar process. Often with these things, you have one topic or one skill that you're really good at, combined with a couple of other things that you're able to figure out. So you don't have to be an expert in everything. This is especially true with tech
stuff, as I often mention. If you're a programmer, great. If you're not, you probably shouldn't go out and learn to program for your hustle. But here with Sheila, the mashup is an engineering background that she had put to use at the observatory, an expertise in tourism gained from living on the island for many years, and the skill of writing, which led to the creation of the tourist guide. And now she's actually gone on from that first one to create additional guides. And she has plans to go on and do several other projects, some similar,
some different in the future. So as you go on with your day, think about the combination of skills that you have, not just skills, but interests, hobbies, experiences you've had, expertise or specialized knowledge that you have. You might be able to have a side hustle from just one of those things. But it could be interesting, could be even more interesting, in fact, to see what kind of mashup or combination you can create when you look at multiple skills, interests and hobbies, just like Sheila did. I hope this is helpful for you. And remember, inspiration
is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. If you want to find the show notes for today's episode, just go to sidehustleschool.com. On that same site, you can ask a question, you can get some free resources, you can see where I'm going for the side hustle school workshops. And wherever you are, I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School, and I'll see you tomorrow.
