This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey there, hello, greetings, what's up? My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." Today is our sixth weekly recap of season two, 2018, going strong, bringing you story after story of busy people who don't have a lot of free time but still manage to invest in themselves, do something to advance their future, create more options for themselves in the form of a side hustle. If you are new, welcome. A side hustle is not a part-time job, it's not just about driving for Uber. The kind of stories we feature on the show are all about people who create assets for themselves.
They create something that they have ownership over, they have actual customers or clients, they're building something for themselves, even if they love their job and have no plan to quit. So this is not so much about being an entrepreneur, even though we have a bunch of entrepreneurs who listen to the show. You guys are most welcome to listen and participate as well, but the people I'm making this show for every single day are those people who are busy, don't have much time to invest in themselves, maybe never thought about being a small business owner, but again, they love the idea of creating personal freedom. All right, so this week we had a number of fascinating stories, maybe at least I found them fascinating, everything from troll cakes, woman who makes cakes based on negative comments on the internet, and then sends those cakes to the people who wrote those comments, a podcast that makes $400,000 in a year, that's right, $400,000, one year, a freelance writing school, and of course, several others. Over here, I continue to hear from listeners who are starting projects.
This is one of the things that makes me happiest, I'm gonna read a couple of emails to you today, I've also got some voicemails I'm gonna respond to, I really love to know who's out there, where you're listening from and what you're working on. You can send me a note from the website, www.cidustleschool.com, you can just write in directly at podcast@cidustleschool.com, send me a little voice memo there, or you can call the Hustle Hotline, which is 8449 Hustle, also known as 844-948-7853. The first note I want to read to you today comes from Wendy, Wendy says it took me 49 days instead of 27, but I'm finally launching my first side hustle. During that time, I clarified my product, and I have a list of 10 related products to launch in the near future. I keep referring back to the shopping list at www.cidustleschool.com/resources to make sure I have everything I need.
I can't wait to share with you how my first launch goes, have a great week, I know I will. Awesome, congrats Wendy, I do hope that week is fantastic, good luck. Also got a note from Kristin in Hollywood who has been reading the side hustle book. She says I'm loving the productivity of this book, I'm reading it slowly by design, but I've already generated $400 this month. My invoice is out and money is on its way.
I teach dance for a studio on the side, but working with the book I found a way to make way more money by renting space and doing private sessions. I'm so excited and I'll be launching some pop-up classes when I travel for my day job in other cities. More ideas are pouring out of me as well, but they're not as immediately profitable, so I'm focusing on this one for now. Can't wait to read more, I'm only on day five. Awesome, thank you so much Kristin.
So glad that is helpful. She is referring to the side hustle book from idea to income in 27 days. And as you heard, she's on day five, she's made $400 so far. Good work, I can't wait to hear what happens when you make it to day 27. By the way, speaking of books, I wanted to mention another book that came out recently.
I was able to read an advanced copy and I wrote an endorsement for it. This is not a business book at all, and I didn't know the author before getting the book in the mail from his publisher. But I read this book and I thought it was beautiful. I've actually read it two times now because they sent me a print copy, an advanced version before it came out, and I took that with me on a trip, and I read almost all of it, but then I think I left it behind on an airplane because I pretty much lose things everywhere I go. So then when it came out last week, I bought the electronic version as well for my Kindle.
That book is called Here is Real Magic by Nate Staniforth. It is a memoir of this guy from Iowa who has been a working magician for the past 10 or 15 years or so, traveling the country, traveling the world, putting on all these shows. Then at a certain point, he kind of gets disillusioned with his career, travels to India to rediscover the world of wonder and magic. I won't give anything else away about the story, but I'll tell you what my endorsement was. I said this book performs the most wonderful magic trick.
When you read it, you feel both entertained and hopeful. Once again, that's called Here is Real Magic by Nate Staniforth. And as I said, I don't even know this guy. They just sent it to me in the mail and I thought it was really great. All right, I mentioned we got a couple of voicemails I wanted to respond to.
This first one is from Fatima and she has a question about a side hustle idea. - Hi Chris, this is Fatima from Omaha, Nebraska. I love your show. Just, you know, love the platform that you bring in. But I had an idea about a coffee runner, coffee delivery in the same line, like what Uber eats, but I'm just having trouble trying to market or bring it off the ground.
I don't know how to just kind of do an experiment or a template from there. And I just wanted to kind of, you know, maybe streamline off of any ideas that you might have. So if you got something maybe that I'm not thinking about, I'm welcome to it, thanks. - Hey Fatima, great question. You're awesome.
So glad you're out there thinking about stuff. So my first thought on the specific idea, and I'll make some general comments as well, about the specific idea, coffee delivery service. You know, on the one hand, it sounds really great because, you know, so many people drink coffee and so many people are accustomed to paying a premium price for it. So on the one hand, you're like, oh wow, if I can get 50 people a day paying $4 each for their coffee, then I've got the makings of a real project here. The challenge is that coffee shops make their real money on volume.
So yes, for every $4 latte they sell, they're making $3.50 or maybe even more. So it's a great profit margin, but they're serving hundreds of customers every day. So the first thing I think when I hear coffee delivery service, I wonder, okay, who are the customers? Like where are these people coming from? Because, you know, most people will just go to the coffee shop or they work in an office that has a coffee machine or there's some other solution.
Now, if you have access to some kind of marketplace, if you know an office building that has a hundred people who want coffee every day and their needs are not being served, then yes, that sounds like a great opportunity to explore. But otherwise, without enough customers, it's gonna be a struggle because even though you're gonna make $3 on every $4 latte, you're gonna have to deliver a lot of those lattes, right? So just consider that. If you've already thought about that concern or that objection and you've got an answer for it, then great. If not, I don't think you should ignore it.
Now, more generally speaking, here's something based on this scenario that everyone can do. You can either think of your product or your service first and then ask, okay, where are those customers? How can I find those people? Or you can think customer first. Like here's a group of people, what product or service do they need?
So this is kind of flipping it a little bit. And in this case, if you don't have access to a hundred people who want lattes every day, who do you have access to? What unmet needs do they have? What problems can you solve for them? How can you make their life better?
And how does that overlap with your skills, your experience, as well as what you enjoy doing? When you think along those lines, you might have a bit of a fast track or a shortcut to success. So instead of thinking product first, consider thinking customer first or client first. Anyway, good luck, Fatima. Thank you so much for listening to "Sid whistle School." And our next caller is sharing an idea he has for a YouTube series.
Let's hear from him. - Hey, my name is James and I'm from PG County, Maryland. And I have this idea of creating a YouTube series in which I interview people about the jobs that they do. Because I feel like a lot of us apply for jobs based off the qualifications and job duties. And we think they're really easy.
But once you get into the job, you find out that you hate it. So I want this web series to really give an in-depth look of whatever career that people might be into. - Awesome, thanks for sharing that, James. We will be cheering you on and looking for that interview series. My only comment is a positive one.
And it is that there is a logical connection between your content, your proposed topic, and potential sponsorship or partnership. So you mentioned that there might be a demand for this kind of interview series where you're talking to people about their jobs and like, what is your career really like? What's the reality versus the perception? So yes, it is interesting and from the side of perspective, if you're thinking of developing a YouTube series or something like that and you want to make money from it, it's good to ask yourself from the beginning, okay, what are the opportunities here? Who might want to sponsor this or advertise on this or partner with us in some way?
Well, for something that is about careers and jobs, well, for the topic, the industry of jobs and careers, there are all kinds of potential sponsors and partners. Probably a third of the sponsors of this show might be interested in something like that if you got it off the ground, if you had enough audience and so on. So it sounds like a great idea to me. When it comes to doing a series like this, as you probably know, there is a lot of work required to do these things really well, just because the quality bar is so high these days. There's so many very talented people out there putting in a lot of work and investment.
Like whenever I go to YouTube and look at stuff, I'm like, man, like 10 years ago, there was nothing like this and that role continues to evolve really quickly. But if that's your world and you're immersed in it already and you know it well, you've got the skills, you've got the passion, then fantastic. So let us know how that goes. And for anybody else out there doing YouTube video series, feel free to write in and let me know about your project. Maybe I can give it a shout out and we can also connect you with James as well.
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Okay, so as mentioned, an eclectic group of stories this week, per usual, I guess. I mean, you never know from week to week what you're gonna hear. I'm getting notes about all sorts of projects these days. And I'm pretty sure the two most popular episodes this week were episode 401 and episode 404. 401 was that story about troll cakes.
Internet trolls eat their words in this comedic cake hustle. I think that was popular just because of the novelty of it, as well as the fact that if anybody's ever said anything mean to you on the internet, well, you know that sucks, that's not nice. So to see this thriving business that kind of gets back at these people, kind of strikes back at those bullies, but in the most loving way possible by sending them a cake with their quote on it, it's just affirming, I think, that most people out there are good. Most people on the internet who are saying ridiculous things in the comment section are not representative of the majority of the people online, they're just louder. So to present a counter message, put forward that message in a unique way through the creation and delivery of cakes, and to make money doing that, that is a pretty cool trifecta, at least I think so.
In episode 404, this was about the business BFFs or the business besties who turned Skype calls into a six-figure podcast and a book deal. This podcast, Being Boss, really took off, and they made $100,000 the first year, something like $250,000 the second year. This is your three or four, and now they're well above that, they got their book coming out in a couple months. And speaking of trifectas, I was thinking about this in the context of this story, because here they had essentially three elements of success. And these three elements are common in so many stories.
The three elements are taking action, luck, and hard work. Or you could say taking action, hard work, and luck. I put them in the first order because in this story, in some ways, they got lucky right away. They took action, they launched the podcast, they didn't intend for it to be a moneymaker. It was just something they were doing as a fun project.
But then almost from the beginning, they got a sponsor that they didn't expect to get, and they debuted really well in iTunes. They got up in the rankings, and that led to more sponsorship, more listeners. Then they did an offline event that they thought would bring in maybe 15 people, and 75 people showed up. And then it just kept going and going from there. But even if you look at the first thing and just say, oh, well, they got lucky.
They got that sponsor that most people wouldn't get. Well, let's just assume that that's true. First of all, they took action to get in that place of being lucky. And then secondly, after they got lucky, they did a lot of hard work. Like they have not missed recording a weekly episode in three years.
They are responding to emails every single day from their community. They built a Facebook group of 25,000 people, then they shut down that Facebook group because they felt it didn't align with their values and their goals. Which as I said in the episode was a pretty bold move, because most people would have just kept it going. So of those three elements, taking action, hard work, and luck, you can only be responsible for two of them. What you can do is take action and work hard and put yourself in a place where you might get lucky.
And if you find yourself in a lucky situation, you should ask, okay, how can I keep this going? What can I do to support this success and grow it even more? So consider those elements as you hear different stories, and of course, as you plan your own projects. So what's coming up next week on Side Hustle School? I was just looking at the notes for some of the stories we've got a summer camp, somebody who starts a summer camp called Camp Fun.
We've got something about fake wedding flowers. Not quite sure what that's about yet. Hopefully it's not like fake news. But just so you know, there are no fake stories on Side Hustle School. They are all legit.
And also another Fulfilled by Amazon story, which tends to be popular among a certain group of our listenership. Some people hear these stories about Fulfilled by Amazon or being a reseller, and they couldn't care less. They're like, that does not interest me at all. Whereas other people are like, that's exactly what I want to do. That's something I love about our community.
We have people doing all kinds of different stuff. I think it also connects to the idea that a side hustle can be lots of different things. And one of the most important decisions you need to make is what are your goals? And why are you doing this? What's in it for you?
What do you hope to achieve through this process? And when you have clarity on that, a lot of other decisions get much easier. So stay tuned for those stories, and of course, many more. We're gonna close out the week here, and I wanna say thanks to some people who make this possible. Let's actually start with you.
Wherever you are in the world, thank you for listening to the show. Thank you for being part of this community. Thank you for sharing it with your friends. Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to leave a rating or a review. That stuff actually does matter, and I appreciate it.
Thanks for your support of our sponsors. That sponsorship model allows the show to be free to you. We try to be deliberate in how we work with sponsors. Most of them have special offers for you that can be valuable. I also wanna say thank you to our senior producer, AC Valdez in Washington, DC.
Freelance producer, Sarah Barrett, who also works on the show. Other folks from the Panoply Network. Gretchen Rubin, who oversees the Onward Project. It is a collection of podcasts of which Side Hustle School is proud to be part of. You can check that out at theonwardproject.com.
Shout out to my assistant in Portland, Oregon, Whitney Karinek. She handles the show notes. She works with her writers. She works with me. Probably the most challenging part of the job.
And of course, the official show cat, Libby Gillipo, sleeping hard for 14 hours a day so that she can be available for the night shift. We should put her on the masthead. In every episode of the show, I try to say inspiration is good, but action is even better. I want this to be a helpful resource to you. I want it to be an encouragement.
I want it to be something that makes your life better. I hope to talk with you again tomorrow and every day next week with more stories and ideas. Our episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time every day. I am Chris Guillebeau and this is Side Hustle School.
