This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Side Hustle School listeners, welcome back. I'm Chris Guillebeau, and here we are at the end of week number six. Now over here, I'm in the midst of the Side Hustle School workshop series. Just finished up the first round, as a matter of fact. I'll have more of a report on that for you soon.
Just finished up Vancouver and Seattle, and today I'm back in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, and we'll put together some photos and a fun video so that you can see more of what it's all about. Now speaking of that, some people have asked what's coming next in the workshop series. Well, I do hope to be in probably eight to 10 more cities in the next couple of months. And as soon as we know what they are, we'll announce them on the site. I just put a couple others up the other day.
And then if you're not in one of those eight to 10 cities, well, later this fall, I'll have a major tour to dozens of different cities. And I'm really excited about that. Over the past nine years, I've built my blog first, Art of Nonconformity, and now Side Hustle School, all on personal relationships. So if you and I have not had a chance to meet yet, I'd love to be able to do that before the year is over. Now, before today's recap, we've got a couple of listener questions that I want to answer.
Now, as a reminder, if you have a question for the show, you just go to sidehustleschool.com, and there's a link that says, conveniently, something like have a question for the show. And when you click that link, you can record your question using your computer's microphone, and we may feature it here to help other listeners as well. And today our first question comes from Jen. - Hi, I'm Jen from Rockwall, Texas. I'm considering starting a side hustle, but I'm not sure I want to go at it alone.
Is it a good idea to have a partner? What are some do's and don'ts of collaborating with a friend? - Well, Jen, great question. Thank you so much for listening. Should you start your side hustle with a partner?
This is one of those questions where it's hard to just answer yes or no, because obviously some people do it one way, and some people do it the other way. I would say, generally speaking, if you're out there and you're trying to figure out what your idea is and how you're gonna pursue it, and you don't necessarily have a partner already identified, or you're not talking these things through with somebody that you plan to start a business with, then all things being equal, you should start it on your own. And maybe you'll get help from other people along the way, but it is your hustle. If you are working on this with someone else, that's totally fine and can be successful as well. But to go to Jen's point about do's and don'ts, I would say wherever possible, try to pick a partner who has different strengths than you do.
Try to pick someone who's good at the things that you're not and vice versa. And wherever possible, see how you can divide areas of responsibility. So it's not just kind of two people working on the same things all the time. And then last but not least, even though presumably this is a friend you're going to do it with, it is very helpful to have a very simple, basic contractual agreement between you. Just kind of identifying who owns the hustle, is it 50/50?
How will you resolve a conflict? Should it come up? What are the general areas of responsibility that each of you will work on? And of course, depending on what it is, you may need to get more specific and detailed and formal than that. But that's the quick answer.
If you can do it on your own, I think that's great. If you're already working towards something with someone else, that's fine too, but you want to be intentional about it. And our second question today is from Ben. - This is a question about fishtankbank.com. I was wondering why would someone go on that website?
It's not even like one of the top ones on Google rather than just go on eBay or Amazon or something to find fish tanks there and look at the reviews for those ones. - Ben, awesome question. Totally makes sense why you would wonder that. And if you're new to the show, Ben is referring to episode two all the way back when we started, when we looked at this website called fishtankbank.com. And this guy in England who makes something like, I might get this wrong, but something like $600 a month, $700 a month from this blog he has that contains reviews of fish tanks.
And he set up this website a couple of years ago and hasn't touched it recently, but it continues to earn that level of Amazon.com affiliate commissions every month. So you could hear more details in that story, episode two. But to answer Ben's question, so the thing is the way some of us shop, like I'm pretty conditioned to go directly to Amazon.com and Ben maybe as well. So if I'm gonna buy a fish tank, that is probably where I'm gonna go first. But lots of other people, they're first gonna go to Google and just type in a certain phrase.
And they might type in fish tank review, but just as likely they're gonna type in something else. They might mention the brand name of a fish tank they've seen. They might mention the size of the fish tank. They might mention a certain kind of fish, fish tank for guppies, fish tank for goldfish. Might be some other related phrase.
So when we say that fishtankbank.com ranks well in Google, it doesn't necessarily have to rank well for the phrase fish tank. It could be anything else. And so then when people click those links and they go and read those reviews, that guy as I recall was really passionate about his subject and that passion kind of shown through provided lots of detailed information. Then it was only natural that a certain percentage of those visitors would then click through to Amazon and then ultimately make a purchase. So again, even if a large percentage of people goes directly to Amazon or whatever the site is, there still very much is a market for niche review sites, especially in areas with low competition like fish tanks.
So I hope that's helpful. Ben, thanks so much for listening. All right, so when we look back on the episodes this week, a few things stand out. We began with episode 36, which was all about the fitness pole dance studio that grew into a six figure business with multiple locations. And in that story, I really love how Sarah grew that business over, I think it was about five or six years.
So it was not one of these projects you hear about that was successful right off the bat. It wasn't an online business. It was something that she really had to kind of pour her heart into, but she did. And it took hard work and dedication, but now it's a huge success. And as you know, if you heard that episode, she did eventually quit her job to go full time into that hustle.
But for quite a while, she continued to work her career as a senior designer and creative director. Episode 37 was about the American expat who coaches families who move overseas or who wants to move overseas. Now here, Jeff is providing a specific kind of coaching, and that's really key, because that specific kind of coaching is almost always better than being a generalist coach. If you're listening to this and you're interested in coaching, be aware a lot of life coaches, marketing coaches, fitness coaches, dating coaches, et cetera, a lot of those people tend to struggle because it's not really clear what they do. It's not obvious what the benefit is, why someone should hire them, what results they're gonna get, all that kind of stuff.
Whereas something like what Jeff is doing is very clear. Now I also like how he's thinking ahead because he realizes he's reached the natural price cap for his phone consultation services, and he can only do a certain number of those each week. He has a day job, he does other stuff, he has a family. So he's changing that up and he's developing a new model, not to replace that service, but to compliment it. And as we go on and we look at more successful hustles, it's often very possible to do what Jeff is doing, whereas you take an existing service and then create a productized version of it, or vice versa.
You take a product and you create a service. And in episode 38, the very next episode, kind of began to preview that idea. 'Cause that was about a tour guide in the Canary Islands who prints and sells astronomy books to tourists. So she's still doing her tour guiding, but she also has this product, this book, that she sells as well. Episode 39 was an early look at software as a service, which is called SAS, and recurring revenue.
So we looked at this live snoop service that helps parents monitor their kids' internet use. This was an early stage hustle. It wasn't making a ton of money, but I wanted to profile it because I think it has potential to, first of all, and I want you to begin to think about recurring revenue. And as you build your hustle, think, how can you get paid not just once, but over and over, which is an increasingly common model these days. So it's not like you'd be the first one doing it.
It's not like it's something totally strange and weird. Episode 40 was about a Chicago psychotherapist who becomes a ceremonial wedding officiant. Jeffrey is a marriage counselor, a trained psychotherapist, who tends to work with couples experiencing difficulty by nature, that's what a marriage counselor does. But a wedding officiant tends to work with couples who are very excited about beginning a new life together. So Jeffrey was also excited that he had found a way to experience both roles once he started his officiant hustle.
He wasn't always working with people in difficulty and trauma. He was also working with people in harmony, beginning something new together. And lastly, episode 41, the US Postal Service mail carrier who makes clay imprints of children. I just kind of like this fun story. It's a physical product.
It's a work of art that's marketed to new parents and expectant parents. It's not really recurring income in the same way that a service is that you pay for each month, but it's recurring for Alex Zandrina, the person featured in that story, because as she learned, once you buy that clay imprint for your first child, well, if you're gonna have more children, you're very naturally gonna buy that as well. And you're also gonna refer that to other people you know who are having kids. So as you can see, as we continue through the first quarter of the year, some different approaches and definitely some very different stories, but several themes that continue to guide our journey. Now coming up next week, I've got some really good ones for you.
I've got the story of a down and out writer who makes less than a McDonald's employee, but creates a course that earns $100,000 in less than nine months. That's pretty cool. There's also a designer who sets out to reinvent a particular item of clothing that most women wear every day and often find uncomfortable. And not kidding, I've got the story for you of someone who dropped ships live crickets across America. Now I've decided that every two weeks on the show, there should be some kind of animal story.
So we have covered saddles for pet chickens in episode 10, Airbnb for dogs, episode 17, but somehow your host has let more than 20 episodes go by without any featured animals. So I apologize for that, but I assure you that this story about drop shipping live crickets will make up for it several times over. If you are actively listening to the show, I want you to know you're the reason I do this. I said when we started in the very first episode that if you make the commitment to make this part of your routine, I too commit to supporting you fully in your quest to create an all new source of income. That side hustle that you've been thinking about, maybe even working towards, but haven't yet turned into reality or that hustle that you've already built and you want to kind of take to the next level.
So if you're subscribed, the episodes will come straight to your phone, tablet, or computer. You can listen however you like on the website, sidehustleschool.com, directly in iTunes in whatever player or service you prefer. And speaking of that, if you're enjoying the show, I only ask once a week, but if you're enjoying the show, I'd be very grateful if you'd leave a quick rating and review in iTunes in particular, or your favorite service if it's not that. That would be super awesome. And it will also help other people discover the show.
You can find show notes, resources, occasionally other surprises every day at sidehustleschool.com. You can also write to me there, submit a question for the show, or if you know a story that we should feature, you can tell me about it. And in every episode, I always mention that inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. So I want you to take action, and I look forward to hearing about you doing that. Episodes are uploaded every day at 6.01 AM Eastern time.
I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. I hope to see you every day next week. [Music]
