This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Oh, hey there, what's up? This is Chris Guillebeau here with you, at Side Hustle School, the weekly recap, looking back at some of the highlights of this week, looking ahead to next week, and also responding to some listener questions. Now today, actually, I want to introduce you to a few more people who've been part of Side Hustle Society, or actually, I'll let them introduce themselves to you. We did a few of these last week, and I've got another quick set for you today. And this is timely because the Side Hustle Society is reopening this week.
If you're listening in real time, it's gonna open on Tuesday, the 27th of February. It will remain open for a week, seven days, at a special discounted price, and then that price will go up at the end of the week. So for those who are interested, I'll tell you a bit more about it on Tuesday. If you'd like to be the first to know, you could just come and join the announcement list at sidehustleschool.com/society. Now I'm just realizing as I'm explaining this, that some listeners may be new, or they've been busy with other stuff, which I totally understand, so they may not know what Side Hustle Society is all about.
Well, the Society is our online community and training program that many listeners requested all throughout 2017. I worked on preparing it for the second half of last year, and we finally released it to an inaugural group of members last month. As mentioned, it will soon be ready for a wider release, and I'd love to welcome you there, if it's something you'd be interested in. It is a group of people, perhaps just like you, or at least with the same values as you, with the same intentions, who are all trying to create more freedom for their lives, another source of income, all the stuff that we talk about every day on Side Hustle School. And they're looking for support, they're looking for guidance, they're looking for resources, specific training, all that kind of stuff.
So without further ado, let's hear from a couple people who've been part of the experience so far. [Music]
Hi everyone, my name is Candice, and I'm a six-foot-tall French Cameroonian travel lover. I work in West Africa as a bilingual facilitator for a non-profit organization, a thing West African business leader, to scale up their business using innovation. I'm also a public speaker in the fields of e-commerce, entrepreneurship, and women empowerment. I discovered Side Hustle book and podcast on the School of Business, and as a Side Hustle, I would really like to create my own podcast, aiming at empowering French and English speaking ambitious women in Africa and its diaspora.
I'm quite good at personal branding and telling stories, but I tend to have a struggle when it comes to executions. I wish I could manage my time and energy well enough to build a proper system for my side hustle. In the meantime, I do occasional coaching and create my own content from my website, www.candicencut.com, and my social media @candicencut, C-A-N-T-A-C-E-N-K-A-T-H. I'm very excited to be part of this journey, and I'm looking forward to learn and grow with you. Bye.
- Hi everyone, my name is Nick Wong, and I'm a software engineer based in Melbourne, Australia. I've always been interested in making money online, and I've tried a few side hustles over the last 12 months, but nothing has really stuck. I'm very passionate about learning and teaching Japanese, and this year I wanna build a profitable side hustle that revolves around that. My biggest strength is solving problems. So like Chris, I believe that everything is figureoutable, no matter how big or small.
My biggest weakness is that I'm easily distracted, which is why I joined the Side Hustle Society. It's great having a community of like-minded people to share with and help me to stay on track. For everyone else that is pursuing a side hustle, or at least thinking about it, I'd like to wish you all the best, and here's to a productive year. - Hi, my name is Nivian, and I live in Miami, Florida. I first started listening to Side Hustle podcast back in December of 2017, thanks to my sister.
And after listening to each story, it definitely gave me inspiration to try to start my own side hustle. With so many ideas, I had to try and narrow it down, but thanks to the Side Hustle Society, I was able to connect with other like-minded people, and they gave me some great tips on how to narrow down my ideas. Two ideas that I am currently working on is a body scrub, and then in the near future, I wanna start up my own podcast. So hopefully, one day I'll be able to be one of Chris's stories of a successful side hustler. Thanks for creating this community.
I really appreciate it, and I enjoy every single episode. - Awesome, those are just a few of the voices from the inaugural group of members. We have several hundred from all over the world who are working on all kinds of projects. And literally every day, several times throughout the day, people are chiming in on this private online forum that we have, where people can share their side hustle idea or what they're already working on, if they already have a side hustle, and get feedback, get advice, as well as share resources with other members. So like I said, that is opening on Tuesday, February 27th.
It will be open for seven days, and then it will either go away again or the price will go up. If you'd like to know more about that, go to sidehustleschool.com/society. [Music]
Okay, on with the show. I got a great email from listener Rachel this week. She has a question that a number of people have asked in different ways, but I love the way that she phrased it.
So here's what Rachel had to say. She said, "Hey, Chris, today I was filled with excitement as I opened my Amazon box to the bright yellow cover of a side hustle book. I can't wait to dig in. My question is though, is it possible to create a side hustle for a brick and mortar business while maintaining your day job? It seems like many of the people's success you talk about is with low overhead online businesses.
But my dream is to open a wellness studio. Am I biting off too much to chew with a side hustle of this nature?" Okay, Rachel, as I said, great question. Thanks for sharing that. I do hope the book is helpful to you. And my response is, if this is your dream, if this is something you really want to do, then of course it's possible.
A number of people that we featured on this show have opened a brick and mortar business or another retail establishment or a wellness studio, just like you mentioned. So it's certainly possible. It's just probably harder than something that's strictly online. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. If it's the right thing for you and you can handle it, then don't let anybody dissuade you from it.
But for yourself or for anybody else out there wondering about it, I would say most of the time when you're trying to start a side hustle, there are multiple options you can choose from. And as you learn more about brainstorming and generating ideas, as you listen to the show or read the book or whatever process you go through, you're gonna discover over time that ideas are not your problem. Like you have no shortage of options. So my suggestion in that scenario is if you absolutely know what you want to do and your dream might require more effort, it might be more difficult, whether it's that brick and mortar store or something else, well, if it's your dream, then go for it. However, for everybody else, if you don't have that life dream, if you're just like trying to explore this world, if you just wanna create that new source of income, if this is your first time doing this, if you just wanna make some money to pay off your bills, then I would say since you can choose from many different ideas, at least several ideas, let's say, why not pick the one that is the most feasible with the least amount of risk?
Okay, so by the way, I would love to know where you're listening from. And if you have a question, we often feature listener questions during the weekly recap and sometimes some other places as well. Pretty much every day in the Cytosle Society, people are introducing themselves and asking questions, but I wanna make sure our whole community has a chance to engage. So if you have a question or a comment or just wanna share what project you're working on, give me a call, leave me a short message at 8449 hustle. That's 8449 hustle or 8449487853.
You could also just send me a note at podcast@sidehustleschool.com, whatever you prefer. [Music]
Looking back on this week, the past six episodes that we've had, I was thinking about motivations, first of all, how motivations can change as you go along. I often talk about how people have different motivations for starting a side hustle. Well, sometimes your motivations for starting are different than your motivations six months in or a year in or two years later or whatever the timeframe is. Maybe it's even just two weeks later because sometimes a side hustle can provide you with unexpected opportunity.
Like you think you're just gonna do something small and that's fine, but then as you do it, it kind of grows into something much bigger and your vision for it expands, your mission expands. Or alternatively, right from the beginning, you can create your own opportunity and say, you know, I'm not just gonna wait for an opportunity to arrive, I'm gonna go out and make it happen for myself. And so I wanted to compare two episodes this week, episode 417 and 419. Episode 417 was about the Shopify employee who sells enough apparel online to buy a French bulldog. Really great story of somebody using print on demand, taking very little risk, and initially just having the goal of making $3,000, which as I learned in the research for this episode is how much a French bulldog costs.
Those are some expensive dogs, just side note. So she wanted $3,000, but as she created this little shop and as she got better at it, she made a lot more than $3,000. In fact, she made more than $100,000. So as she went along, her motivation went from, you know what, I need to make some extra money, to hey, let's see what else I can do with this. Maybe I can buy 33 French bulldogs.
Or you know what, maybe I can just buy one and save the rest of the money. Probably a better idea. And then in episode 419, that was about these two brothers, two brothers in Ontario, Canada, I believe, who have this lifestyle change. Or in fact, one of the brothers has like a healthcare issue. He's got some medical stuff he's going through and previously he had worked in the construction field.
And now all of a sudden, even though he had these skills, he wasn't able to work in that field anymore because of his personal situation. So his brother comes along and says, you know what, let's start a project together where we can still use your skills, but you're not actually out in the field all day and you can work a flexible schedule. And we can kind of construct, no pun intended, the environment to suit your needs, basically. So they end up opening a leather shop, like a high quality leather goods business, selling leather accessories. I think it's like belts and dog collars and things like that.
And they live in this very small rural town. So they're focused on online sales. They can be in the middle of nowhere, relatively speaking, and yet reach a global community. And so they're working on making this full time, at least that's their goal eventually. And in their case, as I said, they have essentially created their own opportunity.
They haven't just waited for something to come along. They have said, you know what, we have to be proactive. Let's make something happen for ourselves. And one way or another, in most of the stories that we feature, there's kind of both of those elements. So you have the element of circumstance of just kind of what happens along the way.
You start the project, you don't know what's gonna happen. Maybe it's a success. Maybe it's a failure. Maybe it's a small success. Maybe it goes on to be something much more, like we talked about, whatever it is.
But then you also have that point about choosing your own adventure and creating your own opportunity. Because even if the outcome, the result is completely dependent on circumstance, which is almost never the case. But even if it was the case that the outcome was completely outside your control, you have to create that opportunity in the first place by choosing to move forward and saying, you know what, I had this idea. It's not just gonna remain an idea. I'm gonna take that idea and turn it into a product, into a service, into something that people can buy.
That is the decision you have to make so that you can get to that point of seeing, okay, well, what happens next? Do my motivations change? What is the result? What is the outcome? You're never gonna find the answer to that until you choose to create your own opportunity.
And that's why every day on the show, I'm telling you these different stories, these different illustrations, these little vignettes, highlights of people all over the world from different backgrounds, starting different kinds of projects. And these very different people all have one common goal, which is probably the same as yours, at least if you've been listening for a while, which is to have more ownership over their lives, to be able to make choices that are important to them, to not just follow a traditional path, even if you have a traditional job. Like that's fine. It's not about where you work or what you do. It's about how much influence do you have over the environment in your life?
And if you feel like you don't have enough influence, if you don't have enough control, well, again, maybe you need to create your own opportunity. And of course, that's what I hope you'll do. Coming up on the show next week, we've got a number of great stories, something about choral music, something about bow ties, something about a woman who makes a healthy kind of fudge, true story, like all our stories. And of course, several other things in addition to the return of Cytosol Society, as I mentioned, I look forward to sharing all of that with you. And before I sign off for the week, I want to say thank you to you, first of all, for listening, being part of this community.
You are the reason I make this show. Whenever I speak at an event, somebody comes up and says, "I've listened to every episode of Cytosol School." And I just think that is so cool. So if that's you out there, you're awesome. If you're busy and you don't have time to listen to every episode, I understand, I respect that. I still want this show to be helpful to you.
I still want it to be something that you can take with you, you can learn something, you can apply it, so that you can look back later and say, "You know what, I actually made my own opportunity," just like I heard about on Cytosol School. That is my hope, and I'm not the only one. There's a bunch of other people working to make this show happen behind the scenes. We do, in fact, do this every day. We do, in fact, do it seven days a week, no breaks, no holidays.
I make this show in partnership with The Onward Project, a collection of podcasts curated and founded by Gretchen Rubin. And The Onward Project is part of the Panoply Network, which also has lots of other great shows. Our production team is led by A.C. Valdez. It also features Sarah Barrett, sometimes some other folks who are filling in from various offices, Brooklyn, New York, Washington, D.C., elsewhere.
Show notes and scheduling are by Whitney Karinek, my assistant in Portland, Oregon. And of course, my cat Libby Gilliboe works the night shift. A fun fact of the week comes from our episode 418 about the gardening mama. And that fun fact is I will cut the grass only when I get motivated. You're welcome, feel free to share that somewhere.
You'll be the life of the party. If you're enjoying the show, I'd be super grateful if you'd leave a quick rating and review for us in Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you can tell your friends about us, that's awesome. It is a free daily show. Listener supported, no big marketing campaign.
We're just all about telling stories and helping people do this for themselves. That is our single-minded goal, our one mission for the show. And like I said, I want this to be helpful to you. I want you to be able to take action, not just be inspired, but be able to make something happen for yourself. And as part of that, I hope you'll join me tomorrow and every day next week for more stories and ideas.
Consider this a 10-minute a day investment in yourself and our episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time every day. Until we meet again, I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
