College Student Pitches 300 TEDx Events, Becomes Semi-Pro Speaker

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hello and welcome. This is episode 425 of Side Hustle School. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. I have the privilege of bringing you a different true story every day of someone who's creating a bit more freedom for themselves. Someone who's taking ownership over their lives, not necessarily becoming an entrepreneur, not necessarily quitting their job, but in whatever situation they are in life, establishing an additional source of income so that they have the ability to do more of what's important to them.

That is what it's all about. It's also about using the skills you already have. It's also about not going into debt. It's also about not taking a lot of risk. Well, today's story features a college student who becomes a semi-professional speaker, all while working a full-time job and also going to school full-time.

I don't think we've ever talked about this, at least not so directly on the show. You know, a lot of surveys report that people's number one fear is public speaking, at least for a lot of people. But what if speaking is exactly what you want to do? What if you'd like to get paid for it while working another job or pursuing another career? So today you'll hear about that student who talks his way into speaking on the TEDx stage.

He actually speaks at 12 of them, 12 TEDx events, and then turns those experiences into a side hustle that earns an extra $30,000 a year. That's right, $30,000 a year from semi-professional speaking, all while working a regular job and going to school. Stay tuned and I'll tell you how this came to be, including his unconventional and persistent habit of pitching events. This guy is pretty hardcore, so let's say thanks to our sponsor and then I'll tell you all about him. [Music]

Simon Tam is a big proponent of the adage, go big or go home.

And as someone who travels at least half the time, he rarely has to go home. This marketing director has turned his public speaking side hustle into an evenings and weekends job that allows him to travel the world for free. He credits the side hustle with helping him find the freedom to travel, create valuable memories, and meet interesting people along the way. So how does this work? Well, Simon has always loved watching TED talks.

Each talk he watched gave him inspiration to apply to his career, sometimes even his life in general. After a while he realized he wanted to be up on stage too. He knew he had a story to tell, especially with his unique perspective as a person of color in Oregon. He just didn't know how or where to start sharing it. Simon knew it was unlikely for him to be selected for a main TED talk without any previous speaking experience.

So the website self-nomination form was not his answer. Instead, he contacted every independent TEDx event in the world, more than 300. These were smaller than the main events, and he thought if he asked enough of them, one of them would say yes. At the time, Simon wasn't just a full-time marketing director at a nonprofit, he was also a full-time MBA student. The only free time he had to reach out to those events was during his lunch break.

Most of those events ignored his emails. Many of them turned him down, but one event said yes. That was all he needed to gain momentum. He then sent more than 200 follow-up emails and was able to book two more events that year. With experience under his belt, he used this tactic again the next year and got himself on the roster for four more TEDx events.

Then he did it again, and all told, he's now made 12 TEDx experiences as both a speaker and host. The publicity from these experiences helped accelerate Simon's side hustle. Ted would post the videos on YouTube, and he began to be asked to lead corporate trainings, offer keynote speeches, and sit on panels. From all these new experiences, he keeps a Google Drive folder full of ideas for his next talk. Simon is now able to earn an extra $30,000 a year in speaking-generated income.

Because he presents at events and conferences around the world, he also gets free trips, in addition to that money. Not only that, when he's away, he rents out his car using a platform called Turo and earns $60 a day, or often an extra $600 a month. All this side hustle income came to be without any startup expenses at all, well, except for the car, which he already owned. The only cost was the time it took him to research events and send speaking proposals. After now presenting at more than 1,200 events around the world, sometimes several on the same day, Simon has learned a thing or two.

His advice is that any unique experience or memory with a lesson can be turned into an even greater story. And once you've got that, the next step is to find a place to share it. Anywhere from those TEDx events or rotary clubs, colleges, conventions, all those things hold opportunities to get started. Once you've found an event, take anything that comes your way. Your first speaking gig will probably be for free, maybe even your second, maybe even your 10th.

But that's okay, because the important thing is to build confidence in yourself and your ability to engage an audience. Simon got his first speaking gigs, which were free, through that initial cold email outreach. But you could also use Facebook, sites like meetup.com, or even social media channels like Twitter or Instagram to find your first gig. It's all about asking and persistence can pay off, especially if you email over 300 events like Simon did. That's another thing he said, emailing is free.

With the freedom to travel the world and earn income while doing it, Simon's side hustle puts him in the perfect position to capitalize on both. And that's something to talk about. You know, when it comes to the world of motivational speaking, I tend to think it's much better to not say, okay, I want to be a motivational speaker. I think it's better just to find something that you're passionate about, to find something you really believe in, that you devote, you know, maybe not your whole life, but you devote a significant portion of time and energy to. And then over time, you'll be asked to speak about that.

I tend to think that's a more meaningful approach than to just kind of start from ground zero and say, you know, I want to be a speaker. Maybe some of that comes from my own perspective, because I never wanted to be a speaker. I was just doing things that I believed in, things I was passionate about. And over time, eventually I began getting asked to do talks. But I kind of came into it on the backend, as opposed to saying like, you know, I want to be the speaker.

I want to be that person in front of the stage. I want to get paid for it. Like that was never my ambition. However, that said, I do respect the hustle in pitching 300 TEDx events, sending out all those emails to all those different places. And presumably he's actually putting some time into this.

So he's not just spamming everyone, but he's actually like contacting people individually. It's not a group mailing. On that point, I do think it's probably more effective to find some kind of mutual contact and go through them rather than just kind of reaching out cold to everyone. But hey, if you don't have a mutual contact, you don't have any other way to get in, and you're willing to do that, then like, that's great. Obviously that's worked for him.

So congrats on the hustle, Simon. We'll be sure to check out some of your YouTube videos. I will link those up on the show notes page. I'll also link up my TEDx talk, one of them anyway. A long time ago, I went to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, together with a good friend of mine, Jonathan Fields.

And both of us gave our first TEDx talk. And mine was on the topic of fear and permission. So I've only done two of them. I haven't done 12, like Simon has. But if you'd like to see that, you can check it out on that page.

Whatever you're up to today, remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Those show notes are online at sidehustleschool.com/425. I can't wait to bring you another story tomorrow. Thank you for listening. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.