This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up? Welcome back. This is Chris Guillebeau for Sidus Love School and I'm excited to be bringing you today the weekly recap. This is in fact our, what is it? I think it's like our eighth.
No, it's our ninth weekly recap of season two. So much has been happening since we started, but especially this week in particular. Got a lot to report to you today. I want to do a shout out for a friend of mine. I want to talk about goals.
Got a great listener question about SEO for video. A couple of thoughts on some of the episodes we've had this week, a preview of next week and who knows, maybe something else. All condensed into a short snackable episode for you because I know you're busy. You've got a lot of stuff going on. I want these minutes that you spend listening to Sidus Love School to be good for you.
Once in a while I mentioned that listening to the show is an investment in yourself. I think the only way you're gonna get ahead, the only way you're gonna make progress, especially if you feel stuck, but even if you don't feel stuck, if you're doing okay and you just want to move forward, you want to be a little bit better off tomorrow than you were today, choosing to actively invest in yourself, choosing to learn, then choosing to apply what you learn, that really is the best thing that you can do. All right, so I mentioned there's a lot going on. The Sidus Love Society relaunch is underway. For those who are listening in real time, we kick that off on Tuesday the 27th.
It's gonna go for a whole week until we increase the price. So there's still a couple of days to go until that price increase. If you'd like to check it out for yourself, just come to sidehustleschool.com/society. We have been welcoming a ton of new members this week. I would love to welcome you as well, if it's a good fit for you, of course.
There's never any pressure. I'm so happy to be able to produce the show every day for you for free. That is not going away. That's not changing in any form. But if you're looking for a community of like-minded people who are all pursuing similar goals, well, that's what this program is about.
And it came to be based on many, many requests I received last year, our first year of Sidus Love School. People said like, this is great, but I want to be supported. I want to have a place to bounce ideas off of people. Maybe I need help in deciding on my idea. Maybe I need help in turning that idea into a product or a service or an offer.
Maybe I need help in marketing that offer. Or perhaps I need help with all three of those things. And listen, we've all been there. I've been there myself many times. So that's the whole point of Sidustle Society to provide a welcoming space for community so you can make real progress on your goals.
I'll come back to goals in just a moment. Once again, if you want to check out society, it's sidehustleschool.com/society. S-O-C-I-E-T-Y, love to see you there. Now I want to do a special shout out for a friend of mine. I often recommend other podcasts, other books, other resources that I found helpful or other people that I just think are doing good and helpful work.
Today I want to mention a friend of mine, Jordan Harbinger. He's got a brand new show on iTunes or Apple Podcasts as we call it now. Jordan Harbinger was the longstanding host of The Art of Charm, which is a podcast I've actually recommended before. I've been a guest on that show. For many years, Jordan did a fantastic job interviewing people like Shaquille O'Neal and myself, although not the same week.
I think for some reason Shaquille O'Neal got more downloads of his episode, but that's okay. He has now moved on from that show and he's got his own show called, conveniently, The Jordan Harbinger Show. The goal of that show is to deconstruct the playbooks of the most successful people on Earth to learn new strategies, perspectives, and insights you can't find anywhere else. Then take those insights into your own life and live what you listen. Great description, great show, check it out wherever you listen to podcasts.
All right, let's talk about goals. I mentioned this briefly in the episode, I think it was yesterday, episode 427. I thought about it a bit more after I went away from that recording. I realized, you know, it's now March, also known as two months after January, a time when a lot of people set goals, a time when a lot of people look ahead to their year and maybe it's an arbitrary date, but we just tend to organize ourselves around a calendar, at least a lot of us do in the West. So here we are two months after that time period.
If you set goals and you're on track for them, or maybe you're even ahead of schedule. That's great, congratulations. I have found over time that this principle of how we tend to overestimate what we can do in a day, but we underestimate what we can accomplish in a year is so true. Like if you actually set goals and decide to live intentionally and say, okay, you know what, this year I'm gonna focus on these things, by the end of this year, this is the outcome I'm hoping for. You may really surprise yourself because especially if you haven't done this before, you may find that you can actually achieve a lot of those goals much quicker than a year.
So for those who are in that position, good work. Congratulations, but don't let your guard down because there's still more to be done. And for everybody out there who's like, wait a second, what goals? Was I supposed to set goals? Man, I had a rough January, or it's actually been rough since then.
Or I set some goals, but I totally got off track. Or I've even forgotten about my goals. All right, so here's my response to that. What happens if you get off track or if you never set the goals, or if you're just feeling stuck? I guess first of all, I would say it's not too late.
And more than anything, what I hope to do with the show, I mean, I want to teach people. I want to give people resources. I want to show them all these different examples of people creating freedom and opportunity for themselves. But more than anything else, I hope to encourage you to make active choices. That really is the whole goal.
Like don't just accept what is presented to you. Don't accept the situation that you found yourself in. There's always room to make a change. Again, there's always room to make a change. We talked about quotes recently.
Here's a quotation I always like, it's really simple. Just says, "Nothing changes unless you do." Okay, so I'm not trying to give you tough love here. Like I know not everyone responds to that, but it just is reality that if we want change in our life, if we do find ourselves off track or drifting a little bit, like we're the ones who have to make changes. Like we have to make active choices. And fundamentally, I am an optimist, kind of a measured optimist or a realistic optimist.
Like I want to believe that the future is better than the present while still appreciating the present, but that's a whole other story. But for that to be true, we have to be willing to do something about it. It's not just gonna passively happen. And so here's the other thing. If you think it's too late, not only is that not true, but that's also an act of self-sabotage.
Like it's a way of setting yourself up for failure, accepting failure, pre-determining that you're going to continue to fail, saying to yourself, "Oh, well, you know, it's too late. "Maybe nine months from now or 10 months from now, "I can take another look." Like that's not gonna help you at all. So if you've gotten off track, I don't want you to feel guilty. I don't want you to beat yourself up. But I do want you to challenge yourself and say, "You know what?
"I can still make some active choices. "I can make them right now. "If my goals have changed, well, that's great. "Let's get on with the new goals." If I still have the same goals, but I haven't made progress on them, where was I stuck? What is the next step I can take?
What is one thing I can do today to just get a little bit closer toward achieving that goal? I hope that helps somebody out there. And I'm gonna continue to talk about this as we go along, because I think it's so important. If you want to create change, make active choices. Okay, and totally different news.
I've got a listener voicemail with a question about SEO for video. Let's do a thank you message to our sponsor. They allow the show to be free to you. I really appreciate them. So let's say thanks to them.
And then I'll play that question along with my answer. [Music]
All right, let's hear from a listener. I want to remind you, first of all, that there is a hustle hotline. That has a phone number in which you can call and leave a voicemail with a question for me or just a comment about the show. Do you want to share about your side hustle?
There's a couple of different ways you can do that. First of all, the hotline number is 8449HUSTLE. That's H-U-S-T-L-E or 844-948-7853. Or if you prefer, you can just use your phone to make a little voice memo and email that to podcast@sidehustleschool.com. So next, let's hear from Nick who has a question about a topic I don't think we've ever featured before.
- Hi, Chris. My name is Nick from Vancouver. I do videos on the side. And I was asked by a client to also help him out with his social media, with his website. And it's been an interesting journey.
It's a good way of also making the video that I did very highlighted on the web. However, he just asked me about the SEO of my site. And last episode, 409, I heard some of the tips that you gave on SEO, but I'm hoping that you can probably help me out with some tips for SEO for video, specifically for this video that I've hosted on a website. Because unlike, I guess, the golfer that you talked about last episode, here with the video, we're dealing with a little bit more of a subjective topic about bees and growing bees. Thanks so much for the show.
I hope to hear more of it. Thank you. - Hey, Nick, thanks so much for listening. And thanks for the question as well. For anyone who's not familiar, search engine optimization is the art of trying to make your website look attractive to search engines.
So if you're featuring a particular topic, you want to be able to come up in the top of the search results. Well, that's easy enough, or at least it's understandable enough when you're working with text, because then you identify these keywords and you use those keywords throughout your text and there's some plugins and some tools you can get to make that process easier. That's what he was referring to about that previous episode. That was number 409. I think we've also talked about it in other episodes as well.
But it's a great question because what do you do if you're primarily focused on video, which is what he does in this case? So if you have video, how do you make sure that video shows up well in search results? It might sound like an impossible task, but there's actually some things you can do. First of all, you may have noticed anyway, just by searching in Google or anywhere else, that video is now increasingly coming up at the top of search results. So in some ways, Google is almost prioritizing that content.
So it can actually help you, not hurt you, but still the question remains, okay, how do I make sure that I'm optimized for search results? First things first, you make a great video. Like let's not miss the forest for the trees. The actual content, the quality of the video you're making is gonna be far more important than anything else. And since Paul is doing this for his side also already, I'm sure he's making great videos.
I just wanna stress to anybody else that it's not about hacking the system. What you wanna do is have great content and then do everything you can to support that content and give it every chance of success. That's what SEO is about. So with video, you can still use keywords. When you upload that video to YouTube or Vimeo or Wistia, there's a few other services.
You almost always have the opportunity to include a title and some tags and a description. Well, all those things should include the keywords that you want to target. Not in a weird way that makes you sound like a robot. It has to actually make sense, not just like a sentence that has keyword number one, keyword number two, keyword number three, et cetera, but you do wanna make sure you use that data well. Next, you wanna make sure you have a really good thumbnail.
So all of those video services I mentioned allow you, when you upload the video, to choose which image is presented in the search results or when people first click on the video before they play it. You're just gonna see that one little image there. You can choose what image that is. So make sure you choose a good one, not just whatever it defaults to when you upload the video. And then last, okay, you've got that video online.
You've made a page that has that video. Well, what else goes on that page? Can you include a transcript of the video? Can you include a more detailed description of the video? Can you include an offer to join your email list?
Like the video is just one part of the page, even if it's the most important part of the page, there's still other stuff you can do there. So I think those are the things you consider when you ask, how do I optimize my video for SEO? It's not a lost cause. And in fact, like I said, you can actually do better than not having video. So good luck with that, Nick.
And thanks again for listening. [Music]
All right, so I was trying to think what was my favorite episode of this week. We had a range of topics from a private chef who creates a $30,000 a month side hustle to a couple that starts a photo booth that they take around to various events, a yoga enthusiast who makes fair trade kids clothes, all kinds of stuff. And here I had a single favorite. I think episode 424 was probably the biggest financial success.
That was about a designer who goes viral with playful t-shirts, earns more than $400,000. So yes, that's a huge, huge success. But for me, the standard of success is not always like who makes the most money. There are other factors too. You know, it's quality of life, it's impact.
It's what does that money allow you to do? What does that bring you in your life? So while I do want everybody to be economically successful, like that is a big part of side hustle school. Like I want you to be able to make more money. I don't have any problem with saying it directly like that.
But it's also very much about a lifestyle. It's about those goals that I talked about. What's important to you? What are you trying to achieve? How can your second or your third source of income play a role in that?
How can it support you with your other goals? How can it help you follow a dream? Whatever that dream is. So honestly, for me, one of the best things about the show, well, I'll say two things. One is just the wide range of stories that come across my desk and that I have the opportunity to share with you.
All these different topics, different people doing all kinds of stuff in lots of different ways, as you probably know if you've listened for a while. And then the second thing, which is very much related to that, is the interaction that comes from other listeners. When the show goes out, I get lots of emails, feedback. I go around the world and do events. Regularly hear from people who are starting projects in response to the show or because the show is supporting them in some way.
Like I'm not taking any credit for it. Like they're the ones doing all the work, but I love the fact that we have a bit of synergy between like what I'm trying to achieve with Side Hustle School and what you are, perhaps. So there are lots of great stories in the archives for you. All of those are free. And coming up next week, we've got another set of them.
I'm reading something in my notes here about a million dollar weatherproofing product, something else about a pilot test flight app, something about CBD beauty products, something about choral music, all kinds of stuff. You never know what you're gonna get. You're gonna get cannabis and choral music in the same week. So don't go anywhere because so much more is on the way and the best is yet to come. And before I sign off for the day, I just wanna say thank you.
It's gonna say thanks to the folks who work with me to produce the show as well as thanks to you. That's right, to you, the listener. So let's start with our Side Hustle School crew. Our senior producer is AC Valdez based in Washington, DC. We've also got Sarah Barrett working on various episodes.
I believe she is in Mexico. Sometimes we get some help from some other people in the panoply offices in Brooklyn. And then back on the West Coast, I work with my assistant, our content manager who does all our show notes and host wrangling, very important duty. Her name is Whitney Corinna. Whitney, thank you so much, you're awesome.
She is working on getting us scheduled out far into the future, which makes my life so much easier, so much less stressful. And that's good because the official show cat, Liberia Gilapo, even though she's a cat and she's awesome, she does sometimes add to the stress. Like just gotta be honest. And also as part of our crew or at least our team and someone who's a friend and mentor to me, I would not be doing this show, at least not in this fashion or it not for Gretchen Rubin. Among other things, Gretchen is the host of Happier, a mega popular podcast that you may have heard of.
If you haven't, you should check it out. She's also a mega bestselling author of all kinds of books, including The Four Tendencies. And of course, the show is also in partnership with you. You, the listener, are the reason we make the show. As I said, I want it to be helpful to you, I want it to be useful, I want it to be a support for you.
I want you to know like whatever else is going on in your life, this show's gonna be here 10 minutes a day, every single day. We talked about goals, I wanna support you and your goals to create that new source of income, maybe that side hustle you've thought about for a while but haven't turned into reality until now. That is our single-minded focus, our one mission for the show. In every episode, I always say inspiration is good, but action is better. So I look forward to hearing about you taking action and I hope you'll join me tomorrow and each day next week.
We've got more stories and more ideas, also tools and resources. Also, you never know what we're gonna come up with. We do have some surprises on the way and I look forward to sharing those with you too. Our episodes go online every day at 601 a.m. Eastern time.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
