This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello and greetings. What's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is the weekly recap.
We're gonna look back on some lessons of the week. I got some announcements for you as well. I'm also gonna answer a listener question about network marketing. And I'm pretty sure my answer is gonna be a little controversial. And I'm just gonna give it to you straight about that.
I'm not gonna try to say, "Oh, on the one hand this, on the one hand that." My goal with the show is to always look out for your interest to give you something that's actually helpful, useful, and valuable. And if there's something I can do to help you save time and money, I certainly will do it. So hang tight and we'll come back to that. Also for those who are listening, as the show comes out, today is daylight savings time. Or at least in some parts of the world, I realized not everywhere has daylight savings time.
But for a lot of us in the US, at least most states, again, that's complicated too 'cause not every state observes it. But a lot of places, a lot of our listeners out there, we are springing forward today. We lose an hour of sleep, but we are gaining, I don't know what we gain. I guess we gain daylight. We save some time somehow.
We save time by not sleeping. How about that? That's what I do every night, basically. This week I've been spending a lot of time in the online community for Side Hustle Society. I haven't talked about that recently, but that is our new online community.
We've got a lot of listeners who are engaging with that, posting up their ideas, as well as posting their progress on what they're doing. So this new thing we've been doing each week, we're asking a prompt. And the prompt could be something as simple as like, "What are you working on this week? What's your number one goal?" And that's what I asked the other day on Monday. So I got some responses.
I'll just read you a few of them here. I think we had more than 100 in the forum. Nabil says, "My goal this week is to finish designing my first online course without being too hard on myself." Which I really liked both those parts, like finish doing the work, but also don't be too hard on yourself. Nivian says, "Hey, Chris, my task this week is to create a survey using SurveyMonkey and ask my testers for their email address." Clayton says, "I've got three goals. I want to make a second draft of my logo.
I want to take pictures from my website in Etsy. And I also want to make some muffins." Which is cool. Make some muffins. Do what you need to do. Lots of people posting other stuff and asking for advice and helping other people as well.
If you'd like to be part of that and you haven't joined in yet, just come to sidehustleschool.com/society. The price discount that we were running last week has now ended, but the price is gonna go up more later too. Like we always want to reward people who are coming in early because we continue to add value, new features, new benefits, et cetera. We'd love to see you there at sidehustleschool.com. /society, S-O-C-I-E-T-Y.
Also in other news or in other invitations, I've got another invitation for you. Have you heard of the World Domination Summit or WDS? This is a gathering of awesome people an event that I've been hosting together with an amazing team in Portland, Oregon, every summer for the past eight years. WDS 2018 is coming up at the end of June. We have people from more than 30 countries around the world coming to join us.
We're gonna have a weekend together with keynote speakers and a main stage auditorium. We're gonna have a bunch of workshops and academies where you can learn all kinds of different topics, some things about side hustles and entrepreneurship, but also all sorts of other things as well. Becoming a digital nomad, cryptocurrency, learning to speak a different language, improving your photography, improving your social skills, how to travel like an introvert, like all kinds of different stuff. And in addition to that, we have hundreds of meetups. You can choose which meetup you want to go to.
You can search by interests. You can host your own meetup if you want. Anyway, the best way to learn more about WDS and get a feel of what it's like is to watch the video on the homepage. So if you just go to sidehustleschool.com/wds, just those three letters, it's gonna redirect you and it will actually send you to worlddominationsummit.com if you want to go there directly. So check that out.
I would love for you to join us this summer. We've got a wonderful community, really supportive people, and it's a lot of fun. Okay, so let's go to this question. All right, I got this question about network marketing. I won't preview it too much.
Like, we'll hear what she has to say. But I will say that I get this question a lot. And I think I've talked about it maybe one or two times in the beginning of the show, but we haven't talked about it recently. And I also don't know if I've been as direct, in my opinion, as I'm gonna be here today. So without further ado, let's hear from this listener.
I believe this is Janine. - Hey Chris, it's Janine from Chicago. I love your show. I stumbled upon it and I listened to it while I'm walking and I'm getting some great ideas for a side hustle. My question is, what are your thoughts on network marketing as a side hustle?
I've been doing it for about three years with a company that I've loved, but I'm really not having much success. And I just kind of wanted to see your opinion generally, 'cause so many network marketing companies are popping up. All right, Chris, thank you so much. Bye-bye. - All right, so here's my opinion generally for your question.
Thank you so much, Janine, first of all. You're not the only person who's asked this question. And you shared your experience there. And in your experience, you said, you've been doing this for three years and you like the company, but you haven't been seeing results. Here's the thing, your experience is so common.
This is, in fact, the most common experience that people have when they go through network marketing programs. Perhaps the only big difference is sometimes they don't end up loving the company. But the other two points about how you do it for a long time and don't see results, that is the reality that most people experience when they go through these programs. And I know there's some exceptions. I'll come to that in a second.
But the reality, again, is the vast majority of people who participate in these programs never even recoup their costs. Like they make this initial investment because that's what you have to do. And not only do they not make money, they never even recoup that money they've spent. So in this network marketing world, for the most part, generally speaking, there are few winners and many losers. Whereas the way the whole industry is positioned in pretty much any pitch you ever hear for a network marketing company is that everybody can be a winner.
And you're a winner, right? You deserve to win. You deserve to make a lot of money. But by nature of these programs, it just kind of rewards a few people. And most people, as I said, just never recoup their costs.
Now, I don't want that to happen to you or our listeners. Like I care about you. How do we make this show? So it's my opinion that these companies, a lot of them anyway, are selling false hope, basically. And you kind of go away feeling bad about yourself after you participate in them because you think there's something wrong with you.
You look and you see like, oh, but like everybody else was successful or my sponsor told me that, you know, I could make X number of dollars or whatever it is. And so it's not their fault. I think there's something fundamentally wrong with the system. So I'm sure I'm gonna get complaints about this. Listen, if you're the exception to this, if you're like, no, I've got a great program, I'm doing really well.
Well, good for you. I mean, that's great, really, truly. But am I gonna advise people to do something in this industry? No, I'm not going to because I honestly believe most people will be better served by doing something on their own. And that's what I talk about every day on the show is like all these different projects.
It's not about buying into someone else's vision. It's looking within yourself and saying like, what are the skills that I have? What am I good at? How can I help people? And then how can I learn to, you know, apply these pretty simple side hustle school principles to something that I already know about or something that I can easily learn?
So again, Janine, thank you for asking that. And for everybody out there, I hope that's helpful. Let me know what you think. I'm now gonna say a quick little thank you to our sponsor and I'll be back to do a quick recap and look ahead at what's to come. [Music]
Hey, so I was taking a look back at the episodes we've talked about this week.
Once again, an incredibly diverse set of stories. We've got the choir teacher who turns a sight reading workbook into a $20,000 hustle. A flight instructor who makes an app kind of ignores my advice about not making apps. It works out pretty well for him. So good for him.
Earns $30,000. A crafter who makes a tool for people who wear dreadlocks. Love her site called luxessaries.com, great name. A call center employee who uses Patreon to fund LGBTQ podcasts. Two podcasts, in fact, that she has about activism and storytelling.
If your project is something missional, like you're trying to advance a cause or there's some charitable component behind it, but you also wanna make money 'cause you want it to be sustainable. You might wanna take a look at the model that she uses because it can work for the right person, the right project. It's not best for everyone, but that's how the world of side hustles works. It's not one size fits all, but there is something out there for you. And it's probably not network marketing, but I won't go on about that.
We'll wait to see what kind of emails I get. And then there was the Southern couple that rolls out sweet profits with the family side hustle, making delicious cinnamon rolls in Mississippi, which we at side hustle school would be happy to test. I'm not normally for sale, like I'm not influenced by people offering to send us free stuff, but for the right pastry, I might make an exception just to be totally honest with you. And then moving from Mississippi all the way to the West Coast, our last episode of the week yesterday, episode 434, "California Moms Get High and Get Well," all about the new and emerging recreational marijuana, medical cannabis, and CBD in particular in that episode industry. Like I said, so many stories, so much is going on.
These days we're getting a lot of submissions. We're able to just look through and say, "Okay, what is best?" What stories do we want to highlight for our listeners? What is interesting? What is helpful? What might inspire somebody to go and do something of their own?
So if something you've heard has been helpful, please let us know. I'd love to hear about it and possibly tell other listeners about it as well. A lot of the stories we feature are now coming from the community and from Side Hustle Society, which makes me really happy. So feel free to be in touch any time. You can write podcast@sidehustleschool.com.
You can call the Hustle Hotline. What is the Hustle Hotline number? Now that I say that, I'm like, I forgot what it is. The Hustle Hotline number is 8449 Hustle. There we go. 8449 Hustle,
844-948-7853. Leave us a quick little message there or just give me a shout out on social media. I'm usually online pretty much every day since I make the show every day. [Music]
Coming up next week, of course, we're gonna continue this trend. Got something about aerial performance.
Got something about iPad lettering. I've got something about proofreading courses. And then perhaps my favorite episode or the most interesting one, I will say, is coming out tomorrow. It's called "It's Not Vandalism." It's a $15,000 yard gram hustle. This is, in fact, a guy who gets paid a lot of money to put plastic pink flamingos in people's yards, usually overnight.
And then they're gone in a couple of days. So stay tuned. You'll hear the whole thing tomorrow. It's crazy. And of course, so much more to come as well.
I'm really enjoying making this show for you. I hope that you're enjoying it as well. You are the reason I make this show. Our crew works on behalf of making sure you have a great experience. I'm gonna say thank you to them in a second, but I also just wanna say, you know, if you make the commitment to make listening to Seto Soul School part of your routine, well, I too commit to being here every day.
Like I wanna support you in your quest to create that new source of income. I want you to have the kind of freedom that you're hearing about through these stories. Maybe you've thought about it for a while, but you haven't done anything about it. Well, that's okay. I don't want you to beat yourself up.
I don't want you to feel guilty, but I do want to encourage you to take small steps because the crazy thing about taking small steps is even if you're taking those small steps, you do eventually get somewhere. All right, so as I said, thank you to our crew. Our production team is led by AC Valdez. Also features Sarah Barrett, a couple other folks sometime who come and go, someone who doesn't come and go, who is super solid, just like AC. Whitney Karonic is my assistant, works in Portland, Oregon, does our show notes, does our content scheduling, works with our writers, works with other people that are working on the show in different ways.
Very thankful to her. And of course, also my cat, Liberia Guillipo, who works the night shift. She doesn't have dreadlocks. She doesn't use recreational marijuana. She doesn't even like cinnamon rolls.
But still, she is solid. She's consistent. She's there for us. Last but not least, Ptossil School might not exist, at least in the form that it does, without my good friend and mentor, Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen is the founder and curator of The Onward Project.
That is a collection of podcasts with all kinds of ideas about making your life happier, healthier, more productive, or more creative. Check that out at theonwardproject.com or just search for her podcast. You may already subscribe to it because everyone does and they should. It's called Happier with Gretchen Rubin. And before we close it out, the last thing, I wanna say thank you to you, the listener.
You have made this show, this community, so much better than it would have been with just me. And there's so much more on the way, like the best really is to come. So thank you for listening. Thank you for telling your friends about the show. Thank you for supporting our sponsors.
They allow the show to be completely free to you. Thank you for your little ratings or reviews and Apple podcasts, those help a ton. Mostly I am grateful to be able to do this every day and I have no plans to quit. I mean, I can't quit because we do it every day. There has to be an episode.
I encourage you to consider listening to this 10 minute a day show and investment in yourself, like a 10 minute little investment in making your life better. I hope you'll join me tomorrow and every day next week for more stories. I look forward to hearing your stories. Let's just have a lot of stories. Our episodes go online at 6 0 1 a.m. Eastern time.
I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
