This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, hello, what's up? It's Chris Guillebeau here with you, your host for Side Hustle School, bringing you the weekly recap. This is in fact the end of week number 11 of season two. I guess that is what, the end of week 63, since we started back on January 1, 2017. And it also happens to be National Awkward Moments Day.
That's right, if you ever had something really embarrassing or awkward happened to you, and if you're like me, it's more like, you know, did something awkward or embarrassing not happen today? 'Cause I kind of go through my life having awkward moments, but when I think about one of my most awkward moments, I was like, what story should I tell for this? There really is a long list. But I kind of always go back to this time I was in Singapore. It's actually my first trip to Singapore many years ago, and I was having a good time.
I was exploring lots of little neighborhoods. I was staying at a hostel. I think it was actually the YMCA. And when I travel, I tend to do this kind of ritual of working for half the day and then going out to see different neighborhoods the other half of the day. So in this case, I had done my exploring in the morning and I was working in the afternoon and I wanted to get some coffee to have like for my afternoon snack and of course to keep me going.
So I walked across the street on Orchard Road and there was a Starbucks there. And I should also explain I'm kind of like in my own little world, like 98% of the time. I'm not very observant. I get lost everywhere I go, which is a story for another day. But in this particular case, I was just like lost in my thoughts.
I don't know if I was listening to music or whatever. But basically I'm walking to the Starbucks and I noticed it's completely open, like there's just like an open air entrance, which is unusual in Singapore because it's always like a million degrees, like super hot. But I don't think much of it. And I just kind of proceed to walk into the Starbucks, that open air Starbucks and all of a sudden, like with no warning whatsoever, a glass door came out of nowhere and just hit me. Now, some people might say that that glass door was there all along.
I just didn't notice it. But whatever the case was, like I walked directly into the glass door, like at full walking speed, just like you would see in a movie, it's almost like, did that really happen? And in fact, that's I think what somebody said, like I walked into the door and I dropped my stuff everywhere and I cut my head a little bit. But of course I'm acting like everything's okay. I'm like, yeah, that's fine.
It just, I meant to do that, you know, like everything's all right. People are looking around like, did that guy just walk into the door? And I was like, yeah, did you see, that door was nowhere before. And all of a sudden it just showed up. Anyway, I was so embarrassed.
I just turned around and left basically, didn't go get coffee, went back to the hospital. I'm kind of nursing this cut on my forehead. And if I thought anything positive about it, it was, you know what? One day I'm gonna have a good story to tell. And in fact, I do.
So next time you're in Singapore, look out for those glass doors just appearing out of nowhere. It really is a dangerous place. All right, aside from that, what's going on in the world of Side Hustle School? Well, I think I mentioned last week that we're doing these prompts in the Sadasil Society, our online community, where myself or one of our team members asked people, hey, what are you working on this week? And last week I shared a few responses with you.
Here's one more. This is from Dr. Lee and Dr. Lee says, hey, Chris, good to hear from you. My number one goal this week is to connect an email service to my website and write the first hello email that will go out when someone subscribes.
I'm also gonna have the overall website critiqued by Linda James, that's another one of our members, and the SEO evaluated by Carolina. My biggest challenge is going from being a non-social media user to understanding how to use it as my primary marketing tool. So Dr. Lee, if those tasks are complete, I hope they went well. If not, I hope you're able to knock those out this week.
We've got lots of other people posting about lots of other projects in the society. If you haven't had a chance to check it out yet, you can come and join at sidehustleschool.com/society. That's S-O-C-I-E-T-Y. And of course, if it's not a good fit for you at this time, I totally understand. We're still very much invested in producing this daily show for you.
And so much more is on the way. So before we go on, I want to take a listener question. I got a good question from, I believe her name is McKenna. Let's hear from McKenna. I'll respond to the topic that she raises, and then we'll also do a little quick throwback to the episodes of the week, as well as a preview of what's to come.
[Music]
Hi, Chris. My name is McKenna, and I'm calling for Denver, Colorado. I am calling because I've loved the show. I've been listening for the past couple of months, and I've really learned a lot about how to create my own side hustle. Something that I'm realizing that I have questions about, though, is how to determine a reasonable price point or price points for a specific market.
I'm creating a business for high school to college age young women, and realizing they don't have a lot of expendable income. I'm just trying to figure out what the best way is to reasonably select a price point that is gonna be attractive to that market. Thanks so much. Love the show. - Hey, McKenna, thank you so much for listening and for your awesome question.
Hello to you and everybody else out in Denver. Couple quick thoughts. Last year, at some point, I recorded an extended cut about pricing your product or service. When I went back to look at the notes, I realized it was more about pricing a service than actually a product, but still, it might be helpful to check out. You can access that one and all the extended cuts at sidehustleschool.com/extended.
And as I listened to your question a couple more times, I had a couple other thoughts. First thought is, regardless of who you're selling to, you always wanna focus on why they need what you're selling, not just want, but like, why do they need it? Why is there some desperate need for whatever this product is, even if, you know, in reality, it's not actually a need. You want people to think it's a need. You want people to read the copy or otherwise see the offer and think, you know, I must have this.
This is gonna change my life, so I have to do something about it right now. I need to respond. And like I said, I think that's true, regardless of who you're selling to, regardless of what the product or the service is. Focusing on benefits, in other words, first and foremost, really is the most important thing. Now, you didn't mention what the product was, but when you said something about how pricing it for this price-sensitive market of high school to college-aged young women, I'm not sure that always is a price-sensitive market.
Like, yes, it's true that young people traditionally don't have a lot of money, but sometimes they do have a fair amount of disposable income, or at least they have money to spend on things that are important to them. I'm speaking generally, not for everyone, but I certainly wouldn't write it off as a low-price market or a market that lacks access to resources. You know, people can be pretty resourceful when there's something that they really want, especially if they perceive it's a need, if they perceive it's gonna change their life. So I wouldn't think so much about, like, what is the lowest possible price? How can I make it attractive, you know, to that price point?
I would think more about how can I make sure my offer is crystal clear? How can I make sure I have clarity about what it is that I'm creating and how it's going to, again, change these people's lives? All things being equal, I think it's more important to get that part right. Good luck, McKenna, and let us know how it goes. [Music]
As I was looking back on the episodes of this week, I noticed there was a theme of at least three of them.
That theme was essentially doing something for fun that turned into doing it for money. Now, when I talk about this, I just wanna be clear, I don't think everything you do for fun should be turned into money. And I also don't think the path to societal success is always, like, look at all the things you do for fun and then figure out how to monetize them. However, that said, there are a lot of episodes we feature, especially, as I said, three this week, where there is a clear path from something that somebody's just enjoying because they like to do it to then figuring out how to make money from it. And I believe that began with episode 436, It's Not Vandalism, it's a $15,000 a year yard gram hustle.
This guy in Pennsylvania with a money-making project of setting up pink plastic flamingos in people's yards overnight. This is a service he provides and people are purchasing it to celebrate others' birthdays, as well as veterans' homecoming from Iraq and elsewhere. He actually does it for free if it's your 100th birthday. So if you're out there in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and turning 100 years old, be sure you get in touch with this guy. Or I guess if you know somebody who is.
In episode 438, a couple of days later, that was about pickleball. I can't believe I actually didn't say the title of that episode in the recording I realized later after the fact. The title is Pickleball Pro Pickles Profits from Persistent Practice. How about that? And by the way, I did get that right on the first take.
And perhaps more important to you than just, you know, my ability to write a decent title every 10 episodes, is the fact that this guy didn't go into pickleball with the desire to turn his pickles into profits. He just started by playing this sport, which is in fact America's fastest growing sport, at least according to NBC News. Gonna be honest and say I never heard a pickleball before this episode, but it is a big thing apparently. As this guy participated in tournaments and then volunteered for tournaments, he slowly came to realize that there was actually this opportunity to get paid to do that. He didn't get paid very much at first.
It was like $500 a month, which is still great for something you do for free. But now I believe his goal this year is to make $40,000 from it, which is not free and not $500 a month, it's actually really significant money. And the last one along these lines was episode 441, an Australian designer who starts a publishing company and hires herself. In this case, it was her goal to become a book designer. She was doing graphic design and she wanted to do more book design and layout.
She really loved the world of publishing, but she wasn't getting a lot of clients because she didn't have a lot of experience doing that particular design job. So in her case, maybe it wasn't just fun, like maybe I'm stretching a little bit, but the point is there was this creative entrepreneurial women's group in Australia, and the founder was kind of walking away from it. Everything about this community had been free before, and this person, Tess, kind of stepped in and said, "You know what, I'll run the group." And as part of running that group, she added a paid membership option, continued producing events across Australia, but then also said, "I'm gonna start my own publisher." And this publisher is going to produce books based on conversations from events that have taken place in this group, and eventually her own books and other people's books that she would collaborate on. So it was something that wasn't really a monetary goal, at least not primarily. It was, "I want to get more clients as a designer.
"I want to kind of break into this world "of publishing design more." So in her case, she does go on to make money. I think it's something like 10 to $20,000 a year in net income. That's from the actual publishing company, but then she also lands a lot more gigs as a designer, which was her goal. So once again, not everything you do for fun is gonna be monetizable, nor should you try to make money from everything you do for fun. But looking at those things can be a good clue, and especially with the pickleball guy, because the others were kind of creating something out of nothing.
But with the pickleball guy, he was participating in existing tournaments and realizing there was this need for people to organize them. And so that's what he did. And now apparently he's gonna become a full-time pickleballer at some point. Anything can happen in the world of side hustles. [Music]
Before I sign off for the week, I want to say thank you to everybody out there.
I want to say thank you to our crew for making this possible. It's also looking ahead to the stories next week. I see something about a million dollar weatherproofing products hustle. I have not recorded that yet, so I'm curious myself to see more of what that's about, as well as something about a LetterJoy subscription service. These are just two episodes, of course.
We're gonna have a different episode for you every day. I do want to give credit where credit is due. I'm definitely not the only person working on the show, making the magic happen. In fact, I just kind of do my thing and then other people make the magic happen. Our production team is led by AC Valdez.
It also features Sarah Barrett and show notes and content management, host wrangling, all kinds of other stuff are by my assistant in Portland, Whitney Karinek. My cat Libby Gilbo hasn't done much this week, but you know, she's a cat, so that's okay. She's not really interested in pickleball or pink plastic flamingos. I want to say thanks as well to best-selling author Gretchen Rubin. She's the founder and curator of The Onward Project.
Cytosol School is part of The Onward Project. It's a collection of podcasts with concrete, actionable ideas for making your life happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative, or just more awesome, I guess. My final thank you is for you, the listener. You are the reason we make this show. It's a free, listener-supported show.
If you're enjoying it, I'd be tremendously grateful if you would pass it on. Tell your friends about it. Show them how to subscribe. If they don't listen to podcasts already, then just ask for their phone and say, "Here's how you do it. It's free." If you listen every day and you apply it over time, it's gonna help you.
At least that's my goal. That's my single mission with the show, to truly help you create a new source of income without quitting your job, without taking a lot of risk. It's not about being an entrepreneur or having a startup. It's about asking how can you look within yourself and find something that is gonna be interesting and valuable or useful to other people. How can you find that opportunity, like all the different ones I tell you about each day?
And then once you've found that opportunity, how can you learn the very, very basic business skills you need to be able to put that opportunity into an offer, get it out to the right people, and then, of course, make money from it. I do want you to be able to make money. I do want you to be able to have more confidence, more security, even if you love your job, be able to look and say, "This is my thing. I started this project. I have ownership over it." And therefore, I have more options going forward.
I can do more of what's important to me. Again, that is my hope for you. I hope you'll join me all next week. We've got episodes coming out every single day. Those episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern Time.
I encourage you to think of this time as an investment in yourself, and hopefully one you can look forward to. At least I look forward to bringing this to you. I'll be back again tomorrow and every day. I'm Chris Guillebeau "This is Side Hustle School."
