This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, greetings. What's up? Welcome back. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
And guess what today is? At least for anybody listening along in real time, today is National Common Courtesy Day. That is correct. It's a day to go out and open the door for somebody or let somebody go in front of you in line or whatever opportunities for courtesy you stumble upon. Be nice out there.
When I saw that this was the pseudo holiday of the day, I immediately thought of my mom who is quite literally the nicest person in the world. And I do realize for all the grammarians out there, that may not be the precisely proper use of literally. But first of all, today isn't National Grammar Day. So hold those comments. But second, just to give you a couple of examples, if we're on vacation or otherwise we just go out to dinner, at some point during the evening, my mom will say something about how the servers are so nice.
And it might happen after we leave the restaurant. And she'll say something like, that waiter was so nice. And we're like, yeah, mom, like that server brought us our food. That's what we paid for. Or it's like the Lyft driver was so nice.
And we're like, how was he nice, mom? She's like, he came and picked me up. We're like, yeah, that's how it works. That's his job. And I could go on and on, but you kind of get the idea.
Very courteous, extremely polite. I have learned a lot from her and I often think of her in situations when I have the opportunity to show courtesy. Or if I'm getting a little upset about something, which tends to happen because I am kind of type A. I don't always respond the way I should, but I tend to kind of go back and say, you know, what would Pat Guillebeau do? So whatever you're up to today, think about courtesy, think about how you can do something for someone, even if they're just doing their job, because we could all use a little courtesy.
And guess what else we could all use? Web development. How's that for a segue? Well, web development is pretty big right now. And this is not a social school, I gotta move on here.
So a lot of people want to learn to code and there are a lot of ways to learn to code. That doesn't mean there can't be one more. So today's story is about a woman who works as a developer, but wants to escape her day job. Two of her previous side hustle attempts didn't work out, but thankfully she kept going. And three months into the new project, she's now earning $1,000 a month on the side and it's growing quickly.
I'll tell you all about how she recovered from failure, put her skills to good use, what the initial outcome was, and what she hopes will happen next. Stay tuned while I say thank you to today's sponsor. [Music]
Software engineer, Malisha McGregor, has spent the past few years trying to work her way out of her day job. Her first side hustle attempt was as a consultant working with local businesses. The second was as a life coach.
Although her skillset was well suited to both of these gigs, Malisha failed both times and found herself no closer to quitting her nine to five job. For any would-be side hustlers out there, this is a tough spot to find yourself in. Facing a failure, or two failures in this case, can leave you feeling defeated. Questioning if you're really cut out to do this. Those were the same worries that Malisha had.
She lost a lot of confidence and was worried about starting yet another venture. But she had something to spur her on. Her desire for financial independence was stronger than her fear of failure. She had a lifestyle she wanted to live and she wasn't willing to give up on it just yet. So she gave herself another chance.
Malisha had been using the time around her day job as a full-stack web developer to volunteer as a local teacher, helping people learn how to code. She'd take students with no experience and turn them into full-fledged developers. In fact, she was so good at it, she had more people requesting to be her students than she could handle in her spare time. What does that fact suggest to you? Well, she realized if there were that many people in her area of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who needed help with this, there had to be other people all over the country, if not the world, who needed this kind of help too.
What if she could create an online course to help all these people learn and make some money on the side? Or maybe more than just some side money. Maybe this could eventually become the path to quit that job. To help build up her confidence and give her more of a chance of success, Malisha began to set herself small goals she could easily achieve. These were broken down into even smaller daily tasks, like creating an email sequence through MailChimp or outlining a module of her course.
This sequential progress gave her a positive feeling. As long as she was moving forward, she was making progress. It didn't matter how small the step was. Now, one of those first tasks was to give her business a name. Malisha wanted to show that coding could change lives and the way that people use the internet.
She came up with a name, Flipped Coding, because when she had the idea for this business, it flipped her life around. Luckily, the domain name was available, and because of her experience as a web developer, she built the website herself. This would keep her costs low and she could have complete control over what went into it. She built that site using WordPress so that she could customize it however she wanted. It was a platform that gave her options to add useful plugins and some available shortcuts to save time.
For example, instead of coding the membership side of her website, she opted to use a plugin called WP Member. This allows people to make payments, log in, view the course materials, and access other members-only areas. Creating the course was fairly straightforward because Malisha already had a lot of experience teaching the subject matter. She outlined the modules, added in extra resources she felt the students would need, and then put each section of the course together as a section on the site. Students can purchase two different packages to Flipped Coding.
$100 a month gives you access to her premium course, which comes with all the course materials and two monthly Ask Me Anything sessions. And her Elite package, which retails at $500 a month, gives you direct access to Malisha and some bonus packages. Now I have a quick little comment on this pricing. By the way, I think $100 a month is great. I think going from $100 a month to $500 a month is a bit of a jump.
So I tend to wonder if there shouldn't be something in between, like a $250 a month option. That would be my suggestion. Malisha decided on that pricing by looking at her competition. Many people were offering free courses that weren't enough to help someone really become a trained web developer. And other people were charging the equivalent of college tuition, which her target audience couldn't afford.
And to get the word out about Flipped Coding, Malisha focuses on what she calls marketing with honesty. No matter what she's writing, she does it as if she's talking to a friend. That means avoiding any sales talk, technical jargon, or anything she doesn't believe to be true. She's found that people respond to this well and has picked up 10 students in the three months since she started her side hustle. Initial startup costs were around $300 for the creation of that website and some small spending on advertising.
And thanks to those 10 students, she's now earning a recurring $1,000 a month. And by the way, you might notice that all 10 of those students chose the $100 a month option, which is further evidence why I think she needs something in between $100 and $500. But we'll see what she does with that. Malisha's advice to anyone looking to start their side hustle is to take it slow, but not too slow, and do your market research. Think about what your audience really needs and then set those small goals to help you create it.
She has set herself the goal of teaching 100 people to learn to code by the end of 2018. That would be, of course, $10,000 a month, assuming all of them stayed. Most of them won't stay on an ongoing basis, so it'll probably be less than that. But if she adds another price tier, of course, it could be more. So we'll see.
And whatever happens, she's happy to know she's making a difference in the future of the online world, teaching people a valuable skill around a topic she loves. And who knows, maybe it will lead her to quit her day job. Malisha, side hustle school will be cheering you on. Okay, what can we learn from this story? Well, I have a couple comments.
First and perhaps most important, give yourself another chance. Malisha had this desire to build something that would allow her to quit her day job. First attempt didn't work, second attempt didn't work. And so instead of just giving up, or instead of just continuing to try the same thing and expecting different results, she changed course and tried something else. And now three months in, there's something else is bringing her $1,000 a month on the side.
So if you have failed before, first of all, join the club. At events, sometimes I ask people like, who has tried to start a side hustle and failed? And a number of people raise their hands, and then I say, who has ever failed at something else? And of course, the whole room raises their hand, at least the honest ones. So listen, give yourself another chance.
If you're stuck, if you're kind of down on yourself because something didn't work out, that's probably the number one thing you can do. Okay, and then maybe the number two thing you can do is set yourself this series of daily tasks, this sequential progress that Malisha used. Saying things like, okay, today I'm gonna write my email sequence, or even just one message for my email sequence, or I'm gonna outline one module of my course, or whatever it is. These slow and steady actions really, really do add up. And in the side hustle society, which is our online community and training program, this is what we're encouraging people to do.
You can see daily posts of all kinds of people that are making this sort of daily progress. And every day they're posting things like, oh, I'm writing my email sequence, or oh, I'm developing the module, or whatever it is that they're working on. If you haven't checked that out yet, if you'd like an invitation, it's on the website, sidehustleschool.com/society, S-O-C-I-E-T-Y. But whether you're interested in that or not, do set those small steps, do work on that sequential progress, do as Melissa suggests, do some research, figure out what people really want, and then find a way to give it to them. That's essentially what she is doing, that's essentially what so many people that we talk about on the show are doing, and of course, lots of different ways.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this story. Don't forget it's National Common Courtesy Day. Glad to be nice to somebody. And today's show notes are online at sidehustleschool.com/445. You can learn about flipped coding, that WordPress plugin, anything else that I mentioned during the show.
I will, of course, be back here tomorrow with another story for you. Hope you'll join me for it. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
