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, your host for Sidus Will School and we are coming to the end of week number 13. This is episode 456, end of week 13, season two. Got a lot to share with you today.
I'm gonna refer you to some resources about crowdfunding. We're gonna talk about clutter clearing or decluttering. Something I heard recently from our good friend, Gretchen Rubin on her podcast. Also a listener question about student loan debt, all among other things. But first of all, if you're listening in real time, this is a new month also, 1st of April.
This episode's going out, which is also April Fool's Day. So hey, look out over there. And just FYI, I don't have any April Fool's pranks for you 'cause you're smart. I know you'd see right through them. And plus enough people are messing with you already.
At least that's my theory. So I can't guarantee there won't be any puns. I mean, that would be a guarantee you probably shouldn't believe if I did make it. But no April Fool's pranks. I'm looking out for your best interest.
I'd like to begin today with a letter we got in the mail, like the actual mail, the postal mail from Jane in Toronto. Jane wrote in to say, "Hey Chris, "I hope you and the gang at Side Hustle School "are all doing well. "I enjoyed meeting you in Toronto for your recent book event. "I have worked at a bank for almost 32 years. "I am hell bent on starting a side hustle "and you, AC, Sarah, Whitney, Libby, "and the rest of the crew are helping me get there." A lot of people I've informally mentored over the years have been promoted and have gone on to be very successful in their careers.
I've also really enjoyed doing this. In many cases, long after we worked together, I'm still helping them and giving them guidance on career decisions. I also volunteered to mentor a new graduate as part of a rotational program we have at the bank. As we progress through the year, she's been telling me stories about how many of her colleagues' mentoring experiences are not helping them as much as they would like. I thought maybe the mentors needed some help, so I came up with the idea to create a mentoring deck of cards.
I've enclosed them for you here. They're meant to help mentors and mentees trigger conversations and help them with career discussions and decisions. So far, I've had 20 sets printed, and if they're well-received, I will create a website to start selling them. And who knows what may develop from there. I may go on to make an app.
We'll see, but either way, thank you to you and the side hustle school crew. Awesome, Jane, thank you so much for sharing that. I'm gonna see if we can get a picture of one of these beautiful cards that you sent us, and if so, we'll put it up on our show notes page today so that other listeners can check it out. Oh, and let us know if you get a website. All right, crowdfunding tips and clutter clearing tips.
We'll do these in quick succession here. It was actually last week's episode number 444 where one of our featured case studies who has done phenomenally well raised a million dollars so far in three board game crowdfunding campaigns. This is not somebody who's done side hustles before. It's not somebody who was a full-time entrepreneur, had a day job, was just really into board games and created these projects that have taken off well beyond anyone's expectation. He gave us these seven tips, and I mentioned them then, but I've got a bunch of emails about them, so if you're interested in crowdfunding, well, here's the short version, go check out the show notes page for that episode, sidehustleschool.com/444.
You can get all of them there. Nothing's for sale, it's not a pitch, but I will tell you two of my favorites just now. My favorites are number three, show them a physical prototype that is as close to the real thing as possible. In other words, if you're trying to raise money for something that doesn't exist yet, you do wanna put some effort into creating that prototype so that people can truly understand what it is. You know, they're taking a risk on you or you're asking them to take a risk on you by giving you money for something that doesn't yet exist.
So if you make that prototype, it takes a lot of that fear away. Then the other tip that I really liked, I'd never actually heard this before, but he said to be smart about the day and time that you launch. Well, I guess I knew it was good to be smart about the day and time you launch, but I didn't know when that time was. And he said, since you want a lot of eyes on your project right at the beginning and then right at the end, we recommend that you launch before lunchtime on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and then end in the early afternoon on a Thursday. And of course, those times are gonna relate to whatever time zone your market is in or your customer base or whoever you think is going to support this project the most.
So that may or may not be the same time zone that you're in. As I said, you can get all of those tips on that show notes page. That's for episode 4.44. [Music]
Now let's move from crowdfunding tips to decluttering tips or clutter clearing tips. Some of you may know that Cytosol School is part of the Onward Project, which is a collection of podcasts that is curated and led by Gretchen Rubin.
Gretchen is the host of the mega popular Happier podcast. She's also a bestselling author of many books, most recently The Four Tendencies. And significantly to me, she's also been a really good friend and mentor to me for, I don't know, almost a decade now, ever since I started writing books. Something that she and I have in common is that we both like order. We like things to be tidy and neat.
We like everything to have a place. So when I heard a very special episode recently on her podcast, live from her sister Elizabeth's cluttered home office, naturally I was curious because it was a whole episode featuring tips on cleaning clutter. Not just cleaning up stuff for the sake of cleaning it up, but to kind of be intentional about your life and make sure everything is there for a reason. And when you do this, I believe it's actually gonna help you do better work. It's gonna help you be more intentional.
And in fact, it probably will help you be happier. To me at least, it stresses me out. If I walk into my house or my office and just see a whole bunch of stuff there. Personally, I don't like that. But even if you don't care, if that's not your perspective, there's still some great tips in this episode.
I wanna give you a couple of my favorites. And of course, just like the other thing, you can go and listen to all the rest. In that episode, they talked about how when you pick something up, you shouldn't just put it down. You should put it away. This is a really powerful tip.
Like if you've got something you're not sure what to do with it, you got it in your hand, we'll figure it out. Instead of just kind of putting it back on the desk or back on the table or wherever it is. Actually take a moment to say, okay, where should this go? And if you do this on an ongoing basis, then you don't have to have these kind of marathon cleaning sessions. Next, make sure something that's being kept as a memento really does hold precious memories.
And here's my favorite part. Paradoxically, having fewer mementos allows you to hold more memories than having many mementos. Like a little goes a long way. If you've got something that's special to you, great. Keep it, display it.
Do you need a thousand special things? Well, probably not. And if you have a thousand special things, are they all really that special? I thought that was really, really good. In fact, now as I'm recording this, I'm kind of looking around and I'm like, what is special here?
I wanna keep my special mementos, but I don't necessarily need to keep everything. And again, I'll probably appreciate those things I do keep more if I get rid of the other stuff. And then last, here's something I completely agree with as well. Consider tackling visual clutter first, because for many people, it's very calming to see an orderly environment, even if the cabinets and drawers are messy. Well, that resonated with me too, because I said earlier that I'm pretty tidy and organized, but there are exceptions.
And I've got some messy cabinets and drawers. Doesn't usually bother me that much. As long as my desk and my big spaces and all that are orderly, I don't really care what's in the cabinet. Like I can deal with that. Anyway, just some fun little tips for you.
You can check out the rest on that episode with Gretchen. It's episode number 160 on the "Happier with Gretchen Rubin" podcast. You can also just go directly to gretchenrubin.com/podcast, and you'll see all of them there in a nice orderly list. Okay, now I wanna take a listener call. Let's hear from Houston from Nashville.
I guess his name is Houston. He lives in Nashville. He wants to talk about starting his own project on student loan debt. So let's hear from him. - Chris, Houston Clark from Nashville, Tennessee.
Love your show. Anyway, my question is, I'm trying to start a side hustle about student loan debt. I have some left, I hate it. I'm trying to get rid of the ASAP, doing odd jobs, but I wanna build something that is more sustainable, to make more money that I can use to pay off my debt quicker, but also help other people. And I think my main selling point is my energy, my motivation, my enthusiasm for just getting it done, but I'm wondering the best way to do so.
A YouTube channel, a podcast, a website. I don't wanna duplicate what's out there. I'm gonna do some research, but any thoughts as to what could be the most effective way to help people get out of student loan debt. Thanks, man. Love your stuff.
Peace. - Hey, Houston, what's up? Thank you so much for listening. All right, so you want to get out of student loan debt. I think that's admirable.
I think you've definitely got the hustle. You've got that momentum, energy, that get-to-it ethic that you mentioned. So all that's great. The thing is those are mostly soft skills, right? Like those are things you can kind of put towards something once you figure out what that thing is.
So what we don't have in all that stuff you mentioned for the most part is a way to actually make money. Like what is the product? What is the service? I think if anything else, what you need to really focus on is how you can get concrete about that and how you can come up with some ideas that you're gonna start in the next 30 days. I mean, if it takes longer, that's fine.
But again, you have the energy. So I think rather than just looking at those qualities of yourself, which are all positive attributes, you should also look at your skills, your knowledge, your experience. I mean, these are the kind of things that are then going to be deployed, essentially, toward your side hustle that's gonna make money. Now, as for this fact about other people having student loan debt, well, yes, it's a huge market. It's a common pain point.
Probably a lot of our listeners out there have the same struggle, but I think you wanna be cautious about saying, okay, my side hustle is like getting out of student loan debt while teaching people how to get out of student loan debt. I'm not saying that's exactly what you're proposing, but this is something that people try from time to time. Like they have a struggle. They're like, I'm gonna document my journey. Like I need to lose weight or I need to quit smoking or whatever it is.
So I'm gonna start this business that kind of chronicles my journey while also helping other people. The challenge with that is that all these other people who also have this common pain point, they're looking for somebody who has the answer, not just somebody who's also on the journey. They're looking for somebody who can be like, you know what, I did have student loan debt and I hated it. And I didn't have a lot of extra resources. I didn't have any special advantages, but then I learned the way of the side hustle and I took this skill that I had but I never maybe even thought that I could make money from, but I found a way to create a product or service.
And then I did it again perhaps, or then maybe I helped somebody else who was in this situation and now I can help you. I think that's what people want much more than just kinship or like I'm going through this with you. I think you have to be at the next level of like, okay, I've been through this. So those are my quick thoughts. None of that is meant to be negative in any way.
Like I said, you got the momentum, the energy, that's great. Those are characteristics that are hard to teach people. You either have them or you don't. So I'm glad you have them. Now you just gotta figure out, okay, what do I do with them?
So good luck with that. Let me know how it goes. Thank you for being part of the side hustle school journey. I've got a lot of great stories coming up in the month of April. Actually I have a big birthday for myself coming up as well, but the less said about that, the better.
I've actually been dreading it for a while, but just trying to come to terms with things, talking it through with my therapist and of course my closest listener friends, we shall overcome. And more importantly, some of the stories that are coming up, especially this week in particular, I just worked on this great story about a mom who becomes an aerial performer, like a circus performer basically, and ends up making $60,000 a year, not just through her own performances, but she creates a whole circus troupe. Basically goes from being a mom slash aerial performer, trains at an Olympic gym in China, then opens up this little business, and eventually goes on to employ something like 14 people. Crazy story, that one's coming up soon. Also our second story ever about face painting.
Can you actually make real money doing face painting? Well, perhaps. Stay tuned and you will hear. Also something about an unconventional math tutor, a court report proofreader, and something that I have in my notes written down as wholesome yum, a wholesome yum blog. I actually haven't seen that one yet, so we'll see what that looks like.
And presumably I will bring it to you shortly. Our episodes go online every morning at 6 o'clock a.m. Eastern Time. Hope you'll join me for them. And before I sign off, I just want to say a quick thank you to those who make this show possible.
That is first and foremost you, the listener, thank you. I'm extremely grateful in particular for everyone who makes this show part of their routine. Choosing to invest in themselves by spending 10 minutes a day listening to other people's stories, and hopefully not just listening, but thinking okay, how might they supply to me? Does this give me an idea? Does this give me some motivation?
Maybe even what could that person do differently or better? Because they want to improve, just like all of us do. Thank you for telling your friends about the show. Thank you for your little reviews and ratings. Those make a huge, huge difference, especially in Apple Podcasts, but really wherever you listen to the show.
You just take a quick little moment to give us those five stars and say what you like about Side Hustle School. I would be most grateful. And not just me, but I think our crew would be grateful as well. I'm grateful to them. We have an international team of folks working on Side Hustle School.
I've got AC Valdez overseeing production in Washington, D.C. Sarah Barrett is working on this show. I believe in Mexico City, last I heard. And my assistant/content manager/host wrangler, she is in Portland, along with my cat Libby Gillibo, who is now selling vintage cat toys on eBay, by the way. Just look for her new shop, all that in the kit and sink.
In every episode, I mention that inspiration is good, but action is better. That's because I want you to take action. I want to feature your story here. Just like the letters, emails, voicemails I've been getting from people, do let me know what you're up to. I'd love to hear some time, and I hope you'll join me tomorrow and each day next week.
Once again, every single day, 6 o' 1 a.m. Eastern time, I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School.
