This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, hey, what's up? This is Chris Guillebeau, your host of "Sydicell School." Welcome, this is the weekly recap, actually. We have just finished week number 15 of season two. Over here in my little world, I've actually made it through a week of being 40 years old. So far, so good.
You know, I went to get a walker from Amazon Prime. I figure this is something I'm gonna need in this decade, so I just wanna plan ahead a little bit. But then I saw like Amazon Prime, you know, as fast as it is, it only has 48-hour shipping. And I was like, I'm gonna probably need it before then, right? So can I get it on Prime now?
Can I like place an order and have somebody bring a walker to my house, you know, in the next 90 minutes? So we'll see what happens there. And whether it arrives or not, I'm actually going on a post-birthday trip. I have been doing very little international travel this year, which is quite rare. I think for the first time in 10 years, I have not been flying around the world pretty much every month.
Went to Australia in January, but otherwise, for the most part, I've been mostly in California and Oregon. Couple of domestic trips, couple of small things here and there. But anyway, this week I'm going on a post-birthday trip to learn to fly a Falcon. This is a true story I'm not making that part up. I mean, we'll see if the walker comes, but I am in fact flying to Dubai.
I should be there later today if all goes well, and I'll be there over the next few days. If you're curious why I'm flying to Dubai to learn to fly a Falcon, we'll check out my Instagram, and I should have some live stories there. That Instagram is 193 countries, 193 countries. I'm not just going to fly a Falcon, I'm doing some other things, but yes, in fact, I will be flying a Falcon. That is a bird, a winged bird that flies far, I think.
I don't get my briefing until tomorrow, so I don't know a lot yet. Okay, so in today's recap, let's see what do we have scheduled. I've got a listener question, got a listener comment. I'm gonna do some look back on some of the things we've talked about over the past few days, focusing in particular on systematizing your business. Several of the stories this week focused on that quite well, or I should say several of the people that we've featured this week did that quite well.
It's not just the stories, it's the people themselves. Also, I want to give you some tips on procrastination. I've got a number of people asking about how do you overcome this resistance, this procrastination. So hopefully I'll get to that. If not, I'll just do it later, right?
But let us jump into this question from Kat. This is Kat who writes in, she says, "Hey, Chris, I'm a day one listener," which by the way, I should just stop there and say thank you to Kat and everybody else who's been a day one listener. I continue to be amazed at how many of you guys are out there. Thank you so much for your support. And of course, we welcome everybody who's joined since day one as well.
But back to Kat's message, she says, "Hey, Chris, I'm a day one listener "and finally getting my side hustle out of my mind "and into the world. "I'm starting Coffee People, a quarterly zine publication "focusing on promoting the creative endeavors "of folks who work in the coffee world. "So far, I've been selling to people I know "through coffee shops I frequent "and via an online web store. "I'm curious how to turn these one-off sales "into a subscription-based model. "Do you have any info or tips on how to manage "a subscription service easily, effectively, "affordably, and efficiently?
"Thanks much." Well, Kat, you are awesome as mentioned. I hope people go and check out your site. We will link it up in the show notes. It's also coffeepeople.org. I was just browsing it myself.
And I think, first of all, you're on the right track. Turning one-off sales into a subscription-based model is 100% the right thing to do in this kind of situation. It's gonna be really hard to make a quarterly zine publication sustainable just with one-off sales. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is I don't actually know that the logistics of selling subscriptions in this instance are that different from selling one-off.
Most payment processors these days have an option for subscriptions. I didn't look too closely at your online web store to see what you're using, but if your payment processor doesn't support that, you should probably have a different one. So it's not so much a logistical question, like you mentioned, easily, effectively, affordably, and efficiently. Even though that might seem like you're asking for a lot, it's actually not that much. So I don't think the logistics are hard.
I think the question is how do you message this? How do you package it? How do you convince people? How do you show people that the subscription is so much better than the one-off sale? Fortunately, in this industry, in the industry of media, zines, publications, people are used to subscriptions.
That is the normal method of selling these things. So that's good, but at the same time, you have to realize what you probably do. People are resistant to subscriptions. Nobody wants to get stuck paying for something over and over. They realize it could be complicated to cancel.
They realize they might forget about it, but they're still paying for it, and so on. And so I think the main thing you have to do is incentivize people and make it really easy for them. You want to subtly, or not so subtly, encourage them to ask themselves, "Why would I purchase the one-off product? "Why do I just want that one issue "when I can have a subscription?" Because when I get the subscription, I'm going to get, I don't know, four issues for the price of three. I'm going to get this special coffee people t-shirt, or whatever the special thing is that subscribers get that one-off purchasers don't.
So I think you should position it in the mindset of your ideal customer, like why should they subscribe? And absolutely, as I said, push people toward that subscription. So, good luck! [Music]
Okay, I've got something else from another listener coming up. This one's actually a voice memo.
But first, just to make sure I don't put it off any further, let's talk about procrastination. Especially when it comes to your side hustle, especially when it comes to this project that you're building, that you might not have a ton of external accountability for. 'Cause a lot of us, when we're kind of forced to do something, or if we have a job and people are depending on us, if we've got to present at the meeting at 10 o'clock, well, ready or not, we've got to present. So at some point, whether it's, you know, 9.55, five minutes before, or preferably earlier, we're gonna think about preparing for it. Like we have to.
Or anything else with a fixed deadline. But if it's something else that we do on our own, we don't have that safety net. So how do we handle it if we struggle with procrastination? Well, I wrote some notes down about this because this is something that I struggle with too. So just to be clear, a lot of what I talk about, it's something that I've learned myself, something that I'm struggling with, that I've kind of found a way to push through or overcome.
And what I've noticed recently, what I wanna share with you is, I actually think that a lot of this kind of procrastination is as much a psychological problem as it is a time management problem. And so a lot of the advice you hear about it focuses on the time management side. A lot of tips and hacks and little strategies. I think these things are valuable. Like I think about them myself, like, you know, what are your priorities?
If I get up in the morning, I'm gonna make a little list. What are the three things I'm gonna do today? I might have 22 things on my to-do list, but I'm not gonna get 22 things done. So what are the three things I have to get done? The day will be a success if I do only these three things.
But if I do the 15 or the 18, 19 other things, and don't do these three things, then it's not a success. So priorities are important. Identifying what you're gonna do first, before you do anything else. Setting up some kind of reward system. Okay, when I finished writing this newsletter, when I finished calling these three clients, you know, whatever your task at hand is, then I'm gonna give myself this reward.
I think those things can be helpful. They can create some significant improvement. But if you do those things and you still have problems, which is the situation I found myself in from time to time, then I think there's something deeper that you have to look at. Like at least for myself, I'm pretty good with time management and productivity in general, but I do sometimes get hung up on continuing to defer certain tasks and responsibilities. And so I've been asking myself why recently, and actually I've been talking about this in therapy.
So here you get some free benefits from my expensive therapy, but don't worry, we'll stay on topic. What I've been observing is that there's a cycle, and procrastination tends to lead to more procrastination, essentially. And I've noticed this with my email. Like I'm either really fast or really slow with email. If you write me and I write you back the same day, that's great.
If you don't hear from me the same day, if you don't hear from me the next day, then it's a problem. You're probably not gonna hear from me for a week. And during that whole week, I'm gonna be feeling guilty. I'm gonna have this little psychic dissonance when I think about like all the stuff I have to do. I'm like, oh, there's that email.
It's not just one email, of course, it's usually a lot. I wrote back to everybody who wrote me today, but I didn't write back to that person from four days ago. So I just keep deferring that. Like I have items on my calendar or my to-do list that I have pushed forward 10 to 14 days in a row. So the first lesson there is just to kind of observe that, to notice like my procrastination leads to more procrastination.
So if I can kind of cut it off at the head, that's better. If I can just avoid it in the first place, that's great. But if I don't, maybe what I need to do is just kind of take a little step back, take a little bit of time to go through those items. Like those things that I have deferred 10 to 14 days, those emails that I have been sitting on. And then your two options are, those things you've been putting off, you just do them and get it done.
Because you know you've been having this psychic resistance, you're probably gonna feel better once you actually like push forward. You might even ask yourself like, what was taking me so long? Like that wasn't that hard. And that's option one. But option two is also to decide not to do them.
And when you do that, you have to kind of let go of the guilt. You have to just say, you know what? I'd hope to do that thing, but it's really not gonna happen. So maybe next time before I set myself that task, I'm really gonna ask like, am I gonna do this? Before I set myself up for a pattern of guilt, a pattern of failure, a pattern of beating myself up.
And the thing is when you decide not to do them, you basically are letting that go. That's the decision. It's not deciding not to do them today and then come back tomorrow and feeling the same way. It's deciding to let them go. So you do one of those two things, either push through or you say, you know what?
I'm gonna let it go. And there are plenty of other things in my life that I'm doing well at. So I'm gonna focus on those things. And next time before I make a commitment that I might not keep, I'm gonna be more careful. Well, I hope that is helpful to someone out there.
I think the big point is procrastination is as much a psychological problem as it is a time management one. So don't just push through automatically. Ask yourself why you're resisting something. And with that understanding can come some insight. [Music]
Okay, I mentioned another listener comment.
Let's hear, I think this is from Chris who's calling in to let us know what he's working on this week. By the way, I always like it when people share their tasks, their goals. We have a whole community of people out there doing different things, all working to establish the kind of freedom and security that I talk about every day on the show. If you'd like to share what your number one task of the week is, just give us a call, leave us a message. Couple different ways to do that.
The Hustle Hotline number is 8449 Hustle. So in fact, you can call the Hustle Hotline, that's how it works. That number is 8449 Hustle or 8449487853. Also my assistant or content manager, Whitney, reminded me that if you go to sidehustleschool.com, on the about page, there's actually a little link where you can use your computer and record a voice message if you prefer that. It's actually super easy.
And last but not least, if you want to use your phone to make a voice memo with your iPhone, your Android phone, whatever, your flip phone, you do that and you can email it to podcast@sidehustleschool.com. Okay, so let's hear from Chris, then I'm gonna say thanks to today's sponsor and we're gonna look back at some of the things from this week. - Hey Chris, I appreciate all you do. My name is Chris and I am most excited about the relaunch of my Tractic Habit membership community. 2.0 is what I'm calling it.
It's for piano teachers where I offer resources, sheet music, workshops, all of the above. It's a monthly or annual subscription-based resource and relaunching that on Monday. So the one thing I got to get through is next week, the relaunch and sending out the auto responder email, setting all of that up, making sure it's ready to go. So I'm excited about that and hope to serve a lot of piano teachers there. So thanks for all you do, take care.
[Music]
For me, the highlight this week in thinking through episodes, what is it, 464 through 469, several of the episodes kind of focused on building your business systematically. Or as I corrected myself earlier, several of the people that we focused on had been really smart in how they built their side hustle systematically. And this came through especially in three stories and two of them were actually from students, which is pretty cool. So episode 464, a college student starts a historic letter subscription service. This guy is doing really, really well with a five figure business, like five figures a month, I mean, like more than $10,000 a month.
He starts his membership sites and he makes a series of bold decisions. One of them is to start the membership site, get it working and then stop it, like put it on pause to go back and kind of work out the kinks and figure out how he's gonna do the production, figure out how he can automate a lot of his tasks, how he can build a sustainable marketing funnel. And then and only then he goes and turns it back on. He kind of flips the switch and says, "Okay, now we're open for business again." Really interesting choice. I don't think most people would make that.
I'm not sure I would make that myself. So good for him. In a couple episodes later 466, a Turkish student turns teacher starts a $14,000 tutoring gig. This is another student who thinks systematically. He creates a series of courses to help his fellow students pass their exams.
He does this at a university in Istanbul, makes $14,000 a year on the side. And he does this part time. So lots of students might start a little tutoring side hustle, but they're basically just tutoring people one off. This guy actually creates a systematic recurring course where he's developed these detailed outlines, these 25 pages of notes for each course. And he has something like a two hour lecture that he does.
And he offers free follow-up by email, which is also smart because as he said, most people don't actually take advantage of it. So it's a benefit he provides that people don't actually use. So therefore it's essentially free to him. Again, thinking systematically, not just thinking how can I go and make $100 today, but how can I create something that can earn money for me over time? Well done.
And last but not least episode 468, again, two more episodes forward, a software engineer creates side hustle that beats her wildest expectations. That is in fact a recipe blog, a different business model, different business model than those other two projects, but similar process in the sense that she was very intentional. And she kind of knew what she wanted to do from the outset, and she built everything on that. She focused on comfort foods, desserts, some traditional foods, but prepared in a paleo, low carb, gluten-free, et cetera, style. And she focused relentlessly on building her audience, making sure she had enough people coming to the site and coming back that advertising could be a sustainable model for the site.
Then she also didn't rely on advertising. She created products, she created a cookbook, she's got a whole bunch of stuff going on. And something I didn't mention in that episode is that she's actually earning more money from this recipe blog than she is from her day job as a software engineer. Okay, so I think it's doing pretty well, right? Sounds sustainable to me.
And again, systematic decision-making. Very smart, good for her. Congratulations to everybody that we featured this week. You guys inspire me, both the people that we feature on the show and our listeners. I feel very fortunate that I can bring you these stories because I too am learning along the way.
Well, that's all for today, or at least that's mostly all for today. I'm gonna wrap this up. I have to get to Dubai to meet my falcon. So before I sign off, I just wanna say thank you once again. You are the reason I make this show.
You, the listener, that's right, you. For 470 days in a row, I have been saying one way or another that if you make the commitment to make this part of your routine, I too commit to supporting you and your quest to create that new source of income. There is a side hustle out there for you. It's not just about working harder, it's about creating security, creating an asset like all those different stories you hear. So I'm cheering you on, and it's also not just me, by the way.
Let's give credit where credit is due. There's a number of people who work on the show. Production team is led by AC Valdez. Also features Sarah Barrett, show notes, content management, host wrangling. Other duties are by Whitney Karinek.
And not to forget, of course, my cat Libby Guillipo on the night shift. Not coming with me to Dubai, sorry. If you like the show, it'd be super awesome. If you give us a little rating and review an Apple podcast, it just takes a moment. It does help other people discover the show.
Or you can also, in addition, tell your friends. This is a free show, listener-supported, organic growth. We haven't had a big marketing campaign. It has frequently been one of the most popular podcasts on Apple Podcasts, and that's because of you. So thanks for your help with that.
Thanks for supporting the sponsors. Thanks for being awesome. You are an awesome person, don't forget it. I look forward to hearing about you taking action. I hope to see you tomorrow, each day next week, with more stories and actionable ideas.
It's an investment in yourself, and our episodes go online at 6.01 a.m. Eastern time, every day. I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
