This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there listeners, friends, and community. This is "Saddestal School." I am your host, Chris Guillebeau. Happy to welcome you to episode 484. This is the weekly recap. We have just finished week number 17 of season two.
Over here in my world, I have mostly been stationary, but I'm going to Nashville next week. So for those listening in real time, I'm doing an event on May 9th. That event is in partnership with Weebly and WeWork. It's called Makers to Merchants, and I'm just one part of it. I think it's like a several day event, and I'm facilitating a conversation and panel on the evening of May 9th.
So for those in the Nashville area, if you're interested in coming to that, just Google Makers to Merchants, Nashville, May 9th, and perhaps I'll see you there. So in today's episode, I want to talk a bit about this concept of going from $1,000 a month to $5,000 a month. I might actually do a whole extended episode about this at some point. But for now, at least I can give you some tips and talk about why I believe in this principle so much. And also, I want to respond to a couple of questions and comments I got.
Last week, I talked a bit about making decisions based out of desperation, or from a place of desperation, let's say. Making a decision from a place of desperation, not usually a good thing to do. I think it's better, if at all possible, to get out of a situation where you're feeling really stuck and desperate and then make some more strategic long-term decisions. Of course, there are all kinds of variables and complexities to these things, but just generally speaking, not just in work or side hustles, but in life, I think it's almost never a desirable situation to be in a place of feeling desperate and having to make long-term decisions. But there is one thing I forgot to mention.
When you're trying to figure out, okay, which side hustle do I pursue at this point in my life, especially if you're at a critical juncture, I forgot to talk about the side hustle selector, which is a tool I developed that a lot of people have used to make decisions, either short-term or long-term, in terms of which project do I take on next, or for my first project, where I have limited time, there's five different ideas that I have. How do I know which one to pursue at this time? Well, I have talked about that tool in several different places. You can get a free PDF of it if you're in side hustle society, or it's in the side hustle book. I did an income in 27 days.
There's a whole day or a whole chapter on that. It's a simple intuitive exercise you can use when you have multiple ideas and you're trying to see, okay, what do I do to move forward? And then last but not least on that topic, I do also wanna say like, you don't have to solve everything in your life at once. If you have more than one problem, if you have 99 problems like Jay-Z once did, I don't know how many other problems he solved since then, but I think he's doing okay. You don't have to solve everything at once.
I think we're often looking for magical solutions that are gonna come along and remedy everything that afflicts us. And that's not usually gonna happen. I mean, nice work if you can get it, but it's not usually gonna work out that way. So instead of getting discouraged, instead of just kind of throwing our hands up in the air and saying, okay, nothing can be fixed, I think it's much better to say, okay, what can be fixed? What do I have control over?
How can I make the right decisions for me at this time? And also, if you're in that difficult situation, I think I said this last week too, but just to repeat, if you're in a difficult situation, hang in there, don't be too hard on yourself. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Okay, one other thing that we talked about recently, there was this other topic about somebody who had a student loan debt idea. And we played a listener question from him.
I gave some quick advice. I've actually gotten several responses to that conversation, to his question and my advice. I want to read you one of the responses. This is a listener response from Terry. And Terry says, "I just listened to the episode, "the weekly recap, where you answered a question "from Houston, who was living in Nashville," little confusing, his name is Houston, lives in Nashville, "about his student loan debt idea.
"Every podcast I listen to, I try to write down "what nugget of wisdom I get from it. "Today, my nugget was that it's not enough "to just want to help someone in the same situation as me. "In order to monetize it, I need to provide something "more tangible, like an answer to the problem." So in my situation, I started a blog through my breast cancer treatment, which led to me wanting to create a program to help survivors find their joy again. I've been trying to figure out what that looks like, but I keep getting stuck at the implementation stage. So this past week, I redid my blog and formatted it for when I have a program to sell.
But what I realized today, after listening to the podcast, is that my story alone isn't enough. It's a valid story, it's a good background for my plan, it validates my expertness, but it's not all that I need to sell and market. So thanks for the spin that helped point my compass in a better direction. Awesome, thank you so much, Terry, for sharing that. I think you have really pinpointed something, you have a clear market, you have a personal story, like you've been through this experience, you've come through it better on the other side, and you also uniquely understand the challenges that people go through when they have cancer treatment and what it looks like on the other side, like how do you find your joy again, as you said.
So that's not the issue. The issue is, just like you illustrated well, you can't just relate to someone's pain, you also need to help alleviate their pain. They need to believe that you can help alleviate their pain, like that's the main difference. And I think it's a critical difference for anything when someone's in pain, whether physical pain, like we're talking about here, or this pain of being in debt, the pain of trying to find the right job, the pain of overcoming whatever obstacle is in front of you, if you want to be the expert for someone going through one of those situations, if you want to be the authority, then your personal story absolutely is valid, but your personal story alone is not enough. You have to focus on alleviating that other person's pain.
Okay, I want to talk for a few minutes about how to go from $1,000 to $5,000 a month. I often talk about this principle or I often mention it. What do I actually mean by it? Well, I'm going to give you a few little bullet points. I'm going to give you a couple of examples, and I'm also going to read you a short story.
So let's do a quick little break. Let me say thank you to today's sponsor. They allow me to bring this episode to you completely free. So I'm very grateful to them. Let's say thanks.
And then we'll keep rolling along. [Music]
Okay, so as I said, might do a whole extended episode about this at some point, just because, you know, the basic principle here is if you can get something working a little bit, you can probably get it working a lot more. This is not universally true 100% of the time, but it is pretty common. I would say far more often than not, if we have a side hustle that's making, you know, I use the number $1,000 a year, but it could be $500 a month. It could be $2,000 a month.
The point is a relatively small, but substantial amount of money. It's usually not that difficult at all to grow that business to, you know, the $4,000 a month, $5,000 a month, whatever the number is. Again, not universal. There probably is a ceiling to it somewhere, but the point is, you know, $5,000 a month is a lot better than $1,000 a month. Okay, and the other point is it doesn't mean you need to expend five times as much effort.
That is the key point, because we all probably know, okay, if we're working an hourly wage job, let's say, if I could somehow work five times as many hours, then I could make five times as much money, but naturally that's not possible, okay? So what I mean here is that there's this exponential factor that comes into play when you're trying to grow from a small amount to a larger amount. So you might have to work a little bit more, but you're not gonna have to work four or five times as much. At least that's the goal, right? Otherwise you haven't really gained much because your time is valuable.
In fact, your time is probably your most valuable resource. So what are some ways to grow? Now, I hope you've got a pencil. I hope you're ready to write this down because I've got a long list for you. Oh wait, actually, I'm looking at my notes now.
There's actually only two things on this list. Wow, how is this possible? Only two things on the list of how to grow your business, but it isn't back true. Everything can fit into these two buckets. If you've got something that's working a little bit, your ways to grow include, number one, you can sell to more customers.
In other words, you can acquire more customers, bring more people into your funnel, into your fold, and therefore you make more money. Or number two, you can sell more to existing customers. That's pretty much it. So one way or another, everything fits into one of these two categories. You're reaching more people, or you're selling more to the people you already have.
And by selling more, I mean, you could be introducing new products. You could have some kind of upsell. You could have a service that complements the product, or vice versa. Or you could just raise the price. And if you raise the price, then you're selling more to your existing customers.
Now, I want to read you a quick story. This is a story that originally came from the $100 startup. I wrote this book several years ago. And I still, to this day, get stories every day from people who are using this method and seeing successes come from it. So this is the story from the book.
And pay attention, because I think this is really going to help some people out there. If you've got a project that is off the ground and doing okay, doing decently, or even doing really well, just listen up and see if you could apply this. Okay, here we go. One day, I received an intriguing message from one of my customers, who successfully built a new business over the past year, and is now making an average of $4,000 a month in his industry. In the email, he told me about the results from an interesting experiment.
I asked if I could share the results with other customers, and eventually this book, but Greg, I'm gonna change his name here, Greg was concerned about his competition, learning how easy it was to increase profits. He finally said I could share this info as long as I didn't unmask him. So here's his follow-up note to me with the details. And Greg said, as mentioned yesterday, I wanted to check something in my product. I set up an experiment that only tested a single variable.
That variable was price. On one sales page, I had $49, and another $89. $49, $89, nothing was different at all. Same copywriting, same order process, same fulfillment. To be totally honest, I thought that $49 was a better price, but I had set that price somewhat arbitrarily.
So guess what happened? Conversion did go down, slightly, but overall income actually increased. This is what really surprised me. I discovered that I could sell less, but actually make more money due to the higher price. I then decided to test it at $99.
Why not, right? But from $89 to $99, I saw a bit more of a drop off, so I got worried. I'm now back at $89, and even with the lower conversion factored in, I worked out that I've given myself a $24 raise on every product that sells. These days, we're selling at least four units a day. So if everything else remains consistent, I'll make $35,000 more this year, all from one test.
And his last little note said, I've decided to do some more tests. All right, so in this example, this guy changes a single thing, a single variable. All he does is raise the price on a product that's selling, makes no other changes whatsoever, and as you heard, it had a tremendous impact, okay? So once again, there's a ceiling to this kind of thing. When he tried to raise it again, it didn't work as much, but as a general rule, you can count on it more often than not.
This is just one example. There are lots of different ways you can attract new customers. There are lots of different ways you could sell more to existing customers, but everything kind of falls into those two buckets. So for those who are at that point, who are like, yeah, I wanna go and do something like this, I've already got my $1,000 a month going, in the side hustle book, which is a more updated book than $100 startup, days 24 to 25, it's all about do more of what's working and less of what isn't, and also how to look for money lying under a rock. So check out days 24 to 25 in the side hustle book for some even more specific strategies, and if you haven't reached $1,000 a month yet, well, this is something to look forward to.
If it's been a struggle to get to $1,000 a month, again, you've got something to look forward to, it might take some time to get there, but once you get there, there's all kinds of other stuff you can do to go further. That is, of course, my hope for you that you can not only get started, but you can also go beyond. [Music]
Okay, so I wanted to focus most of this episode on that analysis, on that concept of, well, first of all, talking about desperation, not making decisions out of desperation, then looking at that concept about how you really need to not just relate to somebody, but you need to show that you have a solution to their problem, a little bit different, but then everything I just shared about how to go from $1,000 to $5,000 a month or whatever the number is. Again, it's not so much about this specific number, it's about when something is working, what can you do to make it work even better? And like I said, perhaps we'll do a whole extended episode about it at some point, but it's about something that people need to know.
All right, so for just a couple minutes, let's look back on this week and look ahead to what's to come. My favorite episode of this week, I'm always curious what our listeners think, but for my preference, my favorite episode was actually where we started number 478. The Gmail tool generates $1 million a year. This is truly an aspirational success story. Not every side hustle is gonna make a million dollars a year, I always try to provide lots of disclosures about that.
But if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that a lot of them actually do really well. A side hustle is not just about mowing lawns, it's not just about driving for Uber or Lyft or whatever. So this is a guy who was able to do this with no employees, one product, really simple, very few features in that product at first. And eventually he decided to invest more into it, which is exactly how you should do it. You get started with very few features, and if it works, then you add more features to it.
But you only do so slowly and deliberately, and you don't waste your time, you don't waste your effort and perhaps other money or whatever resource in something that's not working. That was episode 478. I mean, I liked a couple others as well. Episode 480, the flight attendant who gets paid to help kids learn about the world. And of course, the Aussie man, the Australian guy who eats nothing but potatoes for 365 days.
This is a true story, by the way. You can look this guy up. I actually met him in Melbourne, Australia when I was on tour a few months ago. And in his case, he didn't make a million dollars, he just did something kind of crazy for himself. But then he got a lot of attention out of it and thought, "Hey, what can I do with this to bring in some more money?" So I think he's doing something like $1,000 a month.
Hey, maybe he should listen to this episode, and he can go from 1,000 to 4,000 or $5,000 a month. To be clear, I don't know if that's possible in the potato coaching business, but I guess anything's possible. I mean, this is side hustle school, right? I personally continue to be surprised at all the things that come across my desk, all the stories from listeners, what you guys are doing, as well as all the people that we're featuring. And speaking of what's to come, I've got a former J.P. Morgan employee
who starts something called money therapy for millennials. What is money therapy? Well, I think it's a great phrase, and we will hear a bit more about what it is in terms of a side hustle soon. We also have a story of a couple who creates a design business, goes on to actually make six figures focused on Doxins. That is Doxins as in the dogs, also known as wiener dogs.
Can you make six figures from wiener dogs? Apparently so. Also something about voiceover work, also something about travel gear reviews. So stay tuned, all kinds of fun stuff coming up. It's now time for me to sign off for the week.
I just wanna say thank you quickly before I do so. I want to give credit where credit is due in the form of the credits. All right, so my first credit, my first thank you is to you, the listener. You are the reason I make this show, I said in the very first episode, episode number one. Isn't that crazy how he titled it?
We're like, today's the first episode, we're gonna go with number one. Nobody's ever done that before. In that episode I said, if you make the commitment to make this part of your routine, then I commit to being here. Like every single day, there's not an exception. Seven days a week means seven episodes.
Every day I'm making this because I want you to be able to make that new source of income, that side hustle that you have thought about for a while, perhaps, but haven't turned into reality until now. Or maybe you just want support, maybe you want some motivation, you wanna hear about what other people are doing. Whatever it is, I'm so grateful that you're in our community. It's not just entertainment, even though I know it's hilarious and informative. It's also something that's supposed to help you.
That's my goal. And I'm not the only one who makes this happen. So, Sada's Little School is part of the Panoply Network. It's actually part of the Onward Project, which my good friend and hero, Gretchen Rubin, produces. She's actually the founder and curator of the Onward Project.
Our production team is led by A.C. Valdez in Washington, D.C. Show notes and content management, working with all the different featured stories, working with our team of writers, working with me, probably the most challenging part of the job. That is managed by Whitney Karinek in Portland, Oregon. There's also my cat Libby Guillipo, who's the least reliable member of the team, but she gets offended if I leave her out.
Or now that I think about it, she gets offended no matter what, because she's a cat. That's how cats work. If you're out there and you've been enjoying the show, I'd be super, super grateful if you would leave me a quick little rating and review in iTunes, also known as Apple Podcasts. It just takes a little moment to go and click on the five-star icon. Unfortunately, there's not a six-star icon, but they do have one that goes up to five stars.
And just say why you enjoy the show. It could be just one sentence. It doesn't have to take a long time. That does help other people discover the show. And of course, since we started back on episode one, day one, Sidus Little School has grown because of people like you, because you've told your friends, because you've said, hey, there's this thing you should listen to, and they show you how to subscribe to it on your phone.
Or you can go to sidehustleschool.com and download all the episodes. It is 100% free. We just have a couple of sponsor messages each episode. We try to keep things really non-intrusive, really focused on the content, focused on how we can make a difference in your life. So if you've been part of Spreading the Word, thank you so much, I really appreciate that.
And in most episodes, I always say inspiration is good, but action is better. That's because I want you to take action. I would love to tell your story here. I look forward to hearing about what you're doing. And I hope to see you tomorrow and each day next week with more stories and actionable ideas.
Consider these minutes and investment in yourself. Our episodes go online at 6 o'clock a.m. Eastern time every single day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Sidus Little School.
