This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hello there friends, listeners and Side Hustle School community. Welcome, my name is Chris Guillebeau and we have just finished week number 20 of season two. That's right, week number 20, two zero of season two, 2018 and just passed 500 episodes as I may have said a couple of times last week. This is episode 505, can't wait for the next 500. In today's recap, I wanna talk about how it's not enough to just get started.
Getting started is critical, it is necessary, but it's not sufficient. You also have to be consistent over time and I wanna emphasize that because so often we're saying, you know, just get started, like just start. And that is key, that is critical, it is important, but that's not all there is and I think that's why some people get stuck. So we'll talk about that. But first, why do I make Side Hustle School?
Like let's look back not just at the week, but at the year at this whole project, just to kind of restate the values, the intentions as well as the outcomes and results that I hope will be produced through the show, through everybody who's part of this community. I started this project because I wanted to reach people who didn't necessarily want to be full-time entrepreneurs, who didn't necessarily have a lot of resources. They had jobs, they were really busy, didn't have a lot of time, but they also believed in investing in themselves. And these people perhaps should include you, understood that it's really important to make choices for yourself. It's important to make choices for yourself now and for the future.
And I believe passionately that not everybody should be an entrepreneur. There's all kinds of good companies and organizations you can work for, but even so, you should have more than one source of income. And you should be doing things to create more freedom and security for yourself. So those words, freedom and security, those are two of the values that I stress inside of school, as well as just more confidence, more creativity, being able to do something that's a little bit different. So you've got your day job that you go to, but then you also have this extra project.
It's just kind of something to look forward to at the end of the day. Or perhaps it's something that is bringing in passive income, like a lot of our stories feature, like you're going to bed at night and you wake up in the morning and you check your phone or your computer and you say, oh, I made $150 last night. Or some people make $1,000 overnight. So that's who it's for. And I don't really care like how old you are, like what your social cultural background is.
Like we have a really diverse community in terms of demographics like that. What unites this community is a more psychographic, just a more understanding, like a belief that the world is changing or the world has changed. And you need to do something to look out for yourself. It's not a bad thing. It's not a scary thing.
It's not just because you can't depend on a corporation, although that is true. It is also, I believe, a remarkable opportunity because there are so many things out there you can do to make money. It's not just about getting a second job. In fact, it's not about getting a second job at all. It's not about driving for Uber or for Lyft or for some other rideshare company or participating in the gig economy otherwise.
This is truly about creating an asset for yourself. That's why I make Side Hustle School. And I hope, as we've seen throughout the year and a half so far, just about that a lot of people will be able to start these kinds of projects for themselves. In fact, about 20% of our stories now come from the community, people who've been listening from year one and have started projects and are making money and creating that freedom and security for themselves that I talk about so often. So that is what it's about.
And with that in mind, why is it a problem to say, "Hey, just get started?" Well, I think it's a problem because getting started is necessary, but it's not sufficient. So it's kind of like saying, "All you need is luck and a million dollars." Like, if you want to be successful, all you need is to be really lucky and then make a million dollars, okay? Now, both of those things would be nice, but you can't control either one of them. Like you can't just say like, "Hey, luck, show up at my doorstep. Hey, I want a million dollars in my bank account tomorrow that wasn't there today." It's always important in life, not just in the side hustle world, but in life in general to focus on what you can control.
Like what is within your realm of influence? So within your realm of influence is the ability to get started and then show up. So yes, first of all, you'd have to just get started. If you've got this idea that you've been sitting on, that's not gonna be helpful. You do have to actually do something about it.
And a lot of people struggle with that myself. I've struggled with lots of ideas I've had over the years, but haven't done anything with. But then once you overcome that, there is kind of a part two because real successes like the lasting, enduring, life-changing, quit your job kind of successes, or at least have the ability to quit your job, regardless of what you actually do. Those kinds of successes usually require both getting started and then sticking with it, often for a long period of time. So last week in the recap, I talked about Kathleen Shannon, the co-founder of Being Boss.
And that was the $400,000 podcast. They actually made $250,000 net income on about $400,000 of revenue last year. And that episode, by the way, was one of our most popular episodes. I'm gonna do a whole extended cut about it soon. So stay tuned for that.
But one of the things that Kathleen prides herself on is that in three years, in three years of producing this podcast, they've never missed an episode. And the same is true here at Side Hustle School. Like since I started January 1, 2017, we have not missed an episode. You know, today is number 505. That also corresponds with 505 days since we started.
So for both Kathleen and for myself, I think with this project that success is not just getting started, it's also showing up. To talk about a different story in episode 500 this week. This was about the married couple who goes from crashing their drone into a parked car in New York City to a soaring side hustle, making I believe multiple six figures in the drone coaching business or the drone education business, whatever you wanna call it. They have a site that teaches people about how to use drones. That story was interesting because it could have been a small success and a small success is great.
The guy Allen first had a model of earning affiliate commissions from amazon.com by referring people like he would write articles about drones and if they click the links, he would get paid when somebody purchased them from amazon. And that was a success. I think he made five figures one month from it. But it became a much, much bigger success because they were willing to invest a lot of time in understanding the people who were coming to read those articles and then understanding their deeper needs, which were not just to go and buy a drone. It was also like, hey, how do I use this?
Like what is legal? What are best practices? All that kind of stuff. So they made a plan. He wasn't afraid to get started or if he was afraid, he overcame that fear somehow, but then he also stuck with it, okay?
So yes, just get started, but then get to work. It's okay to work hard and in fact, you probably should. All of us work hard on producing the show for you. I'll say thanks to the rest of our production crew in a moment, but first let's just pause and say a quick little thank you to today's sponsor. They allow the show to be completely free to you.
So thanks to them and then stay tuned. Don't go anywhere. [Music]
All right, thank you again for your support of our sponsors. Really appreciate them and I appreciate you. I'll tell you more about that in a moment, but first I want to read a listener email.
Got this message from Rodrigo and it illustrates some of what I was just talking about, about getting started and then being consistent and seeing it through, okay? And in this case, the seeing it through doesn't require months and months and months of work. It just requires one really long day. Okay, so here's what Rodrigo says. Hey, Chris, a few months back when your tour for Side Hustle brought you to Books and Books down here in Miami, I had the chance to share two minutes of my story of how I forced myself to create a Udemy course on SEO.
So Udemy is a platform of online courses, by the way, SEO, search engine optimization. Udemy course on SEO by doing a really long day trip to Pensacola, Florida and back, which is a 12 hour total round trip with nothing but the voice recorder on my phone and a notepad with the outline of what the course chapters and sub chapters of the course I wanted to create would look like. As I left the house at around 5 a.m. that morning, arriving back at around 6 p.m. just in time for dinner with the family, I hit the record button and started talking.
I pretended like I was in a room with 50 students eager to learn from my experience and I just spoke as if it was a day long training session, which was important because it kept me focused on getting through all the chapters. Chapter by chapter, I worked through it and even uncovered a lot of little details and ideals that I hadn't thought of earlier. The next day, I hired someone on Fiverr to transcribe the audio file and send me the PDF, which I later used to create the actual course. The total cost for this experiment was $120, $90 of which was gas, so the transportation cost between Miami and Pensacola and back and then $30 for the transcription. The big lesson I learned is that there's always a way to dedicate time to something if it's important, but sometimes it just takes some creative thinking and literally forcing yourself away from distractions and into a state of mind where it's easy to think and speak freely.
I just wanted to share this as it could be helpful to others who are time strapped and trying to spend that one hour of free time over 12 days to make progress, rather than just hammering down and cranking out the 12 hours at once, which is what worked best for me. Thanks so much, Chris, all the best, Rodrigo. Well, thank you, Rodrigo. I love that tip. I love that story of the 12 hour journey to Pensacola and back, round trip journey to nowhere, in which you use that time to create all the content for the Udemy course that you then went on to launch.
So well done and let that be a lesson to somebody else out there as well. [Music]
We have a lot more coming up on the show very soon, including a story, I believe it's coming tomorrow, if not tomorrow, very soon, about a marketing professional who makes $60,000 teaching people how to start a food truck. Have you ever wondered how to start a food truck or have you ever wondered how those things work? Well, this guy knows, and then he finds a way to transfer his knowledge, just like the drone guy did. A little bit different approach, but same concept of taking his knowledge and passing it on to others.
Makes $60,000 doing so. Also got an episode about the teenage YouTube makeup star, a 15 year old in Australia who's earning at least $2,000 a month, showing people how to apply makeup. When I was 15, YouTube didn't exist, but I also didn't earn $2,000 a month. I earned an allowance and that allowance was like, I don't know, $10 a week or something. So I think she's onto something.
We'll hear more about that coming up soon. And also a story about a public policy researcher in Washington DC who starts his own tour guide business. And I really liked the story because he has a creative approach to reaching people. There's so many tour companies, tour agencies in Washington DC, more than 150 of them, but he finds a way as a newcomer, as someone who's just like a person, not a big company, not a brand, to go around the conventional system and attract tourists and visitors through a way that nobody else was doing. Okay, so I'll tell you about that coming up soon.
And of course, so much more. I just wanna mention as well that I'm learning through this process just like you. At least I hope you're learning because I am learning something. Like every week these stories come across my desk and I look through them and I'm like, wow, I had no idea. You know, you could make so much money teaching people how to fly a drone.
I don't really wanna be a tour guide myself, but it is kind of curious how those little businesses work. And what if somebody wants to do that? How would they go about figuring it out? I believe in this guy's story that we're gonna hear he spent something like $130. So really cheap.
It's not hard to do a lot of the projects that we talk about. In fact, that's the whole point. Like I don't wanna bring you stories where people have to have $100,000 in investment capital or even $10,000 in most cases. I wanna focus on people who are just like you, just like me, like regular folks out there who take what they know, take the skills they already have and then find a way to adapt them in this new economy that we're all living in together and co-creating. So as we close out the week, I would like to begin the closing by acknowledging you.
Thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of this community. If you have helped to spread the word in some way, if you have given us a little rating or review in Apple Podcast, that's awesome. It just takes a moment and those things really do help. If you wanna tell your friends about the show and say, hey, this is completely free, you can go and subscribe.
Like here's how you do it on your phone if you don't know how to subscribe to a podcast. Which by the way, as a podcast listener, you may think that's unusual. Like why does somebody not know how to subscribe to a podcast? But we are still in an age where a lot of people really don't. So if you've been part of bringing people to the community here, which has grown completely organically, no huge marketing or PR campaign, thank you.
But even if you haven't, if you're just working on your own project and trying to get more freedom, like a lot of the people that you hear about, well, that's cool too. I'm so glad you're out there. That's the reason why we do this in the first place. And when I say we, it's not just me. I'm the voice of the show, but there are other folks who make the magic happen.
They do a lot of stuff that I'm not able to do or have no idea how to do. They have expertise far greater than me. That production team is led by AC Valdez. He's in Washington, DC. On the other side of the country, my assistant, Whitney Karenic, is also our content manager.
Wrangell is all the different stories and scripts that we feature. Wrangell is me often, as I say, the most difficult part of the job. Sarah Barrett is nomadic, the last I heard she was in Mexico. I'm not sure where she is at the moment, but somewhere out there. Thank you, Sarah.
There are other folks at our network, Panoply, who work on the show. We're also part of Gretchen Rubin's Onward Project. Thank you, Gretchen. And obviously I would be remiss if I didn't thank the official show cat, Libby Liberia-Gillibow, who works the night shift. She's also in charge of responding to complaints.
So if we have let you down somehow, if we have offended you, I once heard a street performer say, if you have a complaint, just write your complaint down in the back of a $20 bill and put it in my guitar case over here. I don't know what the equivalent is for complaints that go to the show cat, but again, I'm not in charge of that protocol. I've got people and cats who are smarter than me. In every episode, I mention inspiration is good and action's better. That's because I want this to be helpful and useful to you.
I wanna be able to feature your story here. I wanna get a note from you, just like the note from Rodrigo or the notes from other people who are starting projects and not just getting started, but also being consistent and seeing it through, working over time because they believe in themselves. Do you believe in yourself? I think you do. That's why you're choosing to spend this time listening to the show.
So consider it an investment in yourself. I hope you'll join me tomorrow and every day next week with more stories and actionable ideas. Our episodes go online at 6 0 1 a.m. Eastern time every single day. My name is Chris Guillebeau and this is Side Hustle School.
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