This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello there friends, listeners and side hustle school community. What's up, welcome back. Guess what? We have just finished week number 21 of season two. At least I think it was week number 21.
I realized recently that my count was a little bit off. So if it's not 21, we're gonna correct that for next week. And next week it's gonna be, I don't know, whatever it is. It's gonna be correct. Speaking of corrections, yesterday I went through this whole thing about how do you pronounce this word?
That word for like a strainer, you know, you pour something in like for a beverage or if you're making coffee. Well, not shocking, I completely mispronounced it. So now I have learned, I've gone away and educated myself. The correct pronunciation of that word is sieve. It's spelled S-I-E-V-E.
And of course, I'm sure many of our listeners were like, "No, Chris, that's not the way you say it." So if that was you yesterday, you are right. Just wanna point out that I'm learning on the job here. You know, there's no podcast school. There is now a side hustle school, but there's not a podcast school where you go to learn how to pronounce words. And as a random observation, I've learned since doing the show that there are a lot of words I actually mispronounce.
You know, I like to think of myself as being somewhat literate. I am an author. I do try to read at least one book a week. But what I noticed is that there are a lot of words that I know, at least by sight, but I don't actually know how to pronounce them or if I ever do pronounce them, I'm saying them incorrectly. So now we're gonna add sieve to this list, but the list also includes metric, which for years I've mispronounced as matric.
Even when I recorded my last audio book, the side hustle book, I got some notes back from the production guys and they were like, Chris, you know, do you mean to say metric because you keep talking about matrix, like the matrix, like go and check your matrix. And like, that's not correct. So then I was like, great, all this time I've been saying it wrong. Okay, metric, there it is. Detritus is another word like that.
But detritus is kind of a word that nobody should say anyway. It's the kind of word that should only appear in print. And then last, but not least, at least last for this summary, the adjective for mischief. Like if you are a person who makes mischief. Now I'm sure so many of our listeners are like, well, obviously, Chris, I know what it is.
But for me, for years, I said mischievous. Like, hmm, that behavior is mischievous. Well, guess what? I was adding some extra vowels, at least one extra vowel to that word. The correct pronunciation is mischievous, which I'd actually heard before.
And then when I looked at it carefully, I was like, oh yeah, I'm adding some extra letters in that word when I say mischievous, which is a common mispronunciation, but it is in fact incorrect. That's a little side lesson for you there, no extra charge. And today in the recap, I want to talk about some ways to make a quick and easy website. We're actually going to look back on this week of food trucks, YouTube, makeup, and marijuana. Talk about some ways to make a quick and easy website, a few resources for you.
I do believe everyone should know how to make a website, which is not the same thing as learning to be a coder or a programmer. I'll explain the difference in just a moment. But I also wanted to read this quick little note from Sabina. Speaking of mispronunciation, I hope I'm pronouncing Sabina's name correctly. It is spelled S-A-B-I-N-E.
If I've got that incorrect, let me know, and I'll apologize for that too. But anyway, her note says, "I just listened to Sunday's show. I want to let you know how much insight I'm finding from side hustle school. Also, the insight you shared about profit margins was on the money, pun intended. Profits are what keep us alive and thriving.
People who have regular jobs would never turn down a pay raise. And if they were offered the same job for more money at another company, would probably take it, or at least consider it, if everything else was the same." And she goes on to say a couple of other things. "Every time I listen to your show, it's an idea and energy boost." That's awesome, Sabina. That is our goal. And she also mentions, "Thanks to your crew as well, because you obviously have great people working with you." That is totally true, I do.
Just wanted to highlight her note because of what she said about profit margins. Once again, profits are what keep us alive and thriving. People who have regular jobs would never turn down a pay raise. I think she mentioned that in context to a discussion that we had about how it's okay to have a good profit margin, like this is the whole point, it's all right. If you raise your price and people are still happy to pay you for whatever product or service you're offering, then that means you're not offering too high of a price.
And by making more money, you'll have more opportunities to do different things, to reinvest in your business, to build more sustainability around it so that it can continue, perhaps by putting in place different systems or processes that you wouldn't be able to do without making some investments. So yes, I am pro profit margin. It's okay to make more money. In fact, that's my goal for all of our listeners. I want you to be able to make more money, not just for the sake of having money, but for the difference it can make in your life, for the choices that you want to make.
So those comments in that principle are very much aligned with my whole philosophy, at least why I make this show for you every day. All right, so in just a moment, some resources, some quick and easy ways, some tips on making a quick and easy website. Going to mention a couple of principles as well as a couple of tools, let's just pause for a quick moment to say thanks to today's sponsor. I really do appreciate them because they allow the show to be completely free to you. So shout out to them and then we'll keep on rolling.
[Music]
Okay, so I made this brief statement about how I think everyone should learn to make a website, but you don't necessarily need to become a coder or a programmer. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that when it comes to technology on the internet, a little knowledge can go a long way. So it's kind of the opposite of a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. You've heard that expression before.
I don't know the origins of that expression, I'll probably get this wrong too, but I think it refers to stuff like medicine as in practicing medicine. Like it's probably not a good idea to learn to practice a little bit of medicine, right? If you're going to be a doctor or a nurse or a healthcare practitioner, you should probably learn a lot. You probably shouldn't just spend an afternoon like looking at some online tutorials and then be like, oh, actually I'm qualified or I've got some knowledge in this area. All of us would think that's absurd, but when it comes to things like building a website, you actually can do that and go away being more empowered than you were before.
And actually having a lot of knowledge, even if you end up working with a developer or a designer or some combination of a team to build a website or just somebody you've outsourced or contract to, it really helps to be able to fix small things. It helps to be able to have a vocabulary to explain what you want if somebody else is building your website. And furthermore, these days there are a number of resources, I'm gonna tell you about several of them here, that can actually make the process of making a pretty simple website, which is a phrase I used several days a week, so-and-so made a pretty simple website. I do that because a lot of the sites from the people that we talk about on the show, they really are quite simple. They are using these basic tools that can put together a website in an afternoon or maybe in a couple of days, a few hours here and there.
So a couple of things for you to check out. A while back I did an extended cut early in 2017 actually, called the 90 minute website, which was essentially a plan to make your first website in 90 minutes. You can check that out at sidehustleschool.com/extended. And in that episode, I talked a fair amount about WordPress, which is a partner of the show, but also something I've used a service that I've used myself for more than 10 years now. So they've been a partner of the show for a year, but I've been using them for a decade.
So I mean, I have some bias of course, but mostly my bias is that I've been using them for a long time and I like them a lot. If you wanna check out our partner offer, you can just go to sidehustleschool.com/website and that should redirect you. But there's lots of different ways to do it. There's wordpress.com, wordpress.org. Those are different.
And also just to mention a couple of alternatives because often I talk about oh so and so made their website with Squarespace. Squarespace is another kind of plug and play system that works for a lot of people. There are a lot of Squarespace websites out there. Some of them look really good. Wix is another one that a lot of our people have used.
Weebly. I actually did an event recently with Weebly in Nashville. I've never had a Weebly website myself, but I got to check it out. It looked really nice. So none of those companies are sponsors of the show, by the way, I just mentioned them.
So Squarespace, Wix, Weebly. We'll link those up in the show notes. Now as for which one to choose, like I already told you the service that I use, the sponsor of the show and so on. But I guess what I would say is if you spend some time and go and look at their offers, watch a little video, just make a decision because in the long run, if you hate it, you can go to one of the others. It's okay, it's possible to do that.
But also the main thing is just to become comfortable with that process of writing some copy and adding some images and adding your order button, which some of those services may do better than others, by the way. Shopify is another one that a lot of our featured case studies have used. So really, it's just about finding what you're comfortable with. It's not gonna matter so much to customers. Like there's not a customer who's gonna come to your website and say, oh, I really wanted to buy, but you're using Wix and I prefer Squarespace.
It doesn't work like that. So try a couple of things out and learn to make your first website. It's not that overwhelming. And like I said, it's gonna give you an advantage because even if you end up hiring a designer or a developer, it's important for you to know a bit about what's going on with your website. So a little knowledge goes a long way.
[Music]
Okay, so my favorite episode of this week, just looking back on episodes 506 through 511, my favorite episode was our first one, the $60,000 food truck empire, no cooking required, about this guy who investigates the food truck industry, firstly, because he thinks he's gonna start a food truck or open a food truck, open a food cart, but then he's just kind of fascinated by the whole industry itself. And how does it work? What are the behind the scenes and so on? And so he actually doesn't get his own food truck, but he learned so much about the industry that he ends up creating a website food truck empire, which is a blog and then a podcast, and then I think a series of information products, like first a $14 ebook, and then a more premium course that he partners with a food truck owner on. So this is just a great example of like the food truck business is pretty big.
Lots of people out there like want to have a food truck, lots of existing food truck owners, many of whom are struggling, definitely need some tips to kind of get ahead. And you've got a guy who's a detective of sorts who just investigates and like interviews lots of people, compiles information, and then makes some of that information available for free and then offers some of it for sale, like really classic model and a really specific niche. I think he talked about in that episode about how he was discouraged at first, for the first three months, six months, maybe on into the first year, just because he didn't have a lot of traffic, it didn't have a lot of listeners and subscribers, but then he realized like, well, what few listeners he has or what few subscribers he has, those people are really committed because you're not going to pay attention to food truck empire if you don't want to have a food truck. So that's really solid. If you have a thousand subscribers to something like that, it's probably better than 10,000 subscribers to something more general.
So not shocking that over time, he's been able to build that up. And then like I said, last year, make $60,000 from it. So this is an asset. This is something that's going to continue earning money for him, even as he continues with his day job, which is what I believe he's doing. So to go back to where we started with profit margins, good for him, this is something that you need.
If you haven't started your side hustle yet, you need something like that. You need your own empire. Other episodes last week featured a 15 year old makeup artist, a government researcher that offers private tours of the nation's capital in Washington, DC, two artists in Orange County who opened a marijuana friendly art studio, as well as somebody, one of our listeners in fact, who starts her own line of natural deodorant that brought in $5,000 last month. So all these projects, again, they're building something for themselves. The people behind them are creating security.
They are creating this thing that they can look at and point to and say, that's my thing. That's my side hustle. My side hustle is not just working odd jobs. It's not just selling things on eBay or Craigslist and nothing wrong with that, by the way. But I think the best kind of projects are the ones that I try to reference on the show a lot because they are doing something that helps them long-term, not just short-term, but also for the future.
Ultimately, this is all about building the future that you want. That's why I make the show every day. So coming up next week, I got a whole bunch of good stories. I've got something about a nomadic worker travel planning service, something about candles, something about healthy caramels, something about Fulfilled by Amazon, which is always popular among a certain subgroup of our listeners. Maybe that includes you.
If you don't know what Fulfilled by Amazon is, if you're new to the show, we'll just stay tuned. You're gonna learn all that stuff and so much more. Since this is our weekly recap, I wanna express gratitude to those folks who've made the show possible. I mentioned our sponsors. I really appreciate them.
They allow us to bring this whole production to you completely free. On our production team, we've got AC Valdez kind of steering the ship. Sarah Barrett also produces many of the episodes. Show notes and content management are by Whitney Corinnek, my assistant in Portland. And also shout out to Jed Cheng, who works with our community, the Saddest List Society.
If you're in Saddest List Society, you probably know Jed pretty well. If you haven't joined society, I'm gonna have some more information about that soon. I would love for you to kind of join the ranks and see what's going on. Jed is also my sidekick. If you send me an email sometimes, I try to get back to as many as possible, but if I don't get back to you directly, usually Jed's gonna write you back.
And then of course, my cat Libby Gilliboe, not so great with email, not so great with podcast production, not so great at a lot of things, but you know, we keep her around because she's pretty awesome otherwise, especially in daytime hours. Nighttime is a problem. Last but not least, I want to thank you, the listener, our community, for everybody out there, for you in particular. If you're listening, you're the reason I make this show, you know, 512 days and counting. This is a free, listener-supported show.
I like to say I get paid in nice emails and in reviews, by the way. So thanks to everybody who's taking the time to leave us a quick little rating or review an Apple podcast. If you haven't done that yet, it just takes a moment. You can do it on your phone in the podcast app. If you've read the Side Hustle book, I'd also be grateful for a review on Amazon.
That'd be awesome. And perhaps most important of all, if you know somebody who should be listening to this show, do us a favor and tell them about it. Or do them a favor as well because they need one of these projects too. They need a Side Hustle. And hopefully we can help with that.
Okay, in every episode I say inspiration is good, but action is better. It's because I hope that you will take action. I don't want to just be a motivational program, like I'm happy to motivate you. But I would really love to hear about what you're doing. I'd love to feature your story here on the show at one point.
And I look forward to doing that. I also hope you'll join me tomorrow and every day next week with more stories and actionable ideas. Remember, this is an investment in yourself. A pretty short and easy 10 minute a day investment. Our episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
