This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Is there ever a normal week in your life? Is there ever a time when things go exactly as planned, there's no disruptions, you're not stressed about your work, you have time for yourself, you have time for your side hustle, everything's just going nice and smooth. Well, maybe that happens for some people all the time, but I think for most of us, we have a lot of disruptions. We have a lot of things that come up all the time, and it's almost like there is no normal anymore, like everything is irregular, and this is the status quo for a lot of us. Welcome to Side Hustle School, my name is Chris Guillebeau.
We have just finished week number 26 of season two. Over here in my world, I'm hosting the World Domination Summit this week, the eighth annual World Domination Summit in Portland, Oregon, featuring attendees from more than 24 countries and a lot of different stuff happening. Meetups, half-day workshops, main stage keynotes, some parties, some adventures, and so on. Definitely not a normal week over here in my world, but as I said, when is there a normal week? And you know this very well.
If you're a parent or a student or just a busy person in general, like the kind of person that I make this show for every single day, I was thinking about this because I mentioned last week I've been doing this time tracking exercise. This exercise involves a spreadsheet where I'm basically keeping up with every 15 minutes of my week, like every single 15 minute period. And my hope is that over time, I'm going to be able to identify some patterns, both in terms of being more productive, but not just that, not just working harder or working more, being more intentional, making sure that I'm spending my time the way that I want to spend my time. And Laura VanderKam, the person who created this exercise called 168 Hours, one of her principles is that you shouldn't wait for a normal week to start doing this because we all have different stuff that happens. So whether you're trying to track every 15 minute interval of your week, or you're just trying to carve out some more space to create this project that I talk about every day, the kind of project that's gonna work for you and help you get ahead, help you get more options and the ability to do more of what you want, the thing is because there's no normal, you have to carve out time for yourself.
Somehow, some way. So that may mean saying no to other things. It may sometimes mean getting up earlier or going to bed later. I don't think that is the best long-term strategy. I don't think that's sustainable, but it is true.
There can be times in our lives when something is important to us and we're willing to sacrifice to get it. So you have to start where you are, even if there are a lot of disruptions in your life. Okay, in today's recap, I wanna take a listener question about buying an existing business as a side hustle. So let's hear from Jeff. - Hi Chris, this is Jeff from California.
Love the show, great advice and inspiration. I work as a full-time biologist and my side hustle is a service-based business offering resume services for early career biologists. So I hope to have more updates for you on that soon. My question is about website brokers. So those services that buy and sell websites, such as Empire Flippers or Flippa.
Some of these sites are expensive, but some of them are inexpensive under $5,000. So if you're gonna spend some time and money on a side hustle anyway, why not just buy a business for a few thousand dollars that's already generating a monthly income and then maintain it? Can this be a viable side hustle? Thanks Chris, look forward to this week's episode, bye. - Jeff, thanks so much for calling in.
I look forward to that update you mentioned. And this is a great question. There is a cottage industry of website directories offering existing websites and associated businesses for sale, like you mentioned. And as for why I don't talk about it, well, I just tend to focus on helping people start their own project rather than acquiring someone else's. So a lot of the skills I try to teach people through the stories are more relevant when starting your own project.
However, can it be worth it, especially if you have some money to spend? Well, I think the answer is yes, maybe, right? It's not so much like, yes, this is amazing or no, this is terrible. But let's just start with the question you posed. Why wouldn't somebody do this?
Well, why not? Because if someone is selling a business that is profitable and they've unlocked the keys to this system, like they've figured something out just like a lot of the stories on the program, well, then they're gonna want a good price for it. They're not gonna want to give that away for cheap and nor should they. So in some ways it comes down to this classic marketplace thing, like what are they willing to sell it for and what are you or what is some buyer willing to pay for it? And if you could find a happy medium there, then yes, potentially it could work.
However, a few tips. First of all, be sure to ask, why is this person selling this business? And most of these websites usually will include that information. You wanna look for something really specific there. A good answer could be, I don't have time to grow it.
Like I really believe in the potential of this business and here's the data behind it. Here are the metrics. Somebody could really grow this business further but it can't be me right now. There could be other acceptable answers too. I just think it's really important to understand like why are they doing this?
Are they just trying to flip something? Are they just trying to start something really quickly and then resell it and move on to the next project? In which case, it might be better or more advantageous for you to just figure out how to start the project in the first place. Which is my next tip, like ask yourself, what is the cost of creating something like this myself? If that price is substantially less to the best of your knowledge, then why not do that instead of spending your money on what someone else has made?
You also wanna pay close attention to the historical income of the business which will all be listed on these sites. Whenever somebody sells a business, they have to include all the historical income information. So you really wanna look at the projection or the curve of that income. If the curve is going down or if it's not going up substantially or if there's not enough months of data to make you feel confident that it's gonna keep going, then you should look out. Just to pick some hypothetical numbers out of the air, say you saw a project and it was like, we're selling this business, completely passive income.
Last month it was $10,000. You think, well, that's great, but the month before it was actually $20,000 and the month before that it was $30,000. Well, that's not so great, right? Because they're basically going out of business. Whereas if you can look and see this nice curve that goes up, a year ago they started this business, it was $1,000 a month income and they've kind of steadily and consistently grown since then.
They might've had a bad month, but then they pick back up and the curve is upward. That's important, maybe one more thing. Ask yourself, do I understand this business? Like, do I have some knowledge of what is being sold here or could I easily acquire it? So this might seem obvious, but if it's not something you understand at all, nor could you easily acquire that expertise, then I think you should look elsewhere.
So in short, I'm not fundamentally opposed to the idea, the way that I am to something like a multi-level marketing or network marketing, which I'm still getting emails over, but I'm not sure it's the best answer for most people. So I think most people will be better served by doing something themselves. Thanks again, Jeff, I hope that is helpful. [Music]
Here's my favorite takeaway from the episodes this week. I really appreciate everyone who's willing to go through the process of being featured on the show, which involves being interviewed, providing all the information, and hopefully it's gonna be good for them as well.
Like we've sent a lot of customers to a lot of people, but I also realize it takes a lot of time. So if you ever find yourself like following someone's social media, maybe send them a quick little note saying like, "Hey, thanks so much for being on Side Hustle School." If you get a chance to do that at some point, I'm sure they would appreciate that. But back to my favorite takeaway from episode 541, the Monday episode. This was Ashley, the personal trainer who pumps up breakfast with a $25,000 a month pancake hustle. Several lessons from that episode that was number 541, and here's what I wanna focus on.
We had this little section that said, "Ashley still had to learn the ins and outs of barcodes, "branding, nutrition labels, and expiration dates, "just to name a handful of things. "What was the lesson she learned the fastest? "That you learn a lot when people ask you "for things you don't know about." I really like that quote and to me it illustrates this is why the right mindset matters more than anything at all when it comes to starting this kind of project. You know, figuring out barcodes, that's a detail. Like who out there is born and understanding how barcodes work?
No one. Who out there goes to school to learn about barcodes? Okay, maybe there's somebody out there but most of us don't. However, is it possible and feasible that most of us, if we needed to learn about barcodes, we could do that? I would say yes, it's just a detail.
Have you ever known somebody who asks really obvious questions, like questions that they could easily get the answer to somewhere else but yet it seems like they don't know how to or they're just constantly looking to other people to tell them how to live their lives? One of my favorite websites is LetMeGoogleThatForYou.com or LMGTFY.com, which is what you can say when someone asks a really obvious question. Like how do I do this thing? Oh, here's this great website you can go to to get answers. It's called LMGTFY.com and it's so crazy.
You can type things in and information comes back at you, like all kinds of information. Amazing. So anyway, the details don't matter so much. People who are successful tend to have this positive mindset of being willing and unafraid to learn. Like they are curious, they want to learn.
When they encounter this challenge, oh, I gotta figure out my barcode. Oh, I need to see how expiration dates work for this product I'm making. They just kinda step out and say, okay, you know, how do I do that? What information do I need? Not gonna become the world's leading expert in these things, but I'm gonna learn whatever I need to do to apply to my project and then I'm gonna keep going 'cause I got other things I gotta worry about.
So again, that quote was, you learn a lot when people ask you for things you don't know about, which is another reason why you should just jump right in. It's another reason why you should work on getting started as opposed to planning your project forever without doing anything about it. But if you've been listening to the show for a while, you probably know that. Coming up next week, I will be digging myself out of a hole. Just been going nonstop for the World Domination Summit over the past week.
So I hope to get a little bit of a break, but of course the show is gonna continue. Got all kinds of good stuff coming out for you. I'm also gonna be going on a trip soon to Doha, Qatar, and probably a couple of stops in Europe as well. Still working out my itinerary, but I'll take you along with me if you'd like to come. I mean, not really, but just like in your headphones, you know?
So some good stories, including one that we've been working on for a while. It's about a marketer who makes $60,000 in six months via Fiverr. I may have mentioned this a week or two ago and said it was coming. We just had to do a bit more work on it. So it is coming soon this week.
Also a reselling project, which I know is gonna be popular with a lot of our community that are really into that. Something about a mostly made meal service and something about a food diary. So all kinds of stuff, as usual, a wide range, a big mix of stories so that you can hear all this different stuff and ask yourself, what do I relate to the most? What do I connect with? And even if you don't connect with something, hopefully you'll like that person's story or you'll get an idea for something else.
But then once in a while, you'll hear something that you really do connect with. And you're like, ah, I wanna do something exactly like this, or maybe not exactly like that, but very similar to that. And then hopefully you've got a starting point in which to jump off from there. All right, well, since it is the end of the week, I just wanna say a couple of thank yous to everybody who makes this show possible. I record this show in a little room by myself, but then there's a whole group of people that make it possible to go out to the world and go out to you.
If you've heard the weekly recaps before, you may know some of their names. Our production team is led by AC Valdez in Washington, DC. We've also got Sarah Barrett working on many of the episodes that go out during the week. Show notes and content management and lots of other things, including host wrangling. I am the host, she wrangles me.
That is Whitney Karenik in Portland, Oregon. And working with our Side Hustle Society, which I haven't talked about nearly enough, stay tuned, we're gonna relaunch that very soon. That community facilitation is done by Jed Chang. Thanks so much, Jed. And last but not least, of course, my cat Libby Guillipo working the night shift.
She's been working really hard recently. In fact, we usually say she works between two and 4 a.m., but these days it's been extended hours, overtime, basically. Which would be nice if she actually did something productive, but in fact, she mostly just kind of bothers the humans. So it's a problem, but it's not your problem. Because hey, you're just out there listening to the show.
You wanna work on your project, that's awesome. You wanna have your Side Hustle. So my last thank you is to you. The listener. We are 547 episodes into the show now.
I know there's a lot of people who've been listening since episode one, which I find amazing. Thank you so much, don't stop. And if you picked up on episode 546, or any other episode between number one and yesterday, I'm so glad you're out there too. Wherever you joined in, my firm believed my commitment. Not just my belief, but my commitment is to support you fully in your quest to create that new source of income.
So if you make the commitment to listen, I commit to being here every single day, seven days a week. And if you fall off for a while, well, I'm still gonna be here when you get back. And then you can go back and listen to the archives at a time that's convenient to you. If you wanna do something nice for us that just takes a minute of your time, you could leave us a little rating and review in Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Those things do help other listeners discover the show.
And of course, the number one thing that helps listeners discover the show is people talking about it. We don't have expensive advertising. We don't really have a marketing strategy since I spend all my time working on the content of the show. So since day one, all of our growth has been organic from listeners telling their friends. So if you have help with that at all, thank you so much, you are awesome.
And as always, don't forget inspiration is good, but action is even better. I love hearing stories of our listeners who are taking action. I look forward to featuring your story on the show. And I hope you will join me tomorrow and each day next week with more stories and actionable ideas. Our episodes go online at 6.01 a.m. Eastern time
every single day. Once more, I'm Chris Guillebeau, and this is Side Hustle School.
