This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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When you acquire skills from different places or different experiences in life, they often lead to the discovery of an all new skill or a combination of skills perhaps that you hadn't ever considered. This relates to the connecting the dots theory about life and careers, how you can't always connect the dots looking forward. You don't necessarily know what you're working toward all the time, but you can often look back and understand how you got to where you are. Welcome to Side Hustle School. We're beginning a new week here.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. I have the privilege of being your host. And in my case, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Like when I was six years old, you said, "Hey, Chris, what do you want to be when you grow up?" At first, I said I wanted to work at Burger King, my favorite restaurant at the time. And thankfully that was an aspiration I outgrew.
But I ended up in my twenties with a collection of experiences that at first seemed very disparate, but then ultimately connected to what I'm doing right now. I went to college and got a degree in sociology and I liked studying sociology. I didn't know what kind of career that was gonna prepare me for necessarily. Then I spent several years as an aid worker in West Africa. I became comfortable with international travel, especially in settings that can be challenging.
I learned to work with groups. I learned about leadership. I gained some communication skills. And all the while I was supporting myself through various entrepreneurial projects. Eventually I started my quest to visit every country in the world and began to publish the Art of Nonconformity blog.
That was 10 years ago. And all of those experiences have led to me speaking to you here today in this medium. But I certainly didn't have the intention of it years ago. I was just out collecting experiences, doing things that were meaningful, pursuing work and travel and activities that I enjoyed. So similarly, today's story features a teacher who gains a wealth of experiences from working part-time as a personal chef for children's birthday parties, to working in PR in the publishing industry.
And then to her small business, which we're gonna talk about today, publishing a magazine that is bringing in recurring income of about $5,000 a month. This is all while she continues to work a full-time job. We'll look at how she does it and how you can line up more dots in your life to connect. Does that make sense? Well, I think it does actually.
And I'll share more about it at the end of the episode. How can you line up more dots in your life to connect to bring you towards something that is ultimately going to be very rewarding. Stay tuned. [Music]
Jill Colella grew up in a working-class meat and potatoes family. The food on the dinner table was fairly standard stuff.
More often than not, it included processed or junk foods. Knowing that, you might be surprised to know that Jill ended up with a successful side hustle in the food publishing industry. In fact, it's quite possible that she's one of the most non-foody food publishers out there. Jill's side hustle is a magazine designed to teach kids about nutritious food. But before I tell you more about that project, let's look at Jill's background.
So there's this famous quote that says, "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." That sums up the path we're gonna talk about today. And in fact, if you connect the dots between her previous work, you'd be forgiven for thinking she had it all figured out from the beginning. The reality is, like so many of us, certainly me, she was winging it the whole time. So let's go through a few of Jill's dots and see how they ended up creating a crystal clear picture. Her first job in her early teens was working at a local grocery store.
She hadn't been exposed to many different foods before that. In fact, she didn't even know that olive oil and artichokes existed. Being around such variety sparked her initial interest in food. Fast forward several years to Jill's adult life. After going through college, she made a few dollars writing for Cliff Notes, a collection of student study guides.
This job gave her some experience writing and improved her ability to convey and teach complex topics. Zoom forward again a few more years when Jill is living in Washington, D.C., studying to become a teacher and working part-time. Always wanted to try new things, she decided to take a course on how to become a personal chef. Instead of cooking for high-end D.C. power brokers, she used her new knowledge another way.
She began offering cooking and chef lessons at birthday parties for young children. It was a surprisingly lucrative gig, sometimes earning over $700 in a single weekend. She launched a website to complement the business and built some following through word of mouth. Most importantly, she learned that she loved teaching kids the benefits of nutritious food and how to make it. Before long, she finished college and began working as a middle school teacher, all while running the cooking parties the whole time.
This turned out to be a wise move because shortly after becoming a teacher, her school drastically downsized, leaving her without a job. Fortunately, even though she was on the hunt for a new job, the idea for a business had already come to her. She wanted to create a publication that could extend the classroom near and far to teach kids about healthy eating habits and food. Since she knew very little about publishing, she decided she'd try and get her next job in that space. That way she could learn everything she needed to about creating her own publication.
As luck would have it, in 2011, the timing was right and a few more dots were connected in her story. Child obesity was becoming a larger social issue and a handful of journalists came across her website, which was teachkidstocook.com. They contacted her and featured her in a few stories. These stories led her to a role in PR for a major publishing company. She made online content for them and worked at building an online presence and community.
These were all skills that would pay dividends for her magazine side hustle, which was now starting to take shape on the side. She modified her existing children's party website and began to produce more magazine-style content. Then she created a mock-up of her first issue of "Ingredient" magazine. Hip, hip, hooray! Or at least almost.
She had the magazine, but her first sales didn't happen by magic. Using the skills she'd now developed in PR, she crafted the perfect press release talking about the upcoming magazine. She sent it out to a few outlets to see if they'd be interested in running a story. As luck would have it once more, the popular apartment therapy blog picked it up and within a few days she had 27 subscribers to "Ingredient" magazine. With that validation, she went ahead to make that magazine, since it wasn't done yet, for those 27 people.
Money was tight, so Jill took a design class so that she could create the magazine layout herself. She also wrote all of the content and sourced all of the images. She found an online printing company that offered to print just a few copies so that she wouldn't have to go into debt printing off a huge batch. Those first 27 subscribers were happy, and this inspired her to up her marketing efforts. The existing website and social media, as well as more PR, continue to drive subscribers.
After the success of "Ingredient," she hunkered down and continued to work. A short time later, she launched a second magazine called "Butternut" because in her words, "A person who publishes one magazine for kids "is eccentric and crazy. "A person who publishes two has a media company." This publication has also been a success. Jill now generates an average of $5,000 a month in sales of both magazines while still working her full-time job doing PR. She plans to keep working on new issues and maybe even launch a third magazine.
The beauty of most of her content is that it's evergreen. As a big fan of repurposing, she would like to make a series of books and dedicate them to children and food. Her goal is to be the Mr. Rogers of food, an ambitious goal, but don't bet against her. She's got her media company, and she's connecting more dots.
Awesome, well, first of all, what a great story. Congrats to Jill. I love the quote about how if you publish one magazine for kids, you're eccentric. If you publish two, you have a media company. And I really love the whole trajectory and path of the story.
So let's talk a bit more about connecting the dots. If you accept that model of connecting the dots about how you can't always do it looking forward, but you can often do it looking backward, what do you do about that? Because in this story, you can see she's had all these different experiences that have led to her publishing the magazine. Not just career experiences, but even going back to her early life, when she didn't eat a lot of different kinds of food growing up, which, by the way, was just like me. That's probably why I wanted to work at Burger King when I was six.
I eventually grew up and discovered olive oil and artichokes, too. But then from there to becoming a teacher, to doing the children's birthday parties, to having that experience writing for Cliff Notes, to the PR job and everything else, like I'm sure there's more to it. These are just some highlights. So if I go back to where we started about my story, I can also see a lot of connections or a lot of parallels between my story and Jill's, because I had that degree in sociology. And wasn't sure what I was gonna do about it, but I enjoyed learning about people and groups.
And then I had these years being a volunteer, learning about cross-cultural life and being able to travel in different contexts. All the while I was also learning about entrepreneurship and a lot of the things that I talk about and teach now through the show. And just like Jill, it's not just those things, it's also maybe other more intangible things like stuff that happened when I was a kid or when I dropped out of high school at the age of 15 or when I was a juvenile delinquent. Some of those choices aren't ones that I would make now, like if I could go back, I would probably make different choices, but I also don't really regret them because they did inform who I became later. And they informed my ability to be independent and to perhaps think differently than what I saw a lot of other people thinking or doing around me, just because I'd had a different life experience.
So to put this all together and talk about my story, Jill's story, I mean, more importantly, hear your story. Okay, that's the whole point here. What kind of story are you writing with your life? And if you accept that model of connecting the dots, I think what you do is instead of looking for this one big vision, instead of trying to understand, okay, what are all these dots leading to eventually, especially if you're in a period of discovery, what you do is you just kind of follow the dots and you expand your life experience and you follow your dreams, as cliche does that can sound, I know it sounds trite sometimes, but the reality is if you have a dream, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna follow it or are you gonna let it die?
Much better to follow it, I think, right? So if you have a dream, you're gonna follow your dream, even if it's a small thing or have you started your project yet? Do you have a project you've already started that it's time to let go of and maybe start something different? You can even think about some life design questions. If you had a year left to live, how would you spend that year?
If you could fast forward five years, what would your ideal life look like? What would your ideal day look like? Thinking through those kinds of things and answering them in your own way, however you see fit, can often bring you to that place of expanding your life experience such that you have more dots. And eventually, who knows? Maybe you're gonna look back and say, "Wow, now I'm a magazine publisher," or, "Now I am a," I don't know, try to think what else we featured on the show recently.
Now I'm making a lot of money playing video games or selling sneakers or whatever it is. Your answer is probably gonna be different, but by having these life experiences, by being willing to take risks, by being willing to expand your horizons, like I say, sometimes once you go down this road, once you go down the road of adventure or the road of discovery, you don't always know where you're gonna end up, but it can bring you to a beautiful place. And so my hope is that you're gonna take more steps to create more dots in your life. I'll be here cheering you on every day this week and much more to come, of course. So as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.
If you'd like to see the show notes for today's episode and learn more about Jill's Media Company, just come to sidehustleschool.com/592. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back with you tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau and this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
