This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Oh, hello there, this is Chris Guillebeau, you're listening to Side Hustle School and we have just finished week number 35 of season two. I've got a challenge for you today. Let's have a happier Labor Day. If you're listening in real time, we are entering September. I'll be doing a live podcast recording and free meetup next month in San Francisco.
Those dates are October 16th or 17th, just trying to finalize a couple of things. But if you are in the area or able to travel in, I would love to see you there. So stay tuned for some details on how that's going to work. We might also try to do a workshop, although that might prove to be too ambitious. But live podcast recording for sure, free meetup for sure.
Also in my world, I am finishing up edits for a book. I'm really excited about this book. I can't wait to share it with you at some point. Publishing takes a little while, so this will be coming out in the spring of 2019. So much more to come as it gets closer.
And also I'm excited, because there's so much more that I want to do for Side Hustle School. And this book has been kind of, I don't want to say it's an albatross because that sounds like it's a terrible thing. Like it's a burden. It's not a burden. It's just taking a lot of time.
And I'm excited to turn in that manuscript and move on to some other stuff. And perhaps later in the week, maybe next week, I'll see if we can put together a little check-in call or prompt so that I can get your input on some ideas we have for the show and for this whole community, for Cytosle Society and everything else that we do. You know, here we are at episode 610, and I am just as excited about making the show as I was when I started, and I want to make sure it continues to serve our listeners well. So more on that as well coming up as soon as possible. All right, in other news, let's talk about Happier Labor Day.
In Gretchen's recent episode of Happier, that was episode 184, she included a number of tips and ideas about how to have a happier Labor Day. Now, I'll just note that my philosophy, when it comes to life and work and all the things, is that the meaning of life is not to stop working and go and sit on the beach. That's fine for a few days or a week. If you're burned out, you need to do something to get away. That's great.
But then what do you do? What do you do after you are refreshed and energized? Surely the answer is to find meaningful work. Surely the answer is to find something that you believe in and can look forward to. Maybe you don't even think about it as work.
Again, it's something meaningful, something that you believe in and can look forward to. So if I do my own reflection and think about times of career satisfaction versus dissatisfaction, ups and downs and so on, I know that some of the most satisfying times came when I was challenging myself in some significant way or I was doing something new or embracing a quest of some kind, like my quest to go to every country in the world. But I also kind of feel like that with the podcast, with doing the show every single day, no breaks, seven days a week. And not to sidetrack, but one of the things that makes it feel momentous is not just that I'm doing it, but that people like you are listening. That just means the world to me.
But to get back on track, the times I was dissatisfied were when I tried to do something I wasn't good at and didn't want to do, but I felt like I had to do it for whatever reason. So in other words, I was striving in some way that felt inauthentic. It's okay to do things you're not good at, but you want to do. It's okay to be good at things and not want to do them. But whenever I tried to do something that I wasn't good at and didn't want to do, that's when I felt inauthentic and then also therefore dissatisfied.
So my challenge to you today is on this happier of labor weeks, happiest of labor weeks, whatever it is, my challenge to you today is that if you feel dissatisfied, let's mix it up somehow. Promise yourself that you'll do something by the end of the day to make a change. A big thing, a small thing, doesn't matter. Just take some kind of step. Get out your notebook.
Make a list of things you want to do or pick up the notebook where you already have the list and you're just kind of putting it off. Let's find a way to do more of what matters. Also, something else that I've heard from listeners. This is something that has surprised me quite a bit since starting the show. If I went back in time, you know, 610 days ago and you asked me, like, what are the reasons for having a side hustle, I would have mentioned something about the creative aspect of having another project, of just the use of a different part of your brain or just the concept of having one thing you do for most of your working hours, but then there's this other thing that is a little bit different.
I think I would have mentioned it, but I don't think I would have emphasized it and nearly as much as what I've been hearing from listeners and I've just been hearing over and over from so many people who say, you know, yes, I like making extra money, but it's also really, really great to have this other kind of creative project and that's what helps me have a happier life all around. So kudos to our community for showing me something which is not uncommon at all, but I just thought that was interesting. The creative aspect of having another project is especially important to so many people. Okay, for the past couple of weeks, we have been playing short little two minute updates from people we have featured on the show in the past, a little blast from the past segment and it's been really fun. I'm getting some good feedback about it.
So we're going to keep doing that at least, at least for a while. And today I've got an update for you from Jake Pasco. Now I actually wrote about Jake in the side hustle book as well. And Jake created what he called the most awesome guitar lessons in the universe. So there were some lessons there about branding and copywriting, but Jake found a way to make a much higher hourly wage than pretty much every other guitar teacher and music teacher in his region.
So enough about me and Jake, let's hear from Jake himself. He's got a detailed update about what's happened since we first featured him. Hey, this is Jake Pasco from Annapolis, Maryland and my side hustle is traveling to people's homes and teaching music lessons. It was featured on episode 23. Since then I've gone from side hustle to full-time job, though it's significantly less than 40 hours a week.
The demand for my lessons has exceeded what I can teach, which is good. So rather than turning students away, I've been able to contract out the work that I can't do. This allows me to do a couple awesome things. First, I can still provide an awesome service to my client base. Second, I can help other local musicians get work without them having to do any of the leg work to find new students.
And third, I can generate passive income through the work my contractors perform. And ultimately, this was kind of my plan all along when I had my side hustle from the beginning. And this year we're on target to exceed six figures in revenue, which is really exciting. Since the airing of the episode, other opportunities have also opened up. Probably one of the coolest thing is I've had music teachers and musicians from around the country contact me for help getting their side hustle off the ground.
Even with all of the success that I've had so far, it's taken way longer than I would have liked. I've had a lot of false starts and failures. I've had students quit lessons, I've had contractors just disappear. I've gotten burnt out on teaching, and I think the reason that I've been able to succeed so far is just a combination of persistence and patience. And as I step away from the actual teaching of my music lessons, my side hustle feels more like a business, which is super cool, but also kind of boring.
I think a lot of times when we listen to podcasts or read about success stories, we see the sparkly finish and the end result, and we don't see a lot of the mundane behind the scenes stuff. I'm talking about marketing and bookkeeping and customer service. This stuff is super important because I think it helped keep us in business. So the bottom line is don't let that kind of stuff get in the way. Don't get bogged down with optimizing Facebook ads or choosing accounting software, but also don't neglect it.
So if you're starting, be patient and be organized. And as for what I'm doing now, I'm planning on continuing this growth trajectory and remaining open to other opportunities. So for everybody out there, stay patient and optimistic, and good luck. Thanks. Very cool.
Thank you so much, Jake. And congratulations. Six figures. Well done. Fantastic.
I also especially think it's pretty cool how you're getting that passive income through referrals because your work is in such great demand. Well done on those most awesome guitar lessons in the universe. I guess my only question is, can you transfer those most awesome guitar lessons in the universe or are they like the second most awesome? Like how does that work? And I also want to acknowledge what you mentioned about that sense of the mundane, about how sometimes there are struggles.
And I really like this quote. I actually wrote it down for myself. You said, "Don't get bogged down with optimizing Facebook ads or choosing accounting software." Like those are the kind of things that we have to do to run our business. But hopefully, like I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, like hopefully we're doing something that is more meaningful as well. The Facebook ads or the accounting software or whatever it is, is in support of a greater mission, whether it is simply a creative outlet or it's a way to create more freedom and independence or potentially, like you've done for yourself, a way to completely replace the income from a full-time job.
So anyway, thanks again, Jake. And everyone else, you can follow along with Jake's adventures at Severnrivermusic.com. That is for the Severn River in Maryland. At least I think that's what it's for. I looked it up and there is a Severn River in Maryland where Jake lives.
So that's what my deductive reasoning points to. Again, Severnrivermusic.com. S-E-V-E-R-N. We'll have more updates to come. And we also want to feature questions and comments from listeners.
So how would you do that? Well, if you would like to leave us a question or a comment, you've got a couple different ways. You can do that. You can call the Hustle hotline, leave your short response, short question, 8 4 4 9 Hustle. That's 8 4 4 9 Hustle or 8 4 4 9 4 8 7 8 5 3.
Or if you prefer, you can use your phone to make a little voice memo and email that to podcast@sidehustleschool.com. Let me know what you're up to and what we can help with. All right, so looking back and looking ahead, you know, I was making some notes here for myself. And sometimes I just get in a groove of making the daily episode, which I do, you know, every day. And I get just how crazy it is that after all this time, we still have all these crazy stories crawling out of the woodworks.
Like for example, 6 0 5, the hungover accountant who starts a morning after party cleanup service. It's almost like a joke. It sounds like an onion article headline or something from Andy Borowitz or whatever. But it's completely true. It's a real business.
He's gone on the national media across Australia. He's done more than 200 houses so far, which is a lot of parties, but it is Australia. As much as I love Australia, I will say when I heard that this story was coming from there, I was like, okay, not too surprised. So good for him. And this week also featured several different social good stories.
And when I say social good, I don't mean charities. I mean for-profit businesses that find a legit way to give back as part of their core business model. So it's not just a business that's taking a percentage of profits and donating to charity, although I think that is noble as well. But it's almost more interesting, I think, when there's a social good business that finds a way to make money while doing good. So for example, episode 606 was one man's trashed mash is another man's cash.
And these guys are actually recycling all of this spent grain that's used in making beer and turning them into nutrition bars. So they get started as college students and they're trying to find a way to get around the minimum legal drinking age, but they also have this concern for the environment. So it turns into this thing, which has now grown and has lots of employees and they're stocking their bars in a thousand stores or more. It's just crazy, like I said. And the other social good story was 608 insult this witty event organizer prepares you to respond to rudeness.
This story reminded me of a feature we did long ago on troll cakes on this woman who's actually baking cakes using rude Facebook messages that people leave and then sending the cake to that troll. So this person has also found a way to do something quirky and empowering, but she doesn't actually have to bake cakes. So she's just made a website a little bit easier. Anyway, lots of other good stories as well. Be sure you check them out just to mention that all the stories in the archives are completely free.
You can get to them on Apple podcast or Spotify or elsewhere, but actually because we've had so many episodes, a lot of the beginning ones are not listed in Apple podcasts or if they are, they're hard to find. I actually haven't figured it out myself. So you can always come to sidehustleschool.com and every single one of them is there. You can download them by week. You can download them by month.
You can just go through and search with different tags. This is also one of the things that's on the list that we hope to improve going forward. You know, we designed an architecture before Side Hustle School actually existed. I think we did a pretty good job in thinking about all the episodes that were to come, but it's kind of hard to plan for more than 600 episodes. Like I think we had a good architecture for maybe a hundred or 200 episodes.
So at some point we're going to work on that too. But just to mention that all the archives are completely free. You can listen to all these episodes. You can go and see all the show notes on the page. We always include links to the person's website that we featured to their social media.
You can go and see, see for yourself, like what they've done, like don't just take it from me, go and look and see, you know, how did they make their websites? How are they responding to customers? What is the product they've made that's been so successful? You could also put yourself in observer mode and just kind of ask yourself like, I wonder if I were them, is there something else I could do? Is there another product or a service I could start?
Like what's one thing I could do better? And just thinking like that for yourself can help you as you build your own side hustle. Okay, so much more coming up, got a story of an accountant who earned six figures selling spreadsheets to Etsy sellers. Great story. I really, really liked working on this one.
That one's coming, I think actually really soon, perhaps tomorrow, within 24 hours. How about that? Also a story about a magical toothbrush or at least a very effective toothbrush that some Australians import from the United States and then resell, make something like $30,000. And of course, you know, so much more. I only have a list of the next few episodes, so we'll see where we go from there.
We do kind of make the show in real time. We work about a week out, but that's it. We really are trying to build this together with our community, with our listeners and with all the people that we feature on the show. So with that in mind, I'm going to sign off here in just a moment. I do want to say thank you so much.
If you're listening, you're the reason we make the show. I said in the very first episode that if you make the commitment to make this part of your routine, a small little investment in yourself, 10 minutes a day, I commit to supporting you fully in your quest to create a new source of income. Perhaps that side hustle that you've thought about for a while, but have not turned into reality until now. I could not make this show on my own. I'm not the only one working on it.
I want to say thank you to our senior producer, AC Valdez, our content manager, Whitney Karinek, assistant producer, Sarah Barrett, community liaison, Jed Chang, and of course, the official show cat Libby Gilliboe. And all of us at Team Sadosville School are part of the Onward Project. I mentioned Gretchen Rubin earlier and her goal to have a happier Labor Day. The Onward Project is a collection of podcasts with concrete, actionable ideas to make your life happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. I think at some point soon, there'll be a new show debuting on the Onward Project, so I look forward to telling you about that.
And speaking of telling you about something, maybe if you want to help in just a small way, you can tell your friends about Sadosville School. Again, it's completely free. If you know somebody who needs another source of income, send them to us, show them how to subscribe. And if you could also give us a quick little rating or review in Apple Podcasts, that's awesome. It's really great to see those.
It's great to know that so many people are enjoying and benefiting from all the work that we do here. So I hope you'll join me tomorrow and every day next week. Our episodes go online at 601 AM Eastern time every single day. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is Sadosville School.
