This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello and welcome. This is episode 666 of Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau bringing you today's weekly recap, or I guess it is this week's recap, week number 43 of season two. I'm gonna encourage you to not sit on your ideas. This encouragement comes by way of one of the stories that we featured this week.
More on that in just a moment. We've also got a little blast from the past audio segment from someone else that we featured on the show in the past, and let's see what else is happening. I'm planning a trip. I'm going to Hong Kong and Australia. Not quite yet, I believe, but the week after next, I'll be back on the road.
I'm looking forward to that, it's just a quick trip, but I'm always excited to go to Australia. Now, before we go on, I wanna give you a little quarterly reminder. This is a recurring controversial topic that I get a lot of emails about. This reminder is to not fall for a multi-level marketing scheme, also known as MLM or network marketing, unless you wanna start one yourself, because the only people who make money with them are the ones who start those programs or who get in early enough. The vast majority of everyone else does not succeed, and then they end up feeling bad about themselves because that's the entire culture of those programs, those operations, is to kind of highlight a few lucky winners and show photos of them buying new cars and these long testimonials of how their lives have been changed.
Meanwhile, everybody else is just losing money in the program. So I've said this before, and like I mentioned, I get a lot of emails about it, but a new article in Vice highlights this reality, goes into some real details about this, which I'm gonna link up on the show notes. And here is an interesting fact from this article. According to the FTC, two recent and unrelated studies both found that more than 99% of people who join multi-level marketing programs, MLMs, ultimately lose money. That should be a sobering statistic to anybody who thinks this is a good idea.
99% of MLM participants lose money. So I guess in counterpoint to that, what's the difference between joining a program like that and starting your own project? Well, with a side hustle of your own, using the method that I advise, and it's illustrated day after day, week after week by all kinds of different people all over the world doing this in different ways. First, you don't have to lose any money. A lot of these projects have $0 startup costs or $100 startup costs, or the point is it's really quite minimal.
You don't have to make an initial investment to join the program, which is of course what all these MLMs are about. And second, you are investing in yourself all along the way. You're not investing in someone else's company, you are investing in yourself. So in conclusion, don't do it. You can do better because you are better.
Now, just in brief, back to those emails I get whenever I raise this topic, I get a lot of emails from people who kind of affirm what I'm saying and said that they had a bad experience or they know somebody who didn't have a great experience and they're glad to be doing something on their own now. There's also, to be fair, a smaller but very vocal group who disagrees with me and says like, "Oh, well, you haven't thought about this one program," or, "The program that I'm a part of is not like all the others." And to that position, I always say, "Hey, if it's working for you, great. Like, who am I to tell you what to do?" But just because it's working for you, and also I should say, side note, I'm pretty sure most of these people who are writing in and speaking well about their own program, I'm pretty sure they're actually not making money themselves. Okay, but let's just say that they are, if it's working for you, great, but that doesn't mean it works for most people. That's the problem.
Again, 99% of people in this industry lose money. So now we have evidence of that. And if someone's response is, "Well, I can be the exception, I can work harder, I can be in the 1% or the 99th percentile," what I would say is if you're motivated enough to be in the 99th percentile of people in that industry, just imagine what you could do if you were devoting that kind of attention to a project of your own. Set yourself up for success. Don't look to anybody else to do that for you.
All right, moving on. And by the way, if I've offended anybody there, I do apologize. But again, I'm just trying to look out for most people. Most people are not gonna be successful doing that. So that's the reality.
I wanna share a note from episode 661, which was about five days ago. This was the physical therapist who sells 57,000 neck hammocks. Pretty incredible story. And I touched on this just a little bit in the story, but I kept going back to this note that we had in his survey. And he talks about how he got this idea and he thought it was a good idea, but he wasn't sure.
And basically kind of ends with this advice. And he says, what I would say to someone who wants to enter this kind of world or create their own money-making project, if you have a great idea, don't sit on it because everyone's got a good idea, but it's the people that actually take action who will see success. There are so many people out there who have good ideas and never do anything about them. As a result, they remain stuck in the same position. So don't let that happen to you.
Don't sit on your ideas. I know if you've been listening to this show for a while, you've got at least one idea. And it's okay if you're marinating on it. It's okay if you're still doing some research. I know your life is busy.
I mean, the whole point of this show is for busy people who just have about 10 minutes a day to kind of think through this process and consider how they might apply it to their life. So I never want to make people feel guilty at all. I just want to gently challenge you and just kind of nudge you and say, if you have a great idea, don't sit on it. Steve's advice is pretty good because he had an idea that he thought had some merit. And now he's sold, I believe, several million dollars worth of these neck hammocks.
So he has not stuck in the same position because he took action, and I hope you will too. [Music]
All right, next up, let's have our blast from the past segment. This is a quick little update from someone we featured on the show a while back. We're gonna hear what has happened in his business and if there's something that we can learn or take away from it. So I believe this is an update from Travis.
- Hi, this is Travis Vengroff from Portland, Oregon. My aside hustle is Liberty and it was featured on episode 199. Since then, I've expanded my stories from comic books to also include podcasts and role-playing games. My shift from print media to multimedia has increased my gross income by over 25% and my audience has increased by over a hundred times without the need to physically travel to convert each new fan in person, which is amazing. My big takeaways over that period of time have been expanding my audience in different mediums and also expanding to Patreon.
My partner and I keep our Patreon regularly supplied with new content and our podcasts have entered into the top 5% of podcasts. Honestly, I wish we would have gotten to Patreon sooner. Each Patreon crowdsourcing vertical is a bit different. So to optimize your page, I would suggest looking at the top 20 Patreon pages in your field and try to emulate and offer similar things. Right now, I am working on a new podcast called "The White Vault" and we release a new episode every two weeks.
You can find us at thewhitevault.com. The show has been widely successful. Last but not least, never stop hustling. - Awesome, thank you, Travis. Congratulations on that transition.
His story back in episode 199 was, Comet Creator illustrates his way to $30,000. It sounds like he's illustrated his way beyond that $30,000 point and also increased his audience, what did he say, a hundred times? That's pretty good. Pretty sure most people would be happy with a hundred X increase. And also the use of Patreon is great.
We've had a few different stories along the way that have used Patreon. If you're interested in that model yourself, what you wanna do just like Travis suggested is go and look at some successful campaigns, look and see what people are doing right in your fields, whether that's comic books or something entirely different and see what you can glean from that. I took a quick peek at Travis's Patreon and it looks like he's got 214 patrons. So these are people who are supporting the project monthly and some of them might just be paying a dollar or two, but others are paying substantially more. So at least for some people, it can turn into a substantial revenue source.
Definitely not everyone, but for some people. Anyway, thank you again, Travis and listeners. If you wanna check out what he's doing, you can go follow along at thewhitevault.com and also check out that new podcast he mentioned. More of these to come and we'll also be featuring more listener questions and listener updates via audio, which is the format that I'm using right now to communicate. If you wanna be part of that, there's a way on the website, you can just go and leave a quick little voice memo for us.
You can also call the Hustle hotline, which is 844-9HUSTLE, also known as 844-948-7853, leave us a little message. Or of course you can email us at podcast@sidehustleschool.com. [Music]
Looking back on the week, our episodes featured a range of topics, which is not unusual, but I just made a quick little list of them here and I always love the juxtaposition. This week we had beard oil, neck hammocks, blogging about wine, helping people with resumes, a ballroom dancing ebook, and an online matchstick store. Quite a variety, of course, and as always, there's so many different ways that you can make money.
It's not just the most common things. In fact, the uncommon ones are actually more interesting. That's why we do the show this way. We also have a new series we're running every Wednesday for eight weeks that features side hustlers who've gone big with physical products. So I believe we kicked that off last week and we're gonna continue, as I said, each Wednesday for eight weeks.
Next week I've got a story for you about a woman who opens a private campground in her backyard. I've also got a story about a sports app from a Seahawks fan that touches down on six figures. Those are just two of the highlights. Of course, we're gonna have a different episode every day. And all of this is informed by you, the listeners.
Ever since we started January 1, 2017, this has been quite the journey. I don't record a ton of episodes in advance, by the way. I mean, this is pretty much a kind of real-time conversation that has come about as a result of many conversations with listeners and readers of my books, people who've come to different events that I've done. And I just continue to be very grateful that we've made it thus far. If you're new, welcome.
If you've been around for a while, you're amazing. Thank you so much. You're helping to sustain the show. And because of the beauty of the podcast/advertising model, we can do that completely free for you. So I do appreciate our sponsors for making that possible.
This show is all about community. It takes a village, a number of people working on this to make it a reality, including but not limited to our senior producer, A.C. Valdez, our content manager, Whitney Karinic, Community Liaison, Jed Chang, and the show cat Libby Gillibow. Responsibility is still kind of TBD for her. If you're enjoying the show, you'd be my hero.
If you would go and give us a quick little rating and review an Apple podcast, it just takes a moment. It helps other people discover the show. It does affect their rankings and the whole discoverability thing there. You can also tell your friends or even better, show them how to subscribe. If you know someone who needs another source of income and needs to hear from a source that's not trying to sell them something, send them to us, we'll take care of them.
And in every episode I mention that inspiration is good, but action is better. I think I did that here in a couple of different ways. It's because I want you to take action. I want this to be helpful and useful and practical for you. I also hope you'll join me tomorrow and each day next week for more stories.
Consider this that 10-minute investment in yourself. Episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time every day. And once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
