This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Side hustle school friends, listeners, and community. This is Chris Guillebeau, what's up? I hope you're having a wonderful week. Hope you have had a good week, if you're listening in real time. We have just finished week number 44 of season two.
Now again, for those in real time, this is voting season here in the U.S. Election is coming up in just a couple of days. So if you're listening to this later, well, the election already took place, but it is the midterm election, an important election, and I would encourage you to go out and vote. If you are eligible and able to vote, please do so. I'm a resident of Oregon, and in Oregon, we just have mail-in voting.
So basically everything is done by mail, which is so much more convenient than going and waiting in line at the polls. I think for people who are interested, you can actually take your mail-in ballot and then go and drop it off on the day of the polls. But of course that is a bit complicated. You could also just mail it in. So I have already completed my civic duty about a week ago, which was nice to just kind of get it done.
And elsewhere in my world, I am flying to Hong Kong the day after tomorrow, and then to Australia. So two of my favorite places in the world, Hong Kong and Australia. I'll be based there for the next, I don't know, 10 days or so. And of course the episodes will continue. I look forward to bringing you more stories on location.
I've been getting a lot of listener email, listener comments on Instagram and other social networks. Linked in, I often hear from people there. Just wanna say I really appreciate you guys so much. Whether you reach out or not, I appreciate you. And one of the things that I think is really fun is to hear from listeners who are starting projects.
I've been hearing from people all over the place doing all kinds of projects. Wanna give a shout out to Natalie in New York, to Madison in Calgary, to Jim in somewhere. These are just a few of the notes I've received this week about people who are moving forward with their projects. So feel free to touch base at any point. Let me know how you're doing.
Let our team know how you're doing. And by the way, we do have a membership community called Side Hustle Society. I'm planning to do a relaunch and change some things about the program. So all the feedback from our inaugural members has been very helpful with that. And I will be speaking to you about that at some point soon.
I know a lot of people out there are like, I really want a community where I can connect with other people and get specific advice. We did version one of that earlier this year, and I'm gonna bring you version two pretty soon. If not by the end of the year, then very soon thereafter. Now, of course, we haven't talked about 2019 yet. So I don't mean to get ahead of things.
Right now, we're very focused on finishing out this year. Made a commitment to produce an episode every day this year, just like we did last year. We are seeing that commitment through today as episode 673. So that's what we're focused on. But at some point, I will give an update on what we're thinking about for next year.
Definitely some fun things in the works. Today, I've got an update from someone we featured on the show a while back. He's made some huge progress and tremendous progress. But first, I wanna quickly read or just summarize an email I got from a listener named Hazel. And Hazel writes in and says, "Hey, Chris, I was just listening to your podcast "this morning in the UK.
"I've always been interested in starting my own side hustle, "but I just cannot seem to land on an idea "that I think people will pay for. "I am a dietician by background, "and I hope that this is a service people will pay for. "But I've noticed that some of the nutrition businesses "you featured are much more niche or tightly focused. "The market or the message I wanna convey "is that you can reach a healthy weight with normal foods. "Being calorie aware is helpful, "and you don't need to restrict food groups." And Hazel also asked something about products versus services.
She said, "I don't wanna have a product. "I want to do a service. "Is that better?" And just in brief, I wrote back to Hazel to say, "Well, I understand what you mean about the tightly focused, "the niche thing, the ketogenic, the paleo, "the whatever it is. "I'm not really that interested "in that stuff myself personally. "And if there's not room for good evidence-based advice "about nutrition, then we're all in trouble, basically." So in other words, I think it's possible.
And I also think it's important to find a hook or an angle in this market just because it is a crowded market. It is a saturated market with lots of people offering all sorts of diet and nutrition and wellness advice. So you don't have to follow a fad or a trend, but I do think you need some kind of hook or angle. And as for that part about product versus service, I don't necessarily think either one is more sustainable. It just depends on the specific product or service.
So it really depends on your situation. And we talk that through in different ways with a lot of the stories that we feature throughout the week. [Music]
Okay, without further ado, a blast from the past. Got an update from a guy named Chris. We featured him quite a while back and he's got quite a few updates.
Was pretty excited to hear this one. I think you'll enjoy it too. - Yo, this is El Rubio in sunny San Diego. Our side hustle is the Longhairs and it was featured on episode 64. Since then, the Longhairs has become our full-time hustle.
We dropped the digital agency to go all in on the flow. And today we earn a modest salary with the Longhairs. We've now published original content for over 200 consecutive weeks, adding a YouTube channel and a weekly podcast to the mix, featuring topics like bullies and boys with long hair and how to tie a man bun without calling it that. We now have over 20 collections of hair ties for guys, adding headbands and argon oil hair serum to the product lineup with other superior hair care products and development for next year. Building the Longhairs community has galvanized our true purpose to inspire strength and confidence and men and boys with long hair and to advocate for hair equality.
Most recently, we moved our operation into a new office warehouse and landed a deal on ABC's Shark Tank with billionaire investor Mark Cuban. Our advice to listeners is to start creating content and commit to posting regularly. And if you want to see results, stick with it. Next up, we will attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the largest hair donation in history. On March 16th, 2019, we will host the Great Cut in San Diego where 2,000 men, women, and children will donate 200 pounds of hair while raising $20,000 for children with hair loss.
It'll be a hair whipping, karate kicking, record-breaking charity event. Awesome, Chris, I really appreciate that update. So awesome to see you guys going so strong. Congratulations on the transition to full-time hustling. Congratulations on the podcast, the headbands, all that stuff you're doing, the Guinness World Record, the Great Cut.
That sounds pretty fun as well. And I love Chris's advice for all of us. It said, "Start creating content and stick with it." I remember when we did that episode, he talked about how he has never missed a week in posting. He made this commitment to post according to his schedule and never missed a week. Well, that was episode 64.
Here we are in episode 673. And as you heard in that update, he still has not missed a week. So consistency matters. I also think there's a lot of power in a streak. And that's something I try to live out myself, like here with the daily episodes, haven't missed a day since we started.
And I'm terrified of missing a day. And there's a weird sort of peace that comes with knowing that's part of my routine. And no matter what else happens, this is definitely gonna happen. This episode has to go out. Toward the end of the first year, we had a weird issue with iTunes, now known as Apple Podcasts.
And iTunes wasn't displaying the new episodes for some people for a couple of days, like the episodes were still there, but you had to go and hunt for them. And I got all these emails from people that were like, Chris, where's the episode? Are you okay? And fortunately, I was fine. And we had been making the episodes and we were able to figure that out.
And it's not just powerful in terms of other people. That consistency is good for business, as I just mentioned, but I think it's also good for yourself. Like whatever the pattern, the habit is that you set, just being able to follow through on it will be good for you, even without the external results. So anyway, congratulations again, Chris. And everyone, you can check out The Long Hairs, including their new podcasts, headbands, serum, et cetera, at thelonghairs.com.
More of these to come. And if you have a question or comment, we'd love to hear from you. The Hustle Hotline is 844-9 Hustle, 844-948-7853. You can also use your phone to make a voice memo and email that to podcast@sidehustleschool.com. [Music]
Usually when I record these episodes, I go through all my notes from the week and think, okay, what was the highlight?
What was my favorite episode? Did I hear more feedback about certain episodes compared to others? This week, I really struggled, to be honest, because I liked several of them for different reasons. And we had this whole story about a sports fan, an American football fan, who creates a six-figure sports app. You could say we kicked off the week with that.
Then we also had this story about a Minnesotan who opens a private campground in her backyard, which I thought was just a super creative idea. She's not making six figures from it. She's not making a huge amount of money from it, but it also requires very little work. So as I think I said in that episode, if you have a creative idea, what's your next step? What are you doing about it?
Then special shout out to our courageous content manager, Whitney Karinek. She prepared our special Halloween episode, Maniac Pumpkin Carving. This spooky side hustle won't scare you away. Pretty amazing story there. And then also a financial blog that sprouts into a $35,000 a month money tree, as well as a parody rapper publishing educational music videos.
Just kind of went on and on. So I finally just gave up and said, okay, I'm not gonna pick a favorite from this week. 'Cause I'm pretty sure I learned something myself in each one, or at least almost each one. Maybe I'll just say like, as a reminder, a lot of these stories are coming from you. A lot of these stories are coming from our community.
So if you have started a side hustle since listening to the show, or if you've had one beforehand, or if you know somebody that we should be featuring on the show, we'd love to hear about it. We would love to bring them some business, perhaps. This is a global community of people doing all kinds of remarkable things. So I mentioned the Hustle hotline, I mentioned the email, but also just directly on the website, sidehustleschool.com. If you click the about page and scroll down, I believe there's a link somewhere that says, submit your side hustle school story.
It's kind of a complicated process. You click the link and you tell us your story. And you know, that's about it. We kind of go from there. I mean, there's more to it, but that's the starting point.
That's all you have to do. So if you've got a project, please don't hesitate to let us know. If you know someone we should feature on the show, let us know that too. And speaking of community, before I sign off for the week, I wanna thank our community. I wanna thank our production team, everyone who makes this show possible.
My commitment is to support you fully in your quest to create a new source of income, perhaps the side hustle you've thought about for a while, but have not turned into reality until now. And to make that happen, to enable the show to go out every single day, we rely a lot on people like our senior producer, AC Valdez, our content manager, as mentioned, Whitney Karinek, community liaison, Jed Chang. We actually have a couple of new people on the team who I will introduce to you at some point soon. And of course, the long-standing official, show cat, Libby Liberia-Gillibo. This show is completely free.
It is listener supported. If you're enjoying it, I'd be very grateful if you leave a quick rating and review for us in Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just takes a moment. It helps other people to discover the show. And also all of our growth has been organic.
We don't have a huge advertising campaign. We don't actually have any advertising campaign. We don't have a huge marketing campaign. We don't have time for it because I'm focused on content. I'm focused on trying to make the show as best as I can for you.
So if you think it's worthy, if you think you know somebody who could use a side hustle, it could use more than one source of income. They're already working hard, but they're not really getting ahead, or they could be further along if they had a second source of income. Send them to us and we'll take care of them. And of course, I hope you will join me again next week, every day, new stories, new actionable ideas, perhaps a couple of surprises along the way. Get ready, we got some fun stuff coming.
Consider this an investment in yourself, a really short, quick, easy 10 minute a day investment in yourself, it's free. As mentioned, episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
