This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up friends, listeners, side hustle school community? Hey, this is your host, Chris Guillebeau. We have just finished week number 45 of season two. Week number 45, can you believe it? The year is coming to a close.
I mean, so much to say about that. I don't even know where to begin. Where did the year go? Maybe let's just take it one week at a time. This week on the show, we had zombie apocalypse preparation, totally normal.
Voter turnout postcards, a Himalayan trekking company that is formed when a guy in Nashville meets a Nepalese Sherpa, who just happens to be his Lyft driver. And of course, some other stories that were, I don't know, shall you say somewhat normal? In case it is not obvious, let me just be clear. I love being able to make this show for you. It is so much fun.
And I'm so grateful that you are listening. I'm now on the road for a couple of weeks. I'm on location in Hong Kong, which is probably my most frequently visited international city. I've been here many, many times over the years. In fact, when we first started the extended cut series in early 2017, I remember going on a walk here from actually the same hotel I'm at now and making notes before coming back to record.
I always take my journal with me and I go out and I walk and I make notes. And in that case, I went back and recorded that first episode. These days I'm not traveling as much overall, but I do still get around. And in fact, this week I will be in my favorite country, Australia. Excited to visit Sydney and Melbourne.
I'm not doing any public events this time, but I do plan to return for my next tour in the spring. Or should I say the fall? Because it's, you know, the fall there when it's the spring in the Northern Hemisphere. That can be a little confusing, but I do very much look forward to being back there. And even though I'm not traveling that much, when I have been traveling, I often run into readers or listeners, people in our community who have read my blog or my books or who are listening to the show.
It's really fun to cross paths. So if you happen to see me somewhere, definitely come and say hi. And speaking of running into people, I was reminded of a story recently. I think I told you that I did a marathon a couple weeks ago and I had an experience that was almost exactly like a marathon that I had done maybe 10 years ago. And that experience, which I actually wrote about in the $100 startup, I think something like, I don't know, seven or eight years ago, what happened was somewhere along the course, this guy was giving out donuts.
Now a marathon takes a long time to complete. I finished mine in about four hours the last one, but you know, some people take longer, some people shorter. And if you're not familiar with these races, at a good race, there's all kinds of people out just kind of lining the course, cheering people on. And they have official aid stations, usually every mile or so where they have water, sometimes water and electrolytes. Every once in a while, there'll be some little goo packets, but those are the official stations.
They also have first aid stations if anybody gets hurt. But in addition to the official ones, at various points along the way, especially for a big race, just some regular people who happen to live in the neighborhood or want to come out and support will also be out there offering water or juice or something else to runners, which is always really cool, especially in like the last hour of the race. You're really just worn out and it's great to see people who just choose out of their own initiative to come and support that way. However, during that marathon that I ran like 10 years ago, and the same thing for the one I ran just a few weeks ago, somewhere around mile 18, I believe it was, there was a guy handing out donuts. And in fact, these donuts were Krispy Kreme donuts.
And in both races, 10 years apart, I had the same experience of running up and seeing that guy there and thinking, you know what? The last thing in the world that I want right now is a donut. And it wasn't just me. In both cases, I looked around and absolutely no one was taking the donut. And just to be clear, I am not offended at all by donuts.
I'm actually a big fan of donuts. And in other situations in life, I would have been really excited about that. In fact, if he had been at the end of the race, that would have been fantastic. But at mile 18, not so much. Meanwhile, or just a mile or so later, there was somebody else out there, another unofficial volunteer who just out of the kindness of her heart came out to do this.
And she was handing out orange slices. Now guess what? Orange slice, very popular. Everybody's going for it. I go for it.
I even slow down for a second. I'm like, oh, I gotta make sure I don't miss this because this is pretty cool. And as I go away, like consuming that delicious slice of orange, I thought back about the donut guy. And I thought, you know what? That guy is just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He's got a great product. Again, Krispy Kreme donuts. If he had been at the end of the race, I would have gladly had one or two or six. But when you think about creating an offer, it's not just about having a desirable product. You have to be offering that product to the right people in the right place at the right time.
That is when the magic happens. When you have the offer matched up with the ideal target audience, just like the woman who was offering the orange slices. Now, of course, I come to the end of the race and I'm looking around and the donut guy is nowhere to be found. Womp, womp, right? So here's the takeaway.
Sometimes you can have the right product, but be in the wrong place or the wrong time. If you're struggling with your offer, make sure it's the best possible match for your intended audience. Now also as a side note, just the other day, when I wasn't running a marathon at all, I think I ran like three miles, I went to pick up my green juice and on the way back, I also stopped at the donut shop. And I thought, am I the only person in the world who has like a green juice and a donut? But you know what?
I didn't care because I was like, that's me. I like green juice, I like donuts. I'm just gonna make this work. I'm gonna do what's best for me. And if I wanna have a donut right now, I'll do that.
So as always, you do you, you do what is best for yourself. [Music]
And now let's have a blast from the past, our feature from a previous side hustle school case study. I believe this message is from Steve. - Hi, this is Steve Smith. My side hustle is two puggles and it was featured on episode number 203.
When the episode aired, I was in the third year of my three year experiment and on track to make between 15 and $20,000 for 2017. While growing two puggles, I've been doing a complete remodel of my home. Two puggles was fulfilling my creative side, but an unfinished home was not fulfilling my married side. I made a conscious decision to reduce the time spent on two puggles and put that time into working on my home. In the fall, I attended a few Christmas shows using my existing inventory and discovered that selling bookmarks on Etsy was viable and profitable.
I'm happy to say even with that limited schedule and limited inventory, two puggles managed to finish the year grossing $13,000. More importantly, I was able to purchase equipment and gain expertise that allowed me to build a custom kitchen for my wife. Two puggles is still an effective learning tool in my classroom. My takeaways from the three years are, allow yourself a learning phase, take your lessons learned and focus on brand awareness, then niche down to your most profitable products. In the fall of 2018, two puggles is back to full speed.
I've added wooden clocks that are selling well at profitable pricing. I recently attended a local festival and gross close to $3,000 in two and a half days. This puts two puggles on track to gross over $15,000 for this year. And two puggles has financed an anniversary cruise for my wife, and I've found a happy balance between my wife and my side hustle life. - Steve, congratulations on Puggle Land or Two Puggle Land, I guess.
TwoPuggles.com is his website, by the way. Be sure you go and follow along. That was a lesson in priorities and making conscious decisions. In that initial episode, which was way back on day 203, we heard that Steve is a high school teacher who actually started his side hustle as a means of teaching his students. He wasn't actually sure if he was gonna make money or not.
He just wanted to model something to them. And fortunately, he ended up not only teaching them, but also making some money for himself. I liked his advice here about how you should always allow yourself a learning phase and then niche down to your most profitable products. Definitely something we can all take away from that. And it's pretty cool that his anniversary cruise was provided by his side hustle.
Good work. Many more of these to come. Been getting some feedback that people definitely like to hear from some of the folks we've featured in the past, just to see where they are now and what they've learned along the way. If you have a question or comment, you can also send us a message. You can do that just by going to the website, sidehustleschool.com, click the about page, and then there is a little link that says, "send us a message" or something like that.
It's pretty obvious, whatever it is. I don't have it in front of me. But you can click that button from your computer and just record a quick little message. If you mess up, it's okay. You can do it again.
We'd love to hear what you're working on or what you're wondering about. And of course, you can also send us an email, old-fashioned at podcast@sidehustleschool.com. [Music]
Now, as a reminder, as I was reflecting on some of the episodes this week, just a reminder about following your passion. I almost never use that phrase because following your passion, if you just kind of say that by itself, it's really misguided advice. There are all kinds of things you can be passionate about, but nobody cares enough about them to come along and give you money to do them.
Yet at the same time, if you look at people who are successful, and by successful, of course, I mean various definitions of success, but if you look at people who are successful, they usually are doing something that they really like to do. They are doing something they are passionate about. And you can see this also with the stories that we feature on the show, just like I said, doing a little rundown of this week in particular. I think every single episode, the person who's doing this project, it wasn't just a money-making project, like it was a money-making project, but also it was something that they were really excited about or they really believed in, or they were willing to invest their own time, their own research, maybe even their own resources or money. We had the story of the guy in Tennessee who teams up with a Sherpa and begins putting together these Himalayan treks.
Well, it was on his bucket list to go and hike to Everest Base Camp. This was something he wanted to do for himself. We had the story of these nature-loving neighbors who create a kid's subscription box, encouraging kids to spend more time outdoors. Well, these two couples, they both had kids. They were both trying to figure out how can we get our kids to be more involved in nature.
A couple of days before that, these designers in Boston, they open up an authentic arts and crafts shop for visitors. They really want to show off their city and they're disappointed by all the tourist shops that are just selling junk, basically. So that story is still open. That story is doing something like $10,000 a month in profit. So it's not just a passion project to be clear, but again, in the beginning, it was something that they believed in.
They believed in this mission. And we also had that survival podcast, a guy who's earning multiple six figures a year, helping people learn about prepping. And then not to go on and on, but another episode about the woman who's making these voter turnout postcards. And she is super passionate about encouraging people to go out and vote and participate in democracy. So she does this herself for a long time.
She herself handwrites hundreds of postcards and then thinks there has to be a better way, designed some postcards, puts them up for sale on Etsy. And then so far this year, she's made like $60,000. Okay, so it's not just following any passion, but if you're trying to figure out what should my side hustle be, well, there are worse starting points than by asking yourself, okay, what am I excited about? Or what bothers me? What do I want to change?
If I could create change in the world, or if I could make something happen, not just for myself, but for other people, what would it be? And then of course, the next thing is, okay, if I want to do that, what is the next step? What is the single next step? What is the next step after that? Maybe it's a very, very simple next step.
Maybe you're just gonna go and register a domain name, cost $10. Maybe you're gonna commit to writing out an offer. You're gonna say, I've got an idea to do this service, whatever it is. Well, what does that look like? What do people pay for?
How will I provide it? And so on. If you don't know the answers to everything, well, that's normal. You're probably not gonna know the answers to everything, but I bet you can identify at least one step. So as I try to do from time to time, by that I mean like all the time, I want to encourage you to take that step.
I want to encourage you to take even small steps, even if you're not sure where you will eventually end up. And for me and the whole team behind the show, we're gonna do everything we can to support you in that. We're gonna do everything we can to keep bringing you stories that are both inspirational and entertaining, but also we're gonna show you something. And you might not learn something every day. You might not identify with or relate to every story.
But really my hope is that if you listen on an average week, 10 minutes a day, every week you're gonna be able to look back and say, "You know what, I did learn something." And I never had any idea that people could make money doing this thing. And maybe there's something that I can do. Maybe I found my next step by listening to someone else's story. So coming up this week, I knew story every day, all kinds of stuff. I'm just looking at my notes to see what's coming up.
We've got something about baby coats. We've got something about diaries, something called a comet crate, and something that just says stoner accessories. So I will look forward to learning about that along with you. Since it is the end of the week, I wanna thank everybody who makes this show possible. That is first and foremost you.
You are the listener. You're the reason why we make this show every single day. I'm so grateful for everybody who has passed this on, who has told their friends about it. We have a global community now without doing any marketing, which is kind of ironic, right? Because the whole show is called "Side Hustling." It's showing people how to do marketing.
It really is because of you, and I'm so grateful for that. So I also wanna thank our production team. That team includes senior producer, A.C. Valdez, content manager, Whitney Karinek, community liaison, Jed Chang, Tina Hart, who's been working with me for a while now, but we don't have a title for her. We'll get right on that.
And of course the official show cat, Libby Gilliboe. She doesn't do a whole lot, but she's on the masthead. Oh, and also team "Side Hustle School" is part of the Onward Project, curated by bestselling author Gretchen Rubin. And as mentioned earlier this week, a shout out to Gretchen because this is the 10 year anniversary of The Happiness Project. The Happiness Project, if you've been living on the moon, is a mega best-selling book.
Millions of copies in print. It was all because of an experiment that Gretchen conducted over the course of a year. She wrote a book about it, and now she does all kinds of things. And I am honored to call her a friend and colleague. So look for that wherever you shop for books, including your favorite local bookstore.
I look forward to your updates. I look forward to hearing about what you're working on. And I hope you will join me tomorrow and every day next week with more stories and ideas. You can consider this a short investment in yourself. Episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time.
Every single day, that is seven days a week, not six, not five, seven. The best is yet to come. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
