This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello friends, listeners, community. We have just finished week number 49 of season two of "Side Hustle School." This is your host, Chris Guillebeau, here with you in the booth every single day. Now listen, we're coming to the end of the year and I made a little announcement the other day, which I'm super excited about. If you haven't had a chance to listen to it, it's just a short two-minute check-in, maybe three minutes, not longer than that. Sharing a bit about our plans for the future.
But for those listening in real time, we're approaching the holidays, or I guess we're kind of in the midst of the holidays. Is Black Friday a holiday? Is Cyber Monday a holiday? That was just a couple weeks ago. And I don't know about you, but I got so many emails.
I mean, I was just like, it's beginning to look a lot like email marketing. Black Friday basically starts 10 days early. Now you start getting emails like in the week leading up to Black Friday. Then you get an email that's like, "Hey, by the way, Black Friday's coming in two days." And then in one day. And then actually we're gonna go early.
Here the sale is on now. Then you've got the Black Friday sale, the Black Friday reminder, the extra day of Black Friday, the Cyber Monday is on the way promo. Then all the stuff for that. And it just kind of goes on and on and on. I was getting emails from everybody, like any merchant that I had possibly shopped at in the past five years.
Maybe this is YouTube. Maybe this is a common experience. I mean, I even got emails from like random cafes and bistros, places that I'd only been to once. A gym that I'd only been to once. I never actually joined the gym.
I had just gone for a day pass and this was two years ago, but they wanted me to know about their Black Friday sale. I don't even live in that area anymore, but that's a whole other problem. Like I almost expected my therapist to be like, "Chris, we got a Black Friday sale, book now and get 50% off all your sessions for the next year." I honestly would not have been surprised at that point. And I guess I kind of wondered, first of all, is this effective? To a certain degree it is, right?
Because that's why they keep doing it. That's why merchants, retailers, perhaps yourself, if you have a small business, a lot of our featured side hustlers naturally. I mean, we have kind of been conditioned now to think about Prime Day, which is another made up holiday by Amazon to get these deals and discounts. And so yes, it is effective. I think it becomes less effective.
The more emails you get, like as you kind of get bombarded, it becomes less effective, but it does still seem to work, right? So in some ways it's frustrating. It's annoying. It just kind of becomes ironic at a certain sense. But it also reminds me, as overwhelming as it can be, if you're gonna have a side hustle, if you're gonna have a small business, you need to do some form of email marketing.
And maybe you can stand out in some way. Maybe you can do it differently. You can have some kind of creative approach. I mean, who knows? But of all the things you should leave out, I mean, this is really at the top of the list.
You need some kind of email marketing program and platform. So if you haven't signed up yet, be sure you do that for your choice, a platform. You can see my recommendation at sidehustleschool.com/email. You can actually get a free trial for 30 days there. And that's an offer that's not publicly available.
But whether you go with my recommendation or your own thing, if you already got something, you probably don't need to change. You're probably good. But the point is to make sure you have something. And then be sure you start planning your Black Friday promotion in January, because it'll be here again before you know it. All right, so in that update I shared the other day, I included this quote.
I wanna read it to you again, because I love this quote. I feel like it should be a bumper sticker. This is a quote from one of our featured side hustlers. And she said, "People will tell you it's a risk to start your own business, but so is wasting opportunities and your potential. Time is our most precious resource.
Don't let your whole life pass you by without going for what you most want." And also, if you can handle two encouragements or two motivations in one week, got something else I wanted to share. And this was something from yesterday's episode that didn't actually make it into the final cut, but it's something that I liked as well from the notes. So this is from Ali King, episode 707, savvy stationary site offers cards for divorce in Diwali. And Ali said, "The sooner you get used to hearing no, or more likely just no response, the better. We are raised to maximize conditions for hearing yes, mitigating risk and avoiding rejection.
But when you're trying to get strangers' attention in a super competitive industry, the tactics have to be more direct. Most of the time I pitch something, I hear no thanks or nothing at all. And some days that can be demoralizing, but over time it's just become a regular part of my work, as routine as balancing the books or updating social media. Like so many aspects of starting a business, it seems to be a numbers game." So I thought that was interesting and contrarian because I do like to help people mitigate risk, but I also agree with Ali. Sometimes you're gonna ask a bunch of people things and not everybody's gonna say yes, and that's okay.
And in fact, if you're never hearing no for anything that you ask, maybe you're not asking enough people or you're not asking for enough. Just think about that. And I still hear from people all the time who say, I tried something and it didn't work. And I say, okay, well, how many times did you try? Well, I tried once, or actually sometimes they're like, I tried something and it didn't work.
You kind of drill down and you actually find out that they didn't actually try. Like they had an idea, but they didn't see it through. They got to step number three of seven, for example, then they're like, it's not working. You're like, well, yeah, there's four more steps. Like you have to see things through and not everything is going to work.
You are gonna be rejected. That's true in life, especially if it is, as Ali said, a competitive industry, but you might just have to hear some no's before you get to yes. And you might have to have some failures before you get to the success or whatever the measurement or the metric is, you might have to go through something to get to what you really want. I think that's the point. [Music]
All right, now it's time for our blast from the past segment.
This is a quick little audio update from someone we have featured previously on the show, just kind of letting us know what's going on, what's happened, maybe a lesson or a tip for our listeners. So I believe this one is coming from Danielle. So let's turn it over to her. - Hi there, this is Danielle from Essa Group in Washington, DC. My side hustle is teaching citizenship classes and civics lessons on YouTube.
It was featured on episode 94. Since then, I've been working on updating all my lessons and videos to reflect the changes with the current administration. There are many new regulations and policies that now require more documentation and extensive explanations that need to be added to the citizenship application. There is currently an incredible backlog of applications. When I began teaching, the whole process took between six to eight months.
And currently we are seeing a 14 to 16 month wait time. So easing people's fears during the process has become a big part of my job. Teaching them how to go through the proper channels within the system to get their applications moving and questions answered, or contacting their local representative or senators to intervene on their behalf has been a big learning experience on my end. My best advice to other listeners would be to work hard on building a positive community around your brand. I pride myself on building a safe and healthy community, especially in my comment sections.
I spend an hour or two each morning responding to messages. I encourage a free exchange of information and have a zero tolerance policy for hate speech. There's a lot of love on my channel and I feel like people keep coming back because they know we really care about them. So next up, I'm planning to take on more community teaching roles in the local area. There is a large need for classes and support for our immigrant population and several organizations as well as the local colleges are increasing their programs.
I plan to continue to put classes on my channel and add much requested speaking and pronunciation videos as well. Thanks a lot. - Awesome, thanks so much, Danielle. And in case you missed what she's doing, she essentially has these YouTube tutorials helping legal immigrants study for the US citizenship test. And the US citizenship test all on its own is no joke.
Most people who are natural born US citizens would not pass it without extensive studying for it. So especially for people who are coming to the country, again, legally, but don't have a lot of knowledge about political history or the institutions in our country or if English is not your first language or whatever the case may be. And it's not just the citizenship test, my understanding she's helping people through the whole process with these free YouTube tutorials. And I love the whole project because the people who are benefiting from it, they don't pay anything for it. Like it's completely free to them.
But because of YouTube's model of advertising, the little ads that you see before you watch a video, Danielle is getting paid through that and that's her side hustle. So if you wanna hear more about how that actually works, go back and listen to the episode number 84. And indeed so much complexity here with any change in presidential administrations, but especially with this one that has taken such a hard line against immigration. And that's why I think what she's doing is so valuable. There's a lot more complexity, it's harder, so she's helping to simplify.
And also as she said, helping build community and helping foster like a sense of cooperation and communication between people. So I love what she said and her encouragement to you, we've had like three encouragements for the day, it's encouragement day, work hard on building a positive community around your brand. And I also second what she says about how you don't need to put up with anybody in your life who is super negative. Like I'm just gonna take it broader, not just your side hustle, but in your life, you don't need to put up with anybody who is a hater or a troll, or is just trying to bring you down. Man, life is too short for that.
Let's build positive community. Doesn't mean we can't have disagreements, interactions and so on. But again, primary goal should be to build one another up. At least that's what I'm trying to do. And I really appreciate what she does as well.
So you can check out her work again on episode number 84, or at esagroup.org, that's E-S-S-A group.org, E-S-S-A group.org. And she's got plenty of stuff on her website, but you really wanna check out the YouTube channel, which is linked then from that site, or we'll also link up the YouTube channel directly, because that is the core of the whole project. All right, more of these to come. It's been really fun to look back and see where people are compared to where they were when we started. And also just a reminder, if you have a question or comment, you can call us, you can leave a short message.
We might play it on the air, we might not. We're still happy to hear from you either way. The hustle hotline is 844-9HUSTLE-844-948-7853. Or of course, you can also email at podcast@cidestleschool.com. [Music]
Otherwise on the show this week, we have had once again, a varied set of stories from a spousal birthday gift that becomes a $40,000 card game, to a shoe designer who runs after a $1 million challenge, friends foster Korean face mask frenzy that may have actually been my favorite, although it was hard because there were several good ones.
Oh, and I did go and order some Korean face masks, by the way, just, you know, since everybody was wondering, I'm sure. And then not to forget probably my other favorite, episode 702, veteran turns sweet compulsion into obsessive candy hustle. This is the OCD candy store, which is located in Tacoma, Washington, and somewhat online. Her goal is to make it more online going forward so that you can serve people across the country and perhaps beyond. But now the next time I go up to Seattle, perhaps I can stop off in Tacoma and check out this candy shop for myself, because it sounds pretty fun.
And if you're in the area, of course, go and say hi. Coming up next week, we are looking at comic strips. We are looking at something called Super Nola Snacking. And we're looking at a weekly fig delivery service. That's just what it says here.
So I'm going to take the word of Whitney and our team, that in fact, we're going to have a whole episode all about a weekly fig delivery service. We certainly know that there have been stranger things. So I look forward to all that is to come. Last but not least, in the third to final week of the year, 2018, I still can't believe that, but we're just going to have to move on because that is reality apparently. Before I close it out, I want to say thank you.
When I say thanks to our team that makes this possible, and I want to say thanks to you, the listener. So our crew, really appreciate them. Senior producer, A.C. Valdez, content manager at Whitney Karinek, community liaison, Jed Chang, Tina Hart working with me on several projects. We still need a title for her on my list and the official show cat, Libby Gillibo.
Those are some of the people and one cat that I work with on a regular basis, but there are other people doing stuff too. I'm grateful for all of them and I am grateful for you. Because as I said in week number one, day number one actually of the show, 708 days ago, if you're listening, you're the reason we make the show. If you make the commitment to make this part of your routine, I commit to supporting you fully in your quest to create a new source of income. I want the show to be helpful to you.
I want to build positive community, just like Danielle mentioned in her little update. And I want you to be able to see the results that you want. I want you to be able to pursue a dream, to pursue a goal and also feel supported along the way. And as I mentioned in the check-in message, the other day, I want to do more to support you in that. So I'm definitely taking some time to think, okay, how do we build more of a foundation?
How can we improve this out of social society program? Gonna reopen that in January. I would love for you to join if you have not already, tell you more about that soon. But mostly what can we do just to provide a better foundation for everything? So much more to come.
I don't want to go on and on. Just know that I am thankful for you. I don't take anything about this for granted and I want to keep improving. Oh, and before I go, just a super quick ask. If you like the show, be really grateful for a five-star review, a little rating on iTunes.
Actually, it's Apple Podcasts. I always forget that. Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts and tell your friends because it is free. It is listener supported. And if you know somebody who needs another source of income, send them to us, we'll take care of them.
So that's it for me today. But of course, much more is on the way. Consider this an investment in yourself 10 minutes a day. That's all it is. Episodes go online at 6.01 AM Eastern time.
Be sure you're subscribed. Once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau and this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
