This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, welcome back. You are listening to Side Hustle School. I am your host, Chris Guillebeau. People sometimes ask me, who is this show for? Well, this show is for busy people.
It's for people who already have a lot of responsibilities, a lot of commitments, they don't have a lot of free time, but they also believe in investing in themselves. Well, teachers are some of the busiest people out there, and they also tend to be very efficient and good with their time. So it's no surprise that I have a lot of stories about teachers on the show, because a lot of them end up starting side hustles. Well, today's story is about a woman who uses skills she learned as a college lecturer to instruct other teachers how to be successful in the classroom. [Music]
Today's story comes from Megan Pope in San Antonio, Texas.
By day, Megan is a college lecturer at Texas A&M University. She loves her teaching position, and those who know her well will tell you that she was born to teach. In her spare time, Megan has found a way to teach what she knows to others, and in the process created a side hustle that is bringing her both creative and financial freedom. While in grad school and while she was working as a teaching assistant, Megan took a 40-hour training seminar focused on pedagogy, the method of educational theory and practice. To some people, it might sound a little dry, but Megan was hooked and became very interested in learning to teach better.
When you're genuinely excited about something, you'll find that it occupies your thoughts, regardless of what you're doing, and Megan found herself spending hours thinking of all kinds of creative ways to teach her students, whether she was on the bus, exercising, or driving to work. She really loved everything about it. After her graduate program, she began teaching every college course that was offered to her. Her colleagues and department head recognized her knack for creating innovative curriculum and teaching, and one day, Megan was asked to lead an HR training for managers on campus. Even though this was unpaid, it was still a good experience for her.
She then created a training highlighting communication for managers. Before the training, even though she loved teaching, she remembers being incredibly nervous. It was the first time she had facilitated a group activity that was not for undergraduates, and most of the managers who took the training were older than her. Still, despite being so nervous, the training was well-received, and more invitations to facilitate additional trainings, some unpaid, but also some paid, began to arrive. As much as she loved her actual teaching job, this new venture offered her an opportunity to express herself creatively in a field she loved, and this is how Megan's side hustle was born.
Great course design requires expertise in several different skills. It's not just knowledge of the topic being taught. Then it goes through many stages. It takes patience, creativity, maybe even a knack for knowing what will work. A lot of people don't realize that creating learning experiences or curriculum can be a bit of an art form, and figuring out the best way to achieve learning objectives while still engaging the learner can be a challenge, and that's what Megan is really good at.
When Megan creates a course or a training, her entire objective is to help others teach better so that students learn more and have a better experience. During her last training, she worked part-time and made several thousand dollars. She's now branching out from Texas A&M and helping a health and wellness company develop online courses. She's hoping to continue to apply these skills, initially learn for her day job as a college lecturer, then extended to those in-person trainings, and now as a consultant for that company, doing work online. [Music]
I always find it really refreshing when someone is so excited about something, and it's all they can think about.
Maybe you've experienced this sometime too. You've had a project or something you're creating that you're really excited about, and you just can't stop thinking about it. And like Megan, you think about it when you're at the gym or when you're driving, when you're doing something else. I remember nearly a decade ago, I was actually in graduate school, and I wasn't a great graduate student. I didn't love the institution or the process as much as Megan does, but around that time I started to have this idea of starting a blog and writing about non-conformity and alternative strategies for life, work, and travel, and pursuing this quest that became the journey to every country in the world.
And I was just so excited. For the better part of six months, I don't think I said anything about it to anybody else. I just kept making notes and I would have ideas, and not all of them were good, but some of them were. And as I just kept exploring it and chipping away at it, eventually I did find something that not only I enjoyed, but other people appreciated it as well. So I know some people are listening who are kind of in the discovery stage, and they're trying to figure out, "Okay, what is that thing for me?" And I know that can be a little frustrating, but if you stick with it, you will find one of those ideas, and you will have the same experience of the all-consuming thing that you're really excited about, and you can't wait to develop more, and you can't wait to experiment with, and it's really fun.
So I love what Megan said about how it's not just financial freedom that she's building for herself, it's also creative freedom, but really expressing something that she's good at that makes a clear difference in the people she's serving. And for you, your experience is your own, of course, but if you apply the ideas you learn here, you will see results too, and you'll find that thing that you can't stop thinking about. Remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. If you want to see the show notes for today's episode, go to sidehustleschool.com. You can also find a number of resources to help you start your first website, or create an email list, or other things that might help you on your road to starting a hustle.
Those are at sidehustleschool.com/resources. Thank you for listening. I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School, and I'll see you tomorrow with another story. [Music]
