This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up, my friends? Hey, it's Chris Guillebeau bringing you the weekly recap. Oh my gosh, so much is happening recently. We have just finished week number four of season three. Can hardly believe that the first month of the year is almost over.
For those listening in real time, I guess if you're listening later, then January 2019 is still over. It never really comes back. So earlier this week, we relaunched the Cytosil Society. Just wanna talk about this for a moment. It's an online community and support center for people like you who are trying to make progress on their goals.
And we have been welcoming a lot of new members. I've been personally trying to email as many people as possible to check in. Actually, I had some phone calls with some folks as well. I'm really excited to see what happens with them next. Like our whole goal for everybody in this program is that if they don't have a Cytosil up and running already, they're gonna get one, like soon.
And if they already have one, we have a lot of people who are already having a little bit of success, we wanna help them go to the next level. So if they're making $500 a month, $1,000 a month, wanna help them make $2,000 a month or more, whatever the case may be. We've recently retooled the program, moved to an all new forum, an all new platform for discussions, and it's going really well. I'm seeing lots of people jump in with all kinds of questions, feedback, introductions. And if you're already there, then that's great.
I don't need to say much more about it, but if you have not had a chance to check it out yet, I would love for you to take a look and see what it's all about. Now, right now, there's a special offer with low monthly pricing, where you can get two free months when joining for a year. That special offer ends this coming week on Wednesday, just a couple of days from now. So if you're listening later, it may already be gone. But if you happen to be listening now and you wanna check it out, go to sidehustleschool.com/society, S-O-C-I-E-T-Y.
Like I said, I would love to welcome you there. It's a special offer where you can get two free months when joining for a year. But if you don't wanna register for a year, you could just try it month by month and see how it works for you. There really is no pressure at all. I'm also very fortunate to be able to make this show every single day for you.
Nothing is changing whatsoever with that. I try to do the vast majority of my work for free or very low cost, and that is going to continue. So that's all I have to say about that for now. Last call for Side Useless Society coming up in a couple of days. And that's not all.
Today, we've got an audio update from a cat portrait artist. We featured in year one. That's correct, a cat portrait artist. And also one more big announcement, which if you follow me on Instagram, you might already be aware of. Instagram is 193 countries, 193 countries.
But this is the first time for me to mention it on the podcast. I am excited to announce my next book. It's called "100 Side Hustles, Unexpected Ideas for Making Extra Money Without Quitting Your Day Job." And this book features a collection of stories, 100 stories from year one of the Side Hustle School Podcast. Now this is very different from every other book I've done because it's 340 pages of full color with beautiful high-risk photographs throughout the book. So fully illustrated, photographed edition.
If you've ever wondered what do some of these people look like? What do their businesses look like? What does their side hustle look like? We had a team that spent much of the past year going around the country, documenting this process, taking, as I said, beautiful photographs. I'm gonna be sharing more of them on Instagram as we get closer to the book launch.
And I'm just so excited 'cause we're taking some of the most popular stories that we've had and then showing them off visually to the world. It also features a number of updates on people that we featured a long time ago. So like I said, I just could not be more excited about this. It comes out on June 4th and I will be doing a tour to at least a dozen cities. I'll have more information about that as it gets closer, but you can actually pre-order now from your favorite bookstore or online retailer.
And the reason why I mentioned that is because pre-orders really help authors. Pre-orders show bookstores and other distributors that people actually still care about books in this day of endless on-demand entertainment. There are people out there who care about books. So if you happen to be in a local bookstore, ask them about the book. Say it's the new book by Chris Guillebeau.
It's called "A Hundred Side Hustles." Comes out on June 4th. They should be able to pre-order it or of course you can do that from Amazon or whatever your favorite online retailer is. Again, it's called "A Hundred Side Hustles." This was quite a project that involved a dozen photographers, a dozen other writers who work with me on the show, a wonderful publishing team and partner, and my fact checker slash cat herder, Tina Hart. If there's ever a missing person out there, I want Tina on the case. She can find anybody.
She can follow up with anybody. So thank you, Tina. And thank you listeners because everything we do on the show is for you. This book is for you and much more to come in 2019. For you.
Okay, without further ado, let's hear from Sarah, a cat debating cat portrait artist. Sarah, what's been happening since we first featured you on the program? - Hey, this is Sarah Miller from Atlanta, Georgia. My side hustle is Sarah Payne's Pets and it was featured on episode 233, Cat Lover Creates Cat Debating Portrait Series. I still love that title.
Since then I graduated college in May 2018 from Georgia College State University with a degree in marketing. I was applying for jobs before graduating and realized pretty quickly that there's no better job out there for me than running my own custom pet portrait business. I made my decision to take Sarah Payne's Pets full time in June and I had the best year yet. My most profitable month was November, getting all the Christmas commissions in and I made over $6,000. Since my episode aired, my painting skills have improved quite a lot.
So I was able to increase my prices from an average of $30 to $155. The biggest thing I've learned was that with large freedom comes large responsibility. Working for myself means it's up to me what I do every single day. So I had to hit quite a learning curve in self-discipline. My advice to those listening is to find community.
Chances are all of your friends and family have quote normal jobs and chatting with fellow creative entrepreneurs that truly understand the struggle has really helped my sanity. My dreams for 2019 are to double my income and get featured on the news. Follow me on Instagram at Sarah Payne's Pets to see if this comes true. - Amazing, congratulations Sarah. Thank you so much for sharing.
Wow, a full time cat portrait artist. Good work. I think it's pretty incredible that she was able to make $6,000 in one month with cat portraits. That was the holiday month to be fair, but still pretty cool. And presumably she is selling cat portraits all the other months as well.
I liked what she said about the need for self-discipline and community, especially when you first start doing this. If you've never worked on your own before, you've always had this kind of built-in accountability with colleagues and a nine to five and all the structure that comes with that, that can actually be beneficial for a lot of people. When you step away from it, it can be hard to kind of impose that on yourself. Well, actually I don't mean to say you have to impose that on yourself because you don't. But somehow you have to be able to create some sort of order structure and routine to be able to accomplish what you set out to do.
So thank you for sharing that again. Everyone, you can follow along with Sarah at sarahpaintspets.com. More of these to come each week. And if you have a question or comment, we'd love to feature yours as well. Call the Hustle Hotline, leave your short response, 844-9 Hustle, 844-948-7853, or you can email us at podcast@sidehustleschool.com.
[Music]
When we announced last fall that we were gonna be doing season three of the show here in 2019, a whole other year's worth of stories. I told you that we're gonna be leveling up as well, bringing you better and more tightly focused stories that include specific action, practical steps that you can take. Looking back on this week, I think we hit it pretty well. We featured Marimba Rentals, the Marimba rental business that hits all the right notes, and a YouTube toy channel. All work and no play inspires nurses to hustle.
They're actually doing very, very well. I think they're making multiple six figures with this toy review and reveal channel on YouTube. Pretty incredible, those are just two examples of the six stories we had this week. And all of those are free. They're free and freely available.
You can listen to them on sidehustleschool.com in Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And we're on episode 757 today. Guess what? Episodes one through 756 are all free and freely available. Coming up on the show, much more is on the way, including a guy who makes his own packing cubes, finds a way to sell them on amazon.com and is actually making, I think, five to $7,000 a month from that project.
I'll tell you about it tomorrow, along with, of course, another story every day after that. Now, before I sign off, I want to say thank you to the people who make this possible. That is, first and foremost, you, the listener. I said in the very first episode, if you make the commitment to make this part of your routine, we're going to be here too. Every single day, new story.
I want to support you fully in your quest to create that new source of income. And now that our online community is up and running again, love to welcome you there as well. That's a place where you can join in discussions, get some feedback about your ideas, and hopefully maybe even create that accountability to take those next steps. Our team includes producer Chuck Reed from Los Angeles, California, content manager, Whitney Karinek, community liaison, working on location from Vietnam this month, Jed Chang, cat herder, Tina Hart, and the official show cat, Libby Gilibow. We're all part of the Onward Project led by Gretchen Rubin.
I love Gretchen's work. Be sure you subscribe to her podcast as well. It's called Happier with Gretchen Rubin. And if you're enjoying the show, I'd be super grateful. You could give us a quick little rating and review in Apple Podcasts.
Just takes a moment and it helps other people discover the show. You can also tell your friends and show them how to subscribe because there are lots of folks out there who do not know how to subscribe to podcasts. Strange as that may sound to you. I hope you'll join me tomorrow on each day next week with more stories and actionable ideas. Consider this a short daily investment in yourself.
Our episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time every single day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
