This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up friends, listeners, side hustle school community. It's Chris Guillebeau here. We have just finished week number five of season three. And for those listening in real time, February has arrived. You know how I know that February is here because my gym is back to being less crowded.
It's the most predictable thing. First week of January, you know, everybody's in there working hard and then come, you know, mid January or end of the month or now in February, it's kind of, you know, back to the way things were before. So obviously those resolutions didn't stick, at least for a lot of people, but not you, right? Like you're out there and you're sticking with your resolutions or your commitments, your goals, whatever you'd like to think of them as. And if not, you can start over.
You can start, again, right now, today, it doesn't matter what day of the year it is, you can set an intention, make a decision and start making progress. My encouragement to you is to make sure one of those commitments, intentions, resolutions, whatever word you like, is to invest in yourself. Do something for yourself so that you have more options, more choice, more security, more freedom, all the good things that a side hustle can bring you, at least the right kind of side hustle. Which is, of course, what this show is all about, shining a spotlight on people doing really fun, creative, interesting, and sometimes unexpected projects that end up making extra money for them and often a lot of money. So whatever it is that you're working on or thinking about, I hope you'll make progress today, even just a small step.
Now, I recently did a Q&A call, kind of an ask me anything call with anybody who wanted to show up. We did it by video, so it was fun. We had people from all over the world. And someone asked about this situation they were facing where they're doing their work offline, they've got a side hustle that's actually going well, they feel like they're making a difference in people's lives, they are making money, but right now they're doing it all offline. And they feel like they should be online, 'cause they can reach more people and for all the benefits of being online, but they're worried about negative comments.
I thought it was a great question because again, this person was doing valuable work that was helping people. She had dozens if not hundreds of recommendations and testimonials, but again, just kind of felt this trepidation about putting herself out there online. Even though she felt like she should, she just had this hesitation. And so my response is, well, first of all, don't do something just because you feel like you should, don't grow just for the sake of growth. If you have something that's working for you now, you don't necessarily have to change that.
If you don't wanna do something, don't do it. However, that said, in this situation, my direct response is why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you want to go online and reach more people with this valuable service that's helping people and helping yourself as well? And so my advice to her and perhaps to somebody else out there, if you're in that spot, and the reason you're thinking about it is, it's not just because there's some obligation or pressure you feel, it's because you know it would be a good thing. You know it would be good for you.
Then maybe you just kind of need to step out a little bit. And one of her concerns was negative comments. I assure you, I've been doing this a long time. There are far, far more positive people out there than there are negative. And I know that sounds weird in this day and age when you consider like some of the social and political and cultural issues our country and the United States is facing and elsewhere around the world too.
But to go back to intentions, if you have an intention to put something out in the world and you're interested in attracting the right people, you're not trying to necessarily attract everyone, but you're trying to attract the right people, people who are right for your message, your product, your service. If you're expecting everything to be negative, I bet you're in for a pretty good surprise because you might just find that, just like you've had people offline who like your service or people maybe in your situation, if you're out there listening and you haven't had a product or a service, but people are asking you questions about something or you know it's a good idea, but you just can't bring yourself to move forward. Consider the possibility that instead of negative comments, you might get a lot of positive comments and you might end up helping a lot of people. And just like the response to this question, you might end up helping yourself as well. Just a thought.
[Music]
All right, three quick notes here before we go to our audio update. Got a great audio update from somebody who was featured on the show a while back, along with a really great quote that I love. In fact, I might even use his quote for the title of this episode. But first, a placeholder note on accountability. I've been hearing from a lot of listeners that the greatest need they have is accountability.
And it's been really interesting to notice so many people voicing the same concern, the same need, like I know what I need to do, or I have a list of steps, I got the side hustle book, or maybe I've got my own process. I know what I need to do, but I'm just having a hard time making it happen. Setting aside that time and making progress in my goal, reporting back, I really need some way to be accountable. So this is a placeholder note because we do that somewhat in the side hustle society, but that program is closed for a while. So if you're not part of it now, it'd be a long time before that's open again.
We're gonna do something about this bigger issue of accountability. So stay tuned. I don't have a great announcement yet, but I say this so that I can be accountable to you. I tried to live out whatever it is that I'm encouraging you about. So stay tuned because we're gonna work on something really fun.
So come back to that later. Next note is I read a really good article about buying stuff that is returned to Amazon and then reselling it online. Because you know, if you buy something from Amazon, you can send it back. Well, thousands upon thousands of items, hundreds of thousands, literally hundreds of thousands of items are being returned to Amazon all the time. And for all sorts of reasons, a lot of that stuff, even when it's new, mint condition, doesn't get shipped out to new buyers.
It gets moved on to different warehouses and there's a service called liquidation.com where you can go on and bid for a pallet of stuff that's been returned. So the article was about a lot of people out there who are buying these pallets and opening them up and reselling the stuff. And it's not so easy. The article is pretty clear about saying like, "Hey, there's actually some pitfalls to this," but it is possible. And I thought it was really interesting.
So I'm gonna link that article up in the show notes if you wanna come and take a look at that. Or this is episode 764. So you can just go to sidehustleschool.com/764. And the last announcement is that next month, we're gonna do the final ticket sale for World Domination Summit 2019. WDS 2019 will be held the last weekend of June.
This is an annual gathering that I've been putting together with a group of amazing people, friends, colleagues, team members. And we have people from all over the world who are coming to attend and participate. I've been doing it for nine years, which is crazy to say. And if you have not had a chance to be part of WDS, I really think that you would like it. We've got all kinds of people from different backgrounds and different countries coming.
So next month is gonna be the ticket sale. If you go to worlddominationsummit.com, you can put your name down on the list and you'll be the first to know about it. worlddominationsummit.com. All right, as is our custom with these weekly recaps, we often do a little blast from the past, looking back and hearing an audio update from someone that we have featured on the show. This one is pretty cool.
It is from Evan. So without further ado, I'm gonna turn it over to him. - Hi, this is Evan and I was featured on episode 175 of the Side Hustle School, where I talked a little bit about my music licensing side hustle. Basically what I do is I write and record songs in my home studio, put them up on a website like pond5.com. Then people can buy them off the shelf, put them in their songs, put them in movies, TV shows, whatever.
So since my last episode, I've nearly doubled my income. I made about $5,000 in 2018, including getting a $1,900 check from a song of mine that was featured on TV in Romania. I had a song in a Netflix documentary and another song and I believe it was the History Channel or maybe TLC. I've also launched a course on music licensing to teach people how to do this if they're interested. And if I had one piece of advice or maybe two pieces of advice to give somebody looking to start a music licensing side hustle, the first thing would be to go to pond5.com, sign up and just start taking action today because you're gonna make mistakes, but it's better to start sooner rather than later.
And the other thing would be, don't be too harsh of a self critic because my worst song in my opinion has made me the most money, well over $2,000. And if I was a harsh self critic, I never would have published it. So good luck, get out there and thanks for listening. - Evan, dude, that is awesome. Thank you so much for that update.
Evan is a lawyer who earns passive income through songwriting. It's mostly passive at least. Once he writes the song, anyone who wants to license it for commercial use can go and download it and then they pay him a royalty. Not sure exactly how that part works, but it seems like it's going well with his Romanian hit, his appearance on Netflix and his new course. So that's awesome.
And I love the advice about putting yourself out there and don't be afraid to show up. And that quote is just so great. My worst song made the most money. So I know that there's a lesson out there for somebody. If you have a bad song, whatever it is, whatever you think is a bad song, maybe it actually has some real value or I guess it could be just a bad song.
But in this case, his worst song made the most money. So do consider that. And you can follow along with Evan or check out his stuff at stockmusicmusician.com. Stockmusicmusician.com. We're gonna link it up in the notes and the resource that he mentioned is pond5.com.
P-O-N-D-5.com. More of these to come as we continue to look forward, but also look back and say, hey, what's happened since we last talked to you? How are things going now? And how have you advanced? And what would your advice be to someone else?
[Music]
Okay, as we wrap up, I was trying to decide what my favorite episode was this week. If you could only listen to one, what would it be? And I think I have failed in that attempt because I really liked a bunch of the stories, especially "Tote Bag Titans," "Teacher's Custom Bag Shoulders $110,000 Profits." That was episode 759, 759. And then another teacher story, "Teachers Against Humanity's Card Deck Unites Educators." That's a project that's very new, just a couple of months old and was profitable right from the first week. And also without spending any money at all, which is pretty crazy.
He only spent money once he had orders for the card decks. You can check out that episode for the details, number 761. But then also, "Eat Gray's Love, Massive Cheese Platters Become Life of the Party," 762. I learned stuff every week along with you. This week, I learned about grazing platters.
Did not know that was a thing. Heard about that in the episode. All kinds of stuff is on the way too, including something about a paleo bagel. That's right, paleo bagel. It's called the pagle, crate name.
And then also maybe even back to back, we'll see something about Milwaukee beer. All right, so you got your paleo bagel and your Milwaukee non-paleo beer. Those are just two examples. Of course, there are many more on the way. I'm so excited to be able to make this show for you every day this year.
And if you're out there listening, you're the reason that we actually do this. You're the reason that our whole production team puts together these episodes telling these stories because we want to make a difference in your life. It's not just entertainment, as awesome as it is. I know it's really hilarious and entertaining, but we also want people to be able to take action to get some practical steps just to get a little bit further along in their journey. In their side hustle journey or their journey toward making something for themselves, their creative journey, whatever it is that you want to call it, not too worried about the semantics, I just want you to be able to go away from this experience and make some kind of improvement in your life.
That's what motivates me. Speaking of our crew, big thanks to them, producer Chuck Reed, content manager, Whitney Karinek, community liaison, Jed Chang, cat herder, Tina Hart, and the official show cat, who's not herded by Tina. It's complicated, Libby Gilavo. Side hustle school is free and listener supported. If you're enjoying it, I'd be super grateful if you would leave us a quick rating and review.
It makes a huge difference. If you like the show, give us five stars. Tell your friends also and show them how to subscribe. We'll do our best to take care of them as well. And I hope you'll join me tomorrow and every day next week.
For more stories and actionable ideas, consider this a short daily investment in yourself. Our episodes go online at 601 AM Eastern time every day. My name is Chris Guillebeau and this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
