This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hello, hello, hello. What's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. This is our weekly recap, week number seven of season three, episode 778.
This weekend, I've been part of a podcast festival produced by a good friend of mine, Shawna Noah. Podcast festival is called Listen Up Portland. So I got to do a fun little event yesterday, hung out with some listeners and talked with a couple of special guests. Another good friend, Jonathan Fields, was also in town doing a show for the same festival. And I hope to have some announcements pretty soon about at least two other events that I will be doing elsewhere in the country. Hopefully we will get a chance to meet up at some point, you and me. I mean, if you want,
I'm not inviting myself over. I'm just saying I'm going to be in some different places. And then in June, my brand new book, 100 Side Hustles, which is a whole collection of popular stories from this very podcast, will be out and I'll be doing a worldwide tour. So a lot of stuff on the horizon, and there's more, that's just a couple of things. In today's update, today's little recap, I wanted to share some candid, transparent lessons with you and follow up to the recent relaunch we did for Side of Soul Society. It was definitely a successful launch overall. I mean,
I'll tell you the numbers, I'll tell you everything. But I also learned a couple of things. And after all these experiences, whenever I launch a product, whenever I have a book out or something else, I always try to ask myself, what could I have done better? Because I think it's important to celebrate your victories and your accomplishments. And I talk about that sometimes in the context of the stories that we share, the first time that you make money for yourself, definitely celebrate.
But ultimately, we're going to improve by asking ourselves, okay, what could I do better? How can I make this an even more optimal or efficient or effective, whatever the word is, experience the next time around? So let's see what went well. In that launch, we decided to focus less on conversion and more on serving our new members that were coming in, which doesn't mean you can't do both. But we just really wanted to focus on making sure that everybody was onboarded well.
We have a new discussion forum we're using, it's been helping a lot. And we've also brought on our first guest expert, who is participating in a lot of conversations with people and also joining us for an all new monthly call series. So that's great. And I think we brought in about 200 new members or so. We have several hundred from the previous group. So I believe the active group is
now 500 plus. Now what I could have done better, a couple of different things here. We switched this time to a monthly pricing model. And I think that was important. I think it's actually critical, sustainable for this kind of program because we're actually investing a lot each month into the program. So that's fine and well, but I don't know if we had a compelling annual offer,
since more people signed up for the pay as you go option. So we had two different options. You could pay for a year, you get a discount, get a couple of months free, or you can just pay monthly as you go. And I would have predicted that more people were going to choose the annual option, but I was wrong. More people actually chose the monthly options. That kind of tells me that maybe we
could have done a better job, creating a more compelling annual offer. Also, I think there was a little bit of confusing messaging and that's my fault. It's the fault of the host, the author, the person who puts this up together. I think what I came to believe over time over the past year of working with this program is that the community really is the most valuable part of it. The community, the discussions we were having, how people are connecting with one another, forming little subgroups, mastermind groups, and so on. The community is the most valuable part of the
program compared to the training. But even though I went through that evolution of thought myself, I'm not sure everybody else was able to read my mind as well as I'd like. So in other words, I don't think I completely transitioned the change that I had intended into the copy and the pitch, the offer as presented on the site. And I could tell that was an issue just in the conversations that were coming up, like the emails that we got, people who were like, "I'm really interested in this program, but here are my questions," kind of made me think, "Oh, I haven't actually fully done a great job of explaining that shift or that change." So just a couple of things I wanted to point out there because, as I said, I want to be honest and transparent with you. The side hustle world is a journey and I'm learning along with you. Every time I do something like this, I always
notice something that I could do better or something to kind of take with me into the next project. Oh, and one final thing, I had a lot of people been asking for help with accountability. I may have mentioned this briefly as well. We've got a whole accountability project on the way. I'm actually really excited about this. It's a super, super simple thing that I think is going
to be helpful and effective to a lot of our listeners. So we're actually working on that right now. I should know something within the next, I don't know, 10 days, 14 days, pretty soon coming up. So I tell you that to be accountable to you. More details coming soon.
All right. Also in today's recap, we've got an audio update from a previously featured case study. And then I also promised to circle back with you about something that we talked about a few days ago. This was all about FDA approval in episode, I believe, 772. Let's see, what was that called?
That was the athletes who create chewable energy gum. And in that episode, I think I said something about FDA approval. I was curious how that worked for them and if that was a big pain, if that was really difficult, because it seems like it would be to sell a product like that. Because often we're encouraging listeners, "Hey, just start where you are. Done is better than perfect," et cetera. But when you're selling a food product or a supplement, obviously anything
like that, you can't just go out and do it. You actually do need to be really careful about getting the right approvals and making sure everything is safe. And so we followed up with them and said, "How did that work?" One of the guys we talked to said that they were fortunate enough to find an amazing supplier who became an equity partner and help them navigate the Waters of Regulation. So that partner had a full FDA facility, helped them get the right documentation, and made sure they use the best ingredients. So if you're a regular listener, you might know that I often discourage people from forming partnerships without a good reason.
There's all kinds of reasons to not have a partnership. This, however, is an ideal example of when it might be helpful to deliberately seek out a partnership because something like FDA approval can be a complicated process. And they found a supplier that had the knowledge and experience. And now after telling you all of this, I just realized something very important. I forgot to say what the FDA is. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, especially to our international listeners.
FDA is the Food and Drug Administration. That is the government authority in the United States that has regulatory approval over, I believe, pretty much every food and drug product. I don't know all the details. But the point is, if you're selling something like that, you need to make sure you are compliant. So in different countries, I'm sure they have a similar process, probably under a different name.
All right, let's go to our blast from the past segment. We're going to hear from someone featured on the program, I believe, way back in the first year of the show, something like 500 days ago. She has an update and some advice for everybody out there who is just getting started. So this is Janina. My name is Janina Klimis, and my side hustle is my website, Real Life Language, where I share language learning materials in 11 languages. My side hustle was featured on
episode number 243. Since the episode, huge progress has been made in my long term dreams. I teach languages and only have summers to side hustle. With the time I have, I have continued to publish many language courses via podcast and now have 1.2 million downloads. I have guest posted for Fluent in three months, the most popular blog on language learning in the world, and I'm publishing another article for them at the moment. I just spoke at Language
Show Live in London in November and have grown my email list to more than 17,000 subscribers. After the episode aired, I began crafting a book proposal. The five-week linguist, the smarter way to master a language, got the attention of a New York City literary agent who helped me get two bestselling authors to become expert contributors to my project. A major publisher is considering it now. The most important lesson I learned from side hustle school is on my offerings. Don't be afraid to continually refine and improve
your offerings and content, as well as increase your prices accordingly. The second lesson is consistency. Keep showing up to whatever you do, even when you don't want to. This allows you to learn every day, which spirals back into improving your content and offerings. The more you learn, the more you can share.
Awesome, Janina. Thank you so much. Congratulations. Lots of updates there and fingers crossed on the book. Hope everything goes well. 1.2 million downloads. That is fantastic. And you mentioned
Fluent in three months as well. Benny Lewis is a good friend of mine. I believe I have known him for a decade. So yes, keep showing up. I totally agree. And I hope that is helpful for some of our
listeners as well. Everyone out there, if you'd like to follow along with Janina, just go to reallifelanguage.com/reallifelanguageblog. So reallifelanguage.com/reallifelanguageblog. We will link it up in the notes. Also, if you're out there and you got a question or comment, the phone number is 8449-HUSTLE, also known as 844-948-7853. You can also just make a little
voice memo and email it to us at podcast@sidehustleschool.com. I would love to feature more listeners on the program as we roll through season three. This week on the program featured everything from that chewable energy gum to coasters for beer to an artistic wedding backdrop known as an arbor in Melbourne, Australia. Also another Australian, I believe, a mom who is doing an uber easy side hustle, taxiing kids to elementary schools, all kinds of fun stuff and much more to come. In addition to that update on accountability, we've got an episode called Pizzoli to the People, an episode all about Pizzoli. Can't
wait for that among other things. It is the end of the week. So I want to say thank you so much to everyone who makes this show possible. That would be first and foremost, you, yourself, the listener. That's right. I'm thinking you. Thank you. We make this show for you. We make
it to not only entertain and to inspire, but also just to kind of give you a practical support and maybe even show you some ideas that you wouldn't have considered otherwise or help you develop your own sense of curiosity, your own ability to ask, Hey, what if, what if I actually try to do something like this? What would that look like for me? How can my life change for the better if I find a way to invest in myself through the power of creating an income generating project? And that's why we do it every single day. And it's not just me. I want to thank our producer,
Chuck Reed, our content manager, Whitney Karinek, community liaison, Jed Chang, our cat herder, Tina Hart, a new team member, James Johnson. He's actually been writing for the show for a while. Now he's working a bit more with our writers and just kind of taking on an increased editorial role. So James, shout out. Thanks so much for joining us.
And the official show cat, of course, Libby Gillibow. Collectively, Side Hustle School is part of the Onward Project that is led, curated, championed by my good friend and also a best selling author. I should say it the other way around. She's a best selling author and she happens to be my friend too. Her name is Gretchen Rubin. She's got a new book coming out soon.
I have pre-ordered that myself and I would encourage you to do so as well. If you like the show, just do something awesome. Go and give us a little review, a little quick rating doesn't take long. Five stars would be awesome. If you feel it's helpful, you can also tell your friends or show them how to subscribe to the show.
If you know somebody out there who needs another source of income, that's what we're all about. It is free. It is every single day. It is short. It is a quick little investment in yourself to get you thinking and perhaps, as I said, to give you a next step. And with that, we are almost wrapped.
Thank you so much. I hope you'll join me again next week, every day. Our episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time. Once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
From the Onward Project
