This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, hello, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Here we are, beginning an all new month. It is the weekly recap, finished week number nine of season three, week number nine, season three, episode 792.
Beginning the month of March, at least for those listening in real time. If you are listening later, well, I do my best, probably 90% of the time, at least, to keep every episode relevant and evergreen. So if you happen to be catching up on some past episodes, we've got lots of people who discovered the show and then go back and listen to all 700 plus episodes, which is an incredible feat at this point, since we continue to roll out a new episode every day, but I respect that. So there's always something you can learn, at least that is my goal. [Music]
All right, so I'm excited about this month.
I'm gonna be going on my first really big international trip in quite a while. I promise to take you along with me, or at least I'll tell you about it. I don't have room in my carry-on bag, but I'll bring you some highlights on the program and of course on my Instagram, which is 193 countries, 193 countries. And let's see, we had a $0 startup story yesterday. I always love pretty much every week or two.
We have somebody who starts their income generating project without spending any money whatsoever, which I think is great because people are always saying, well, what if I don't have any money? How can I start a business? I need capital. Or what kind of business can I start for $5,000 or $10,000 or whatever the number is? And I always say, well, respectfully, that's the wrong question to ask.
Because again, we've got people who grow really substantial projects without investing any money at all. And we also had what I guess you could call a negative $400 story on Monday. That story, let's see, episode 786. It was about a college student who started a closed reselling business. This person didn't have any money at all.
Like eating out at McDonald's was a luxury, true story. And the way he got his $400 in startup capital, which in this case he needed to buy 30 shirts for resell, was by opening a credit card at Macy's with a $400 limit, all of which he promptly spent on those shirts. And then a week later, he doubled his money, got to keep one of the shirts for himself, which was in fact his original goal. The reselling was secondary, at least at first. Then this project went on to become a six-figure business as he transitioned into an image consultant.
So pretty crazy story there. And just to be clear, the idea is to never go into debt at all. I don't encourage people to go out and open credit cards to start your business. But in this case, I think it worked because as I mentioned at the end of the episode, he wasn't really running the risk of losing money. In the worst case scenario, with his $400 investment that he didn't actually have, if the $85 shirts he bought for $14 each, those were the details if I'm not mistaken, if he really couldn't sell those shirts for more than $14, which seems pretty likely that he's gonna be able to do that, at least more than $14 each, well, he could have just returned them to the store.
No harm, no foul. So as I reflected on this, I thought creative thinking can take you far. And this is a stellar example of creative thinking, but of course only when it's combined with action. You can't just have the idea to buy 30 shirts and sell them for twice as much as you paid. You can't just walk in the store and say, what would it be like to buy some shirts and resell them?
You actually have to try it. And because he tried it, because he combined his creative thinking with action and then learned as he went along, he eventually had like $50,000 worth of inventory in his dorm room as a college senior. And as I said, transition to becoming an image consultant or a fashion consultant, it was a chance worth taking. It was a low risk chance worth taking. So what chance are you taking?
What low risk strategy are you trying? And how will you combine creative thinking with action? That's my opening challenge and encouragement for you today. All right, now before we go to our audio updates, blast from the past segment from someone we featured on the program before, oh, and this one's really fun by the way, it's by a guy who started a sign hustle, which of course is hilarious and ironic, sign hustle. More on that in a second.
I just wanna share quickly a couple of things that I wrote about in my newsletter last week. I think I may have mentioned before that I've been doing more personal writing. And every Wednesday I've been sending out an update that sometimes connects to side hustle school, but often it's about something different. You can subscribe to that for free on my blog, chrisguillebeau.com, C-H-R-I-S-G-U-I-L-L-E-B-E-A-U.com. It is completely free, nothing for sale, just like the show.
And this week I did a little piece called "Eight Ways to Save More Time." Got a lot of feedback about it. So I just wanna share a couple of highlights with you. Now, I believe firmly that in a lot of ways, time is our most valuable resource. Time, not only is it valuable, it's also finite. Once it's gone, it's gone, you can't get it back.
So the moments that make up today will be gone forever, tomorrow. No matter how much money you have, no matter how much other resource you have, you can't trade those resources to get back time. So therefore it's really important to learn to use your time well, because it is so valuable. So I wrote a short little list of eight things you can do to have more time or save more time, however you like to think of it. And I'll just share a couple of them with you here.
Number one, decide what's important and do it first every day. Just kind of know intentionally when you get your day started, like this is the one thing I'm gonna accomplish today, and I'm gonna start working on it before I do too much else. Number two, don't let other people schedule your life. That's really important, it's about boundaries, essentially. You know, if you've got something that you have defined as important, you need to make time for it.
I also said, schedule your breaks and enjoy them. I actually don't think you should work all the time. There's this quote, "Time you choose to waste is not wasted time." So if you've got a TV show that you like to watch, I don't think you should necessarily stop watching it. However, if you've got six favorite TV shows you like to watch and, you know, when you're not sure what to do, you fire up the Netflix or the Hulu or whatever, you know, maybe you wanna be more intentional with that. So choose your downtime, your free time, whatever it is and be intentional about it.
And then just one more, I think this was number seven on the list. If you keep putting something off, like if you keep kind of pushing something from one day to the next, you know, of course you can kind of like push through it. And sometimes that's the right decision, but you can also maybe just choose to let it go. And sometimes I find myself, like I've had the same thing on the to-do list, you know, every day for three weeks in a row. Again, sometimes I have to just push through it, but at the same time, if it's been there for three weeks, like is it really a priority, right?
So maybe it's actually just taking up mental space and it's pressing me out because I haven't done anything about it. So I should just decide it's not gonna happen. That is also about intention, just like deciding what's important to you and doing that thing first, not letting other people schedule your life. And then once you find what is important, try to base your decisions on that principle. Like when you decide what's important to you, as you make different decisions, commitments, set goals, et cetera, always ask yourself like, how does that connect to that principle, to that value?
To what is the most important to me? And this is not always an easy thing to do. I think I wrote about that too. It's not always easy, but I do think it's worth it. I think it's worth it to kind of push through and advance that agenda for yourself.
This show is all about investing in yourself. And we usually talk about that in the context, starting the side hustle, your income generating project. But even that is directly connected to freedom, to opportunity, to having more security for yourself. So that again, you can make your own choices and do what matters to you. So those are a few tips on having more time.
Let's now go to the blast from the past segments. We're gonna hear a quick little update from someone we've featured on the program before. Again, this is the sign hustle. So let's hear from Pierce. - Hi everyone, this is Pierce Mars from Thompson Station, Tennessee.
My side hustle is actually a sign hustle business and it was featured on episode 126. Since then, our sign placement business has grown significantly. That's great news, but along with the growth, brings some new challenges. One of our largest clients asked us to provide our services outside of our existing geographic coverage. Since I started this side hustle, I've always kept the business close to home so I could maintain control and not spread myself too thin.
We had a choice. Let one of our biggest customers hire someone else and possibly risk losing the entire account or find a way to service them and keep them happy. We chose the latter. We have hired two new people to help us in these new areas and will bring on a third in 2019. Hiring people can always be a challenge, but through this process, we have experienced the gratification of taking what we have and helping some other people earn a nice side income.
On our original update, we were generating around 50,000 per year. With our current growth and our expanded territory, we expect to increase our revenue by 25% in 2019. [Music]
Hey peers, thank you so much for the updates. Congratulations as well on the 25% increase since we featured you. And for listeners, that episode was sign hustle brings in $50,000 for only 40 hours a month.
That's not 40 hours a week, that is hours a month. That sounds like Pierce is being really strategic and also intentional with his time, as just mentioned a few moments ago. And then when it comes to making that choice, like he talked about, should we expand, hire, et cetera, or not, it sounds like he's made the right choice for him, of course, but I just wanted to say it's also okay to make the other one. These things are a little bit subjective because it really depends on your goals. For a lot of our listeners who have busy day jobs and other responsibilities, they might wanna say, you know what, this really is a side hustle, sign hustle, side hustle.
And I don't actually want to go to that step of hiring people. So again, everything needs to connect to your goals, but great to hear that update from Pierce. You can follow along with him at piercemaris.com. I'll link it up on the show notes, but it's spelled P-I-E-R-C-E-M-A-R-R-S.com. [Music]
More of these to come.
And as a reminder, we're always happy to hear from our listeners as well. If you've got a comment, question, whatever you got, just email podcast@sidehustleschool.com. We also have the Hustle Hotline 844-9 Hustle 844-948-7853. Don't be a stranger. Looking ahead, we got some great stuff coming up this week, something about custom airbrush tanning, something about zen organizing and apartment modernizations, and then probably some other stuff too.
You never know what you're gonna get. Who knows, we'll have something with crickets or My Little Pony or I don't know, another sign hustle. Every day, it's a different adventure. And I am excited to be able to share that adventure with you. I really do enjoy making this show.
I really do record it just about every day. We don't really batch a lot. Like pretty much every day, I'm thinking, you know, what are we gonna do? What's the takeaway? You know, for all those folks out there that are enjoying this program, how can we bring them the best possible content to get them fired up, also maybe to give them some practical steps and also just encourage them on so that people understand that they're not alone.
You know, if you're out there trying to do this, you're definitely not alone. There are lots of people all over the world with similar goals and similar values. That is the reason we make this show because we believe in these values, this community, because we believe in you. So thanks for being part of it. Now, I'm not the only one working on it.
We've got a whole team behind us, producer Chuck Reed, content manager, Whitney Karinek, editorial review, James Johnson, community liaison, Jed Chang, cat herder, Tina Hart, and the official show cat who is not herded by Tina. You know, it's complicated. This is the actual cat, Libby Gillibow. All of us at Team South Hospital School are part of the Onward Project that is curated by bestselling author Gretchen Rubin, who has a new book out this week. I'm so excited Gretchen does amazing work.
I always learn from her. I've been learning from her and she's been a friend of mine for, I believe, about a decade. So congratulations to Gretchen. That book is called "Outer Order Intercalm." I have received an advanced copy myself. Thank you, Gretchen.
But I also went to pre-order myself because I believe in supporting authors. So go and check that out at your favorite local bookseller. All right, that's about it for me. This is a pre-listener supported show, super quick request. If you're enjoying it, I'd really love it if you'd help us to spread the word.
That's pretty much it. You can take a few seconds and leave us a quick rating and review, five-star review, preferably. That'd be awesome since you can't give us six. You know, five-star review in Apple Podcasts. It helps other people discover the show.
You can also just tell your friends. Tell them, "Hey, this program goes out every day." They're telling all these crazy stories. It's completely free. And you can subscribe and those shows will come directly to your phone or wherever you prefer to listen. I often mention that inspiration is good, but action is better.
That's because I hope that you will take action to go full circle to where we started, not just think creatively, but combine that creative thinking with taking action. That is the only secret. There's no secret. There's just method. There's just application.
So I look forward to hearing about you doing that. I hope you'll join me tomorrow and every day next week with more stories and ideas. Consider this that short daily investment in yourself. Our episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time.
My name is Chris Guillebeau and this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From The Onward Project.
