This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up my friends? Hello, welcome to Side Hustle School. This is your host, your daily host, Chris Guillebeau, bringing you a new story every day and a weekly recap on Sundays. Here we are with episode 827, the end of week 14 in season three. This week featured a brand of tailor-made teas where you can go and customize your own tea and someone will ship it to you.
She's doing really well with that business. Two college graduates who started a social media agency. I think they're actually doing seven figures now and an epic reselling story, a story about a guy who's reselling and he's actually reselling headlights and taillights. I really enjoyed working on that one because I used to be a reseller myself. Anyway, this guy is reselling headlights and taillights in what is now a six-figure business, a former automotive painter who actually quits his job to now buy and sell headlights and taillights full-time.
So in this recap, I'm gonna bring you some comments on earning passive income, especially through a couple of online course platforms, Udemy and LinkedIn, in addition to a lengthier than usual audio update from a previously featured side hustler. And in fact, these two topics work in tandem as in they work together. So I'll play you her update a little bit earlier than usual and then share some comments on that. Also on a personal note, I'm doing a tough mutter today with the WDS team. So I've been part of this event called World Domination Summit for the past nine years.
Our ninth annual event is coming up in just over two months. I look forward to seeing many listeners there. And we decided a couple months back that we should do something together that's a little bit adventurous and challenging. And so we chose a tough mutter. Now we're actually doing the, I believe it's a 5K course, like five kilometers.
So it's not super difficult, but you do go in all kinds of mud and there's like 13 obstacles and I don't know, a whole bunch of crazy stuff. So wish us luck. If you're listening to this later, hopefully we survived. You can follow along on Instagram or see some stories of the event. My Instagram is 193 countries, 193 countries.
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One more thing I wanted to mention quickly before we go into that update and discussion of passive income. The "100 Side Hustles" book is coming out on June 3rd. Now I am really excited about this. It's my first book in at least a year and a half, maybe going on two years. And this book is unlike any other book that I've written.
So it's my sixth book. I still can't believe, by the way, I've been writing books for a decade. I still cannot believe that I get a chance to write books and then they go out in the world and people read them. And some people actually like them and care about them. So if that's you, I'm so grateful.
Like I really do feel grateful every day that I can be an author and produce this show for you. So this book is different than every other book because it is highly visual. So it's a four color process book, meaning that every page of the book has color photography on it, just beautiful photography. We commissioned, I think something like 15 different photographers all across the country going around and documenting many of the most popular episodes of "Saddestle School" during year one. So basically this book is like the podcast in visual form.
I mean, it's 300 pages. It's like a coffee table book. You can like put it out and display it, but you can also read it. It's crazy. It's a book that you can read.
It's a new feature that we're trying out. But my hope of the book is as you kind of like scroll through it, you just see like all these different stories and you're like, oh, I could do that. Or it's really interesting that that person did this. And my hope is that it just inspires more people to kind of enter this world. And by enter this world, I don't just mean like subscribe to my podcast.
I mean, do something for yourself. Find a way to create this kind of passive income for yourself. Find a way to create an asset. And you can do that without quitting your job. You can do that without going into debt.
You already know a lot of things. Like you have skills already. And so you just need to learn some pretty simple business skills to apply them. It's not like you need to go back to business school. It's not like you need to go into debt.
I mean, and if you've been listening for a while, you understand that's the message of the show, but I just kind of like to reiterate it because I think it's so important. And I think so many people out there need to know that message and to know that it's possible. So I kind of see this book, again, it's called "100 Side Hustles" as a book of possibilities, essentially. It's like a book of like, wow, you can do this. So I'm looking forward to sharing it with you.
As I said, it comes out on June 3rd and you can pre-order it from anywhere. It makes a huge, huge difference to authors when people pre-order their books. I know as a reader, you probably don't care. You're like, well, I'll just wait till the book is out. But as an author, it makes a big difference because that shows bookstores, distributors, everybody in the publishing industry, oh, people are actually interested in this book.
And so it kind of creates this like positive loop cycle. So we are working on a special thank you for everyone who does that. Because I know, like I said, you could just wait till the book is out. But if you take the time to actually pre-order it now, which you can do from anywhere, any online retailer, could be Amazon, could be something else, could be your favorite local bookstore, which I always encourage people to support. And in this case, I do recommend the print version because it's so visual.
But of course, there's also an audio version as well. And of course, an ebook version for Kindle and all other common formats. So as I said, we're working on a special thank you for everyone who pre-orders. I'll tell you more about it soon, probably next week, but you don't need to wait because anyone who buys the book in any form at any time before it comes out will be eligible for this special thank you. You're not gonna miss out by pre-ordering early.
In fact, as I said, that makes a big difference to me. So thank you so much in advance if you're up for doing that. All right, speaking of books and speaking of passive income and creating freedom for yourself, all these strands are gonna kind of come together in one amalgamation in this audio update. It's gonna set us up for a more extended look at the subject of passive income. So without further ado, I want you to hear this extended update, it's about two minutes, from another author, Jessica Brody.
So let's hand it over to her. Jessica. - Hey, this is author Jessica Brody from Portland, Oregon. My side hustle is teaching creative writing online and it was featured on episode 303. Since then, I've launched two new writing courses.
The first, which came out in November, 2017, is dedicated to learning the foundations of fiction writing. And the second, which released in October, 2018, teaches writers how to plot and write a best-selling novel using only 15 steps. The same 15 steps I've been using to structure my own novels for over 10 years. So far, these two courses combined have earned over $40,000 on udemy.com. And a few months ago, we were invited to release my writing courses on LinkedIn Learning, also known as lynda.com.
We are still new to the Linda LinkedIn platform, but based on the first few months, we're expecting to earn an extra $1,000 to $1,500 in passive income per month. Although this has all been very exciting, managing my side hustle and my primary career as a novelist has been difficult. In 2018, I launched three new books, and I have another releasing this month in March of 2019. Juggling the online courses with book writing, touring, and other promotion has taken its toll on me, and I experienced severe burnout. One thing I've had to learn in the past year is how to maintain balance, not just with my primary job and my side hustle, but also with my personal wellbeing.
When you're trying to excel at a job and a side hustle, it's easy to get overwhelmed and forget to take care of yourself. I found that meditation, exercise, cooking healthy meals, and spending time outdoors in nature to be the best remedy to bring myself back into balance. Next up for me, as I mentioned, I have a new novel releasing this month from Simon & Schuster called "Sky Without Stars." It's a sci-fi retelling of Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables" set in space. I'm very excited about that. I'm also working on a new course dedicated to overcoming writer's block.
This is the first in a new series of shorter courses that I hope to develop that each target a specific pain point for writers. You can find out all about my latest books and courses on jessicabrody.com. Thank you to Chris and the Side Hustle School team for having me back on the podcast. - Thank you, Jessica. Love that update and congratulations on all the different projects.
Impressive as I expected. I actually got a chance to meet Jessica. I don't know if it was a year or two ago at an event. In the episode that we featured her on, it was called "Publish Author Ads Income Source. Makes an extra $21,000 her first year." Episode 303 in the archives.
And so now, as you heard, she's up to $40,000 on Udemy. And the key point here, this is passive. This is passive income because she's made the course. It doesn't mean that there wasn't a lot of work. In fact, it was a lot of work to make the course, just to be clear, it's not easy.
But the beautiful thing about this model is once that course is done, she's already filmed, she's wrapped, they've done all the production. Now all she does is cash the check. Which actually these days is anticlimactic since most payments are arriving by direct deposit. But the point is like every month, like money is going into her bank account. And she also, as you heard, did a lynda.com or LinkedIn learning course.
I think she's actually done more than one. I just did a course with them as well, which I mentioned on the podcast. It's not out yet, but I filmed it with them in Carpinteria, California. And in her case, she said, she's hoping to add through this course or these series of courses she did $1,000 to $1,500 a month in addition to everything else. So hopefully the same will be for my course too.
We'll see, we'll find out. But I remember when I met Jessica, I was so impressed because she is a novelist. It's not like she has abandoned her novel writing career to just focus on writing books about writing, which is kind of meta, but she does both. She is writing novels, she's got her new one coming out soon. And she's teaching courses about writing.
So I love it because she's really walking the walk and demonstrating a proven model to people and building passive income for herself, which again, the whole point of side hustle school. When I went through all the work to prepare the course for LinkedIn, it was a lot of work, as I said, not easy. I remember working on it and thinking, I'm actually spending a lot of time on this. And I might be able to, if I'm looking at this strictly from a dollars per hours kind of calculation, I might be better suited to doing something on my own or doing this a little bit different or whatever the case may be. But I am really attracted to the concept of like, I'm getting a check every month or getting the direct deposit.
I'm really attracted to like, if it's $1,000 a month, I'm almost more interested in that than I am in a project that makes X thousands of dollars for just one off. But for me, I've actually started to kind of restructure some of my business around making choices to do things that are going to bring in, even if it's a relatively small amount of money, if I know it's going to be solid and consistent, then I'm actually gonna kind of push for that because again, it just feels good. It feels good to kind of like go about your life and do other things and then you know that this money is coming in on the side, right? And so I encourage you, as you're thinking about your different projects, there's so many different things you can do. As you know, you listen to the show, you hear different opportunities every day.
I would encourage you maybe to consider gravitating towards some of those opportunities, the ones that have the potential at least to pay month after month. And that's why, for the right person, this kind of online course can be a good thing, like Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, there are some other platforms, Skillshare, they've been a sponsor of the show in the past, but we've also had a lot of people doing courses with them. So again, for the right person, this is something that is good to look at. And if doing a course is not a good fit for you, I would still encourage you to think about the concept of recurring passive income, what can you do to generate some of that in your life, even if it's just a small amount. Like here's an example, many years ago, I recommended a software program that I no longer use.
And I think I only did this recommendation once. It goes back like five or six years, if not more, actually seven or eight years probably. So I kind of moved on and ended up using a different platform after that brief period when I recommended it. But apparently I referred a few people during that time, and every single month since then, I've been getting a check for like 60 to $80. Now 60 to $80, not much to write home about, but it comes in every month.
And I did this thing for it, again, seven or eight years ago. So it's kind of fun. And it makes me think, well, what if I had crafted a more strategic recommendation? What if I had referred more people? What if it was 600 to $800 a month instead of 60 to $80?
That's coming in month after month and year after year in this case. So just keep your eye out. And as you make different decisions, ask yourself, what could I do to have that kind of thing happening for myself? Even if it's small amounts of money because they had up over time, and it just feels really good to get those checks or see those deposits. More updates to come.
And of course, we love to hear from listeners as well. I've been getting lots of great notes. You can always email me at podcast@sidehustleschool.com. You can call in and leave a message for us, 844-9-Hustle, 844-948-7853. Or you can say hi on social media, like I'm around.
Or you can say hi on tour when I go out on tour soon for the "100 Side Hustles" book. Then also let me not forget to say, you can keep up with Jessica at jessicabrody.com. I think she mentioned that too, but she did such a great job. She gets an extra shout out. We'll link her up on the show notes page as well.
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Coming up on the program soon, we've got stories about yoga, about translation, and about mustard. Those are three topics that I see on the list for next week. So yoga, translation, mustard, and of course, some other stuff too. You never know what you're gonna hear. And I know I can speak for our team when I say that we are just as excited about putting this together now as we were when we started, if not more.
Because now it's like we have even more depth and we know that there's this whole community out there, tens of thousands of people that are listening every day, and lots of people taking action and doing something for themselves. And so many of the stories that we feature now are coming from our listeners, which makes me so happy. It's one of the things I most, most enjoy about the work I do is knowing that there are people out there taking action on the stories, applying them in their own way, and then in creating some kind of advancement for themselves. So that for me is what it's all about. And I do wanna say thank you as we close out the week.
If you're listening, you're the reason we make this show. I said in the very first episode 827 days ago, that if you make the commitment to make this part of your routine, I commit to supporting you fully in your quest to create that new source of income. That side hustle that maybe you've thought about, but haven't turned into reality until now. And we wanna see that happen for so many of our listeners. I wanna give a shout out to producer Chuck Reed, content manager, Whitney Karinek, community liaison, Jed Chang, Kat Herder, Tina Hart, and the official show cat, Libby Gillibow.
All of us at Team Saadisle School are part of the Onward Project that is led, curated, and championed by bestselling author Gretchen Rubin. You can learn more about that at theonwardproject.com. And if you're enjoying the show, I'd be super, super grateful if you would leave a quick rating and review. It just takes a second. Give us a little five-star review.
It helps other people discover the show. And you can also tell your friends or show them how to subscribe. There's still a whole world of people out there that do not listen to podcasts. And if you know somebody who needs another source of income, send them to us. We'll take care of them.
The show, as you know, is completely free and we want to continue leveling up this year. So speaking of this year, I hope you will join me again tomorrow and every day next week. Got more stories and actionable ideas. Consider this a short daily investment in yourself. Just takes 10 minutes a day.
Episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time. My name is Chris Guillebeau and you are listening to Saadisle School. [Music]
