This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, what's up and welcome. We have just finished week number 19 of season three outside of school school featuring coffee importing, dog loving and terrarium building, among others. That was just three. Speaking of three, there are less than three weeks, less than fewer than, there are, I don't know, you know, a bit more than two, fewer than three weeks until I will be in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Austin and Seattle. And that's just week one of the 100 Side Hustles Tour.
I'm really excited to bring you my brand new book, which features 100 of the very best stories from this podcast in highly visual form, and also an all new presentation that I'm taking to all these different cities. So can't wait for that coming up soon. But for now, in this action packed recap, I want to share a powerful, important strategy you can use while building an initial audience. This is for everybody out there who is trying to develop deeper relationships with their followers or to have more followers, more followers, better relationships with those followers, whether those are podcast listeners or YouTube viewers, blog readers, email subscribers, whatever it is. I'll talk about that in just a moment.
And I will also bring you an audio update from a previously featured Side Hustler. So glad you're here. My name is Chris Guillebeau, let's jump right in. [Music]
So I got the chance to read an upcoming manuscript, or I got the chance to read a manuscript for an upcoming book by Pat Flynn called "Superfans." And I really like this book. So this is not a pitch for the book because I don't think it actually comes out until later in the summer.
You can pre-order it now, I'm sure, but I'll tell you more about it when it comes out. What I liked, what I want to tell you about is he writes about this strategy called "Return Every Handshake." And basically the strategy is as much as possible, try to communicate with anyone who reaches out to you. And if anyone kind of extends their hand in some way, like for a handshake or a high five or a fist bump or whatever, do whatever you can to make sure that you return that. Now, I built my brand using a similar strategy. He talks about what he did, about how when he had his blog and people would leave comments, he tried to reply to every single comment.
It wasn't just that, he would also then go to that person's website or their blog and leave a comment on their blog. And then he would also email them to say, "Hey, just letting you know I really appreciate your comment. Looks like you're doing some cool stuff too." Then on top of that, he would make a note to follow up with that person a few weeks or a month or two later. And like I said, I built my brand using a similar strategy. I really, really relate to this idea of connecting with people directly whenever possible.
And I think what I kind of took away from what I was reading, here's the key point, because if you're just starting out, you're like, "Okay, cool, but I don't have 100 people a day leaving comments on my blog." Here's the key point. Everybody always focuses on this point about how it's not scalable. Well, you can do that now, but then once you grow, you won't be able to. And in some ways that's true. In some ways, like right now, to be honest, I'm actually struggling with this.
Like I read this and I'm like, "Man, I used to, I remember when I used to like respond to every email and every tweet or whatever. That was really fun. And like, I feel like I've gotten away from that a little bit. I don't quite know how to fix it." So here's what's cool. Like it gets harder as you go, but we can leave that point aside for now.
Here's what Pat said. "When you're small and just starting out, you can use the size of your audience and the simplicity of your business to your advantage. One of the advantages of being small is that you can better connect with your audience where there are fewer people following you. It's easier to talk to each of them one-on-one. So take the time to reply and reach out individually to everyone who emails or messages you, whether privately or publicly.
But you can also take that initial handshake a step further. Keep track of everyone who gets in touch and follow up with them later. To them, it'll come out of the blue, be completely unexpected, and it will leave a great impression." So think about it like that. Maybe it's not ultimately scalable and sustainable, at least not for thousands or tens of thousands of people. But Pat's key point is when you're small and just starting out, you can use the size of your audience and the simplicity of your business to your advantage.
So if you think, "I don't have a ton of followers," well, that's good in this case. For this strategy, it's good to not have a ton of followers because you can really just build these deep relationships with them. So my encouragement to you, if your business or side hustle or desired business or side hustle involves building relationships at all, which is probably 90% of the projects that we talk about in one way or another, you can do this right now. You can start right now. If you've got 10 Facebook friends, you could start with that.
If you've got an Instagram account that's got 40 followers or whatever the number is, you can start right now with those people. Whenever you get an email inquiry that comes into your website, whenever you get a track back or a link or somebody else's including a link to your site somewhere, there's all kinds of opportunities there. And I think you should think about that strategy. Return every handshake as much as possible. And if it gets complicated later, that's a good problem to have.
When you're getting going, don't worry about it. Just focus on returning every handshake. Focus on those interactions. Focus on those little moments of building value and making a difference in someone's life and perhaps even surprising them. Surprising them by remembering to follow up.
Surprising them by going above and beyond or answering not only their question, but maybe their next question or providing something even more helpful, whatever it is. Like you figured out what it looks like to you, but I think this strategy is very, very effective. And it's also fun. Like it's a lot of fun to do this. So thanks a lot to Pat for kind of reminding me of that.
And also just for framing it in this interesting way about how when you're small and you don't have a lot of followers, it actually works to your advantage. All right, return every handshake. Let's go to our audio update. This one features someone we featured on the program way back, I believe it was episode 320. So let's hear from Mike.
- Hey, this is Mike from Eldorado, California. My side hustle is resume writing. And it was featured on episode 320. Since then, I added paid link building posts to my blog. That ended up doubling my resume writing income.
Combined, I earned just over $30,000 in 2018, double what I earned in 2017. But Google didn't like these paid posts. They downgraded me and the post writing company backed off. My income was instantly cut in half. The gravy train had run off the tracks.
So I reassessed. A fellow side hustler told me about LinkedIn Profinder, a service LinkedIn has that matches service providers with prospects, including resume and LinkedIn profile writers. I decided to try it out, not expecting much. While was I wrong? The first day I got 101 requests.
Only one to 2% converted to paid clients. But by the end of the week, I was booked. Since then, I've become more selective about who I work with and increase my prices 30%. I'm now doing three to five resumes a week. It should be my best month in the four years I've side hustled.
I'm considering it a recovery and a win. What's my advice to you? Leverage your opportunities and don't bet your business on someone else's platform. What's in store for 2019? I'm gonna ride this LinkedIn opportunity and see what happens.
Maybe I'll double my income again this year, but it won't be something I'm gonna quit my day job for. Mike, congratulations. And thanks so much for that detailed update. Super cool about doubling your income and also recently having the best month in four years of side hustling. That is super cool.
And listeners, that tool that Mike mentioned is LinkedIn ProFinder. He ran into some problems with the black hat tactics before discovering that tool, which is called LinkedIn ProFinder. We're gonna link that up in the show notes. And everyone, if you'd like to follow along with Mike, it's mikemcrichie.com. Mike, m-c-r-i-t-c-h-i-e.com.
We will link that up as well. Again, congratulations. And hopefully you have another best month soon. [Music]
All right, here on the program, we continue to plow ahead toward June and beyond. June is soon, folks.
Summer's coming up, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. I just worked on a couple of the stories for next week that are really cool. One of them is a wedding planner who earns passive income with DIY flowers, which is actually earning tens of thousands of dollars a month through this really interesting model that I had never heard of before. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. Also got a finance guy from Australia, Southern Hemisphere shout out, who is making swimwear as well as hair braiding workshops and all kinds of other stuff, especially around the time of the book launch, which again begins on June 4th.
So before I go today, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who makes this show possible. And that is first and foremost, you, the listener. Thank you so much. You are a rock star. You're the reason we make this show.
I said in the first episode, 861 days ago, that if you make the commitment to make this part of your routine, I commit to supporting you and your request to create that new source of income. That side hustle that maybe you've thought about for a while and haven't turned into reality. Until now, I know that lots of our listeners are taking action and I'm always happy to hear that. I'm definitely let me know what you're working on and how things are going and how we can help. I also really appreciate producer Chuck Reed, content manager, Whitney Karinek, community liaison, Jed Chang, cat herder, Tina Hart, and unrelated, the official show cat, Libby Gillibo.
All of us at team side hustle school are part of the Onward Project that is curated and led by bestselling author, Gretchen Rubin. She recently introduced a new show on the network that I know has been in the works for a long time. It's called "Do the Thing" with Melissa Urban. It's all about making progress on that thing that you've been putting off. That thing that you really want to do again, but for whatever reason you've been stuck.
So it could be a side hustle or it could be something health related. It could be something totally different, whatever it is. I just love that whole mission, that whole ethos of that show. And for all of us on the Onward Project, but certainly side hustle school as well, this is a free listener supported show. So I would be super grateful if you would leave us a quick little rating and review an Apple podcast.
Just takes a second and it helps other people discover the show. You can also tell your friends or even better show them how to subscribe. If you know somebody who needs another source of income, say, "Hey, there's this free show. "It's out every single day. "It's less than 10 minutes long." You're busy, but every single day you're gonna get a different idea.
Or at least you're gonna hear a story about how some regular person out there, not an internet celebrity, not somebody who had a ton of followers or a ton of money, but they had a regular job and they found a way to make extra money on the side, pursue a creative project, do something for themselves. A lot of our listeners are doing a lot for other people. This is about doing something for yourself. So I hope you'll join me again tomorrow and every day next week. Much more is coming up.
Consider this an investment in yourself. 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.
