This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
What's up my friends, welcome to Side Hustle School and welcome to our weekly recap. We have just finished week number 20 of season 3. This week featured hair braiding, swimsuits from Australia, DIY wedding flowers, and a man who invents a mug made out of ice. You know you need one of those the next time you go to the sauna and you require an ice cold beer. What are you going to do?
Well you're going to need to have a mug made out of ice and that's what that guy invented. Alright, less than two weeks until I will be in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Austin, and Seattle. And that is just the first week of my new tour. I'm super excited. You can get all the details and sign up at sidehustleschool.com slash tour.
We already have hundreds of people who have signed up all across the US and Canada and I can't wait to see all of you. And if your city is not listed on that schedule, I apologize, I'm doing a bit of an abbreviated tour. It's not abbreviated, I'm going to like 14 cities, but just because I have the world domination summit at the end of June, I can't go out and do like a 35 city tour like I've done before. So hopefully I'll try to get as many places as I can and then if all goes well we can hit up some more in July or August. Alright let's jump in.
So in this recap, I want to share something that I pulled from an upcoming story. The story is actually coming out in a few days but I like this so much I wanted to talk about it here. And I'll also bring you an audio update with a big success from a previously featured side hustler. This is a guy who's actually going all in after seeing a tremendous return on the project he's been working on for a while. So first of all, this is a quote I'm going to share with you from a story that's coming out as I said in this coming week.
You could call this essentially a quick note on why I make this show. And this is from a guy who's on track to earn $36,000 this year from making YouTube videos. They're actually YouTube videos of him playing video games which I think as I said in the episode, I was obviously born at the wrong time because if it was possible to make money playing video games, posting them on YouTube 20 years ago, I don't know if I ever would have got into traveling the world and writing books and doing podcasting. So probably good that it wasn't. But awesome for him.
On track to earn $36,000. And here's what he said. He said, "I'm not going to lie. When I got my first YouTube paycheck, I teared up. I felt like I won the lottery.
You're telling me people love my channel so much that I could actually make an extra income to cover my expenses on YouTube. It was a dream come true." Now that sentiment is something that I hear day in and day out from a lot of our listeners, from the featured case studies. We always ask people in our interview process, "What did it feel like the first time you got paid?" The first time a customer purchased something from your online store, the first time a client hired you to do something, or in this case, the first time that YouTube sent him a check. And these kind of sentiments of validation, essentially, are so celebratory and yet also so common. When I say common, I don't mean to denigrate them in any way.
It's actually a wonderful thing. What I mean is just like this is a shared story across so many different people who are pursuing side hustles. The first time they get paid, they feel so great. Like this guy said, I teared up. I felt like I won the lottery.
And his first paycheck from YouTube probably wasn't that big. It was probably something small, but he still felt so good. And so because I know this is true, and I hear this, like when I go out and do events, I always ask people to stand up and talk about the first time they got paid for something outside of their day job. Since I know this, this is why I think your goal should be to get to your first $100 as soon as possible, like your first $100 or even your first $50, whatever it is, the first nominal amount of money, the first time you get paid to do something. Don't think about the big business plan.
Don't think about the startup. Think about doing what's in front of you. It's like I talked about, I think it was last week or the week before. If you're not sure what the big thing is, then just do what's in front of you. In this guy's case, he had been making some other videos and they weren't going super well.
But then one day he just decided to record a video of him playing this particular game. I'll tell you the whole story in a couple of days. But basically that was the thing that was in front of him. And when he uploaded it, he got more views from that video than anything else. And so therefore the thing in front of him was to say, okay, this is interesting.
People are somehow inspired and motivated and encouraged by these videos. So I'm going to keep making them. And so from then he went on to make I think a different video every day or he just really, really devoted himself to it. So don't worry about the big business plan to what's in front of you. Again, your goal is to get to that first $100.
Now after that, your goal is to build a sustainable income. And then depending on what happens, you may end up facing the choice that you'll hear about next in the audio update. So good little segue here. I want to share with you an update from someone we featured way back in the program. He's got a lot of stuff that has happened since then.
So I'll let him tell you about that. And then I'll have some comments as well. I believe this is Gabe. So let's hear from him. Hey, this is Gabe from Salt Lake City, Utah.
My site hustle is SI certs and online construction, education and training company. It was featured on episode 311. So since our episode aired, I've taken on our first full time employee. Well, that was a big step for us. As until recently, our company was a select few spending hours and hours and hours to build it.
All of us worked full time jobs, but even bigger, I quit my day job. My side hustle became my full time hustle. It's been awesome, but honestly also a challenge. For almost 20 years, I've grown accustomed to going to a day job every day, not anymore. So now I'm challenged to find a productive working routine, balanced family activities, things like that.
It may sound funny or silly, but actually it has not been easy. Well, since our episode aired on Side Hustle School, we noticed our site traffic increase and it's opened up some other opportunities with other podcasts who have interest in our story. Not only that, our revenues have just climbed and allowed me to quit my day job and maintain the same lifestyle that we had prior. So what's up next for SI certs? Well we're growing, and that's a great thing of course, but with growth comes growing pains.
We need a total revamp of our user and company dashboard. Now that we have lots of companies on board, we need major UI improvements. We're also launching 15 more courses this year, and right now we have 10, so it'll be a busy year for us and myself. I better figure out how to be productive. Awesome, congratulations Gabe.
Thank you so much for sharing that update as well. Lots of great news in that report. Congratulations on taking that big leap to go full time. I know that's been in the works for a while. Gabe was actually earning a pretty good full-time income from his side hustle, but continued to work the day job just because he liked the day job.
As you heard, now he's having some challenges adjusting, which is something that I often hear as well. Going from side hustle to full-time business can be harder than you expect. You have to build a routine into your schedule and allow for some transition time. That seems like he's doing really well, first full-time employee, making a lot of new courses. Gabe is also, by the way, in the 100 Side Hustles book.
The book that's coming out really soon that I'm going on tour for, we've got a bit more about his story there. If you would like to follow along with him now, you can do so at sicerts.com. That's S-I-Certs, C-E-R-T-S dot com. We're going to link that up in the show notes, and again Gabe, good luck being productive. Somehow, I don't think you'll have a problem in the long term.
Lots more stuff coming up on the show, including that episode I just talked a little bit about. We're actually going to call that one Professor Starts Marvelous YouTube channel. You'll understand the pun there, marvelous, once we get to the episode 872. Also a party lover who starts a custom confetti business. That one was fun as well.
In addition, I think we're featuring a fire protection engineer, a physical therapist, and a wedding coordinator. That's all coming up in just the next few days. I'm super excited to bring that to you. Before I sign off for the week, which I'm going to do now because it is the end of the week, at least for me here. I've got a long list of stuff I need to do to get ready for the week.
I'm sure you do as well. We never want to take your time for granted, but I do want to say thank you. I want to say thank you for listening. I want to say thank you for being part of this Hadasil School community. This is a small army of remarkable people all across the planet, in fact.
People listening from lots of different countries, different backgrounds, different ages. We've got some students. We've got some retired people. We've got people all in between. I'm just so excited that you have chosen to make this part of your routine.
My commitment is to support you as much as I can in your quest to create that new source of income so that you can tear up when you get your check from YouTube. You can say, "Wow, I never thought I was going to be an entrepreneur. I never even had a desire to do that, but all of a sudden, I found a way to make money for myself." That just feels good. It feels empowering. It gives me more autonomy, choice, freedom, etc.
It's not just me, by the way. It's working to make this happen. We've got producer Chuck Reed, content manager Whitney Karinek, community liaison Jed Chang, cat herder Tina Hart, and the official show cat Libby Gillipo. A few other people are going to be joining our team soon. I'll tell you about them soon as well.
We're also part of The Onward Project, which is curated and led by bestselling author Gretchen Rubin. I always appreciate Gretchen. Be sure you're subscribed to her podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin. She has also introduced a new program to the lineup recently called Do The Thing with Melissa Urban. It's a great show that is shot up to the top of the Apple Podcast chart and it's well-deserved.
Speaking of Apple Podcasts, I'm always grateful when our listeners give us a quick little rating and review. It just takes a second. It helps other people learn about the show. Thank you for doing that. I know a lot of you have done that and I'm very, very grateful.
You can also tell your friends or even better show them how to subscribe. If you know somebody who needs another source of income, send them to us. We'll do our best to take care of them. In closing, I often say inspiration is good, but action's better. It's my hope that you'll be inspired, but it will also lead you to some positive change in your life.
I look forward to hearing about that. I hope you'll join me tomorrow and every day next week. Consider this a short daily investment in yourself and our episodes go online every day at 601 a.m. eastern time. Thanks so much.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
