This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hello and welcome back. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School where every day you'll hear a different story of someone who starts a hustle without quitting their day job, and usually in a limited amount of time because if you're like me and the people that we feature on the show, you're pretty busy. Today's story is really fun. It's about a California government employee who becomes a part-time wedding photographer by posting an ad on Craigslist. Yesterday, you heard about a man who creates a $3,000
a month hustle by answering people's questions about cruises. Today's story has a similar result that government employee you'll hear about also makes actually more than $3,000 a month from his hustle, but in a very different way by providing a service. Remember, we talked briefly last week about different categories of hustles. There's a product, service, also reselling, affiliate, the arts, other stuff we haven't even got into yet. Now, it's not that any one category is better in general, but one side hustle category is probably better for you. So pay attention as we go along and see which stories resonate the most with you
both in terms of what the featured side hustler is doing as well as how they're doing it. And now, our story. Oliver Asis works as a civil engineer for the state of California. He's also an amateur landscape photographer with a good eye and a lot of technical skill. When a friend asked him to photograph her wedding, he was happy to say yes, but just an hour later, he started to panic as the reality of what he'd committed to set in.
He was a good photographer, but he'd never shot a wedding before, and he hadn't even been to a lot of weddings. He knew that most weddings follow a general protocol, and he thought it'd probably be a good idea to get a lot of photos of the bride, but he also figured that wedding photography was the kind of thing you don't really learn until you do it. Now, plenty of people in Oliver's situation would have done one of two things. They would have either canceled that commitment out of fear, or they'd plow ahead and just kind of hope for the best. Now, Oliver was smart. He had a third and better idea. He decided
to gain experience by offering to shoot a wedding for a very low fee for the first couple who took him up on the offer. He posted the deal on Craigslist. Cheap, but hardworking wedding photographer available for hire. Price is $250. He put it bluntly when he told me this story later. He said, "You know, I didn't want to mess up my friend's wedding, but if
I mess something up for a stranger, I wouldn't feel as bad." So after he made an appointment to meet the frugal bride-to-be who took him up on the offer, he realized he didn't really have a portfolio to show her. Thinking quickly, he went through some of his favorite landscape photos, which didn't relate to weddings in any way, but it was all he had, and sent a few of them off to the printer. Since he didn't know what to charge and the whole thing was an experiment, he figured that at that point, it didn't matter. Well, fortunately, he didn't mess up the stranger's wedding. He actually did a great job. It was a learning experience
that gave him more confidence for the next one, and the bride loved the photos. That first gig paid just $250 for a lot of work, and then his friend paid him $500 for hers the next month. But now, with more experience and a portfolio of actual wedding photos, he quickly became able to charge a lot more. So he now does at least one wedding a month for a starting price of $3,500. Oliver's story is a classic side hustler narrative. He didn't know how to do something, so he
figured it out. He knew he was a good photographer. He had the technical skill. He was also good at working with people. So for him, it was just a matter of understanding the protocol, the process of good wedding photography, the best practices. And he gained that initial
experience through his Craigslist wedding. This story also illustrates an important side hustle principle. Start before you're ready, and then improve or improvise even as you go along. Oliver didn't get caught up in lots of administrative details. As he grew, as he improved his skills, he focused entirely on the customer experience. And then later,
as he grew his hustle, he also raised his prices to a much more reasonable amount. So these two areas, helping people more and making more money, should be your focus as you prepare to launch your hustle. And you as a hustler, you have an advantage over full-time business owners, people who want to be "entrepreneurs." Your advantage is that you don't have much time to waste because you are busy. You have other responsibilities. And so as you build your hustle, you really want to focus on those essentials, on helping people more, making more money. That's what
Oliver's done. And if he wanted to, this hustle is going so well, he could probably do it full-time. You know, if he did two weddings a month instead of just one, he'd make more than $80,000 a year from it. But for now, at least, he's happy with his job. And he's also very happy about the ability to take wedding gigs and make more money whenever he needs.
Well, it may not happen exactly like that for you. But if you listen to these stories and you start applying them to the hustle you're going to build this year, you will see results over time. Remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. And hey, by the way, you don't want to miss tomorrow's story. If you thought it was crazy that way back on episode two, a man in Scotland makes $700 a month for fish tank reviews that he wrote three years ago. Well, just wait till you hear what
a woman from Colorado is doing. I had to verify that this was an actual thing because at first I thought someone was playing a joke on me, but it's no joke. Pretty crazy story. So make sure you're subscribed to the show in iTunes. You can also follow it on Spotify. You can
just come straight to sidehustleschool.com. So you get notifications when new episodes are out. They go live at 6 0 1 a.m. Eastern time every single day. I hope to see you then.
I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
