This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Welcome, what's up my friends? This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. We have just finished week number 31 of season three. This week featured a Toronto power lifter who bakes custom cakes, a Texas couple who turns test scores into treasure, and my personal favorite, a Reddit secret Santa who delivers a sack full of adventure. All kinds of good stuff.
It is also a new month, the month of August for those listening in real time. And I'm really enjoying the season. I had a very, very busy June. I went to like 14 different cities, hosted the world domination summit at the end of the month. In July, I still had a bunch of things related to those projects.
I also filmed two new courses for LinkedIn that will be out later this year. And now I'm just focusing on some creative work. I've been writing a new book and so it's fun to kind of delve into that process. And I also want to say, as I was making some notes about what to share with you here today, I also just want to say that I am grateful for you. Like I am amazed and honored that I can still make this show 946 days in.
I do feel like I live in the get to world, not the have to world. Like I get to do things I'm excited about. I get to work on work that I find meaningful instead of just like, here's what I have to do. I have to do this, you know, to get to the weekend or whatever. And my goal is always, you know, for you to spend more time in that world too.
That's why I hope this show will be helpful to you in a practical way, giving you some ideas, maybe encouraging you on, maybe just supporting you in your goals to create freedom for yourself. Now, speaking of goals, I want to talk today about Warren Buffett's five goals rule. Something I've been thinking about a lot over the past week or two as I have been shifting into that creative phase. You may have heard this story written up somewhere about a conversation that Warren Buffett supposedly had with his airplane pilot long ago. I know the story may be apocryphal at this point.
Like I said, it's been told and written a lot of different ways, but I think there's still value in it. I've been pondering it a lot over the past couple of weeks. In short, basically it is the 525 rule or the 525 strategy. Basically it is a reminder that it's not what you do, it's what you don't do that drives your productivity and performance. So in the story, his pilot came to him and said, you know, Warren Buffett, what is your secret to success?
And Warren Buffett said, well, here's what you do. Go and write down your list of top 25 goals. You know, write down the 25 things that are most important to you, the 25 things that you most want to achieve. So the guy goes away and does that. Comes back and Warren Buffett says, okay, step two is, you know, out of those 25 goals, identify which five are the most important to you.
So like your five top priorities out of this list of 25 things that you want to do. So the pilot goes away, does that. And Warren Buffett says, okay, so tell me how you're going to accomplish this. Like how are you going to deal with the five priorities as well as the other 20 things? And the pilot says, okay, well, the top five, you know, those are my top priorities, those are the things I want to do most of all.
So I'm going to give those most of my attention, but I'm not going to forget about the other 20 either because those are also important. So whenever I'm not working on the top five or whenever it seems good to fit something else in, and that's when I'll tackle that second list. Okay, and I think that's probably an answer that a lot of us would give. I think that's probably an answer that I would give, you know, to be totally honest. And in this apocryphal story, Warren Buffett supposedly says, actually, you've got it completely wrong.
Everything you didn't circle just became your avoid at all cost list. And all those other things, those 20 things are the enemy of you accomplishing your top five. And it's really tricky because all those 20 things are actually things that you want to do, right? It's not like things that you're trying to outsource or stop doing or delegate or whatever, right? It's a list of things that you're actually excited about, believe in and would love to pursue.
The problem is you won't be able to accomplish 25 big things at once. So what you need to do is, you know, this is again, Warren Buffett's supposed advice is just get rid of the other 20, just forget about them and do not pursue them at all. Because if those top five are truly your priority, then that's what you're gonna focus on, all right? So, you know, like I said, I've been thinking about this because I truly am the archetype of the person who's like, yeah, I've got my five, but I also got my 20. And I work on the 20 in addition to the five.
So I decided to try and experiment and identify throughout my week, how much time and attention I was giving to my main things versus my secondary things. And so I actually did take some time to say, okay, what are the five most important goals that I have? Goals slash value slash practices slash routine. There's a little bit of ambiguity there, at least in my list, but I had my five and every day in my journal, I'd write down, you know, five slash 20. And I would annotate what I had done that day.
And I would allocate basically, is this in the five or is this in the 20, you know, or is this in the other category of like other stuff, basically. And just by being intentional about this, just by noting it, it's causing me to ask some bigger questions in myself. So I just wrapped up a couple of projects that took a lot of work. For the most part, I enjoyed them. And I'm not talking about WDS, by the way, like I love doing WDS.
I love being able to go out and meet my readers and listeners on book tour. That's wonderful. Just some other stuff that I've been doing. I thought, you know, for the most part, I enjoyed those things, but I'm not certain they fit within the five goals construct. So what does that mean?
You know, and I don't know for sure yet if it means that I shouldn't have prioritized them or I shouldn't have done those projects at all, but it probably is fair to say that they took time and attention away from the five goals. Okay, so just something that I've been thinking about and we'll see where I ended up taking it. Let me know what you think about that. Let me know if you have taken some time to identify your top 25 and then circled your top five, and then how you think you're gonna manage that issue of the five versus the 20. So food for thought there.
All right, so in the moment, I've got the audio update of the week for you. This one features Lenny, who has built a successful business helping people spot typos in their blog posts. I remember working on that fun story quite a while back. So update from him. But first, here's a message on behalf of our sponsor.
I really appreciate them allowing us to bring the show to you completely free, keep the lights on, feed the cat, all those good things. So sponsor message, then we'll hear from Lenny. [Music]
Hi, this is Lenny Braun from Brooklyn, New York. My side hustle is the blog proofreader. It was featured in episode 399.
Since then, I actually lost one of my biggest clients, which made up a significant portion of my revenue. And I had to go out and hustle for more work. Within a few months, I was actually able to get two new steady clients and even had the previous client come back to me as well. I was also able to leverage my experience to gain freelance work from a large content provider for a stable paycheck every month. My monthly earnings have now doubled from roughly 1000 per month to 2000 per month, and sometimes more on a regular basis.
Although I've gained more clients in total, I've also recently lost a steady client. However, this time, I was the one who decided to let the client go. I was beginning to get bogged down by too much time spent working. With a recent addition to my family, we had a baby. I decided it's better that I stick with a slightly smaller amount of hours working.
And that's my advice to everyone out there. Make sure you decide how much time you want to allocate to work and stick with it. It's not worth working all day if you can't spend quality time with your loved ones. Other than that, I'll just continue doing what I'm doing for now. Steady sailing from my side hustle at this time.
If you have any questions or just want to reach out to me, please visit the blog proofreader.com or email me at lenny@theblogproofreader.com. Thanks and hustle on. [Music]
Thank you so much, Lenny, for that update. Good work on getting the new clients and recovering the lost one and firing the other one who is taking up too much time. Thanks as well for that advice.
Make sure you decide how much time you want to spend on your project. Definitely good to be intentional, as always. Whether you're pursuing your five goals or your 25 or whatever it is, being intentional and making decisions for yourself is always a good thing. Once again, Lenny is at the blog proofreader.com. [Music]
If you have a question or comment for me, feel free to call up the Hustle Hotline 8449 Hustle or you can just use your phone to make a voice memo and email it to podcast@sidehustleschool.com.
Coming up on the program soon, we've got stories about Locker Reynolds in Nashville, the New Jersey Veg Fest, and something called Aida's Attic. All right, so all kinds of stuff. There's also, let's see, I'm looking through here, online jobs, Scotch whiskey. I myself am surprised week by week at all the different stories that are coming in. All the things that people like you, perhaps, are out there doing.
If it's not you specifically, someone like you, someone who has a regular job, someone who's got responsibilities but is finding a way to invest in themselves to make something of their own, whether they eventually go full time with it or whether it just becomes that extra source of income, all good things. There's no downside. So my commitment is to support you and your quest to create that new source of income. And if you are listening, you're the reason I make this show. We are at the end of the week.
I want to say thank you 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 Saddestle School are part of the Onward Project that is led by bestselling author and my good friend Gretchen Rubin. Check out her show, "Happier with Gretchen Rubin" as well as "Happier in Hollywood" and the popular program from Melissa Urban, "Do the Thing." This is a free listener supported show. If you're enjoying it, I'd be super grateful for your quick ratings and reviews in Apple Podcasts. 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 out there who needs another source of income, send them to us. We'll take care of them. I often say inspiration is good, but action is better. That's because my hope is that you will take action.
You will do something about this. I want to feature your story one day. So I look forward to hearing about it and I hope you'll join me tomorrow and each day next week. Our episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time every day.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from the Onward Project.
