This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up, my friends? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. We have just finished week number 32 of season three. All kinds of stories in the mix.
This week featured a Nashville Lyft driver who earns an extra $1,000 a month storing luggage for her passengers. We also looked at the type one diabetic travel blogger, or perhaps we could say the travel blogger who specializes in writing about traveling with type one diabetes, couples counseling that leads to an international whiskey brand, and more. Over here in my world, I am writing a book. I'm trying to stay active, going to yoga, running, et cetera. Speaking of wellness in general, I saw an interesting news article that came out.
I'm gonna talk to you about that in just a moment, have some comments on that. It's about health coaching in particular. But also I had a conversation with some folks with CBS this morning, and it was really interesting. In talking with a producer, she was saying like, "Hey, side hustling, millennials are really into it, "but we are noticing that people of all ages are into it. "We are noticing that even some older people "who are retired or interested in a second career, "a second act, a third act, or whatever, "are into side hustling.
"And have you seen this too?" And I was like, well, funny that you mentioned that because I've been seeing this for the entire 10 years that I have been writing about this topic. The entire 10 years I've been writing about microentrepreneurship and starting a little business for yourself. I remember way, way back in the first few months of my blog, and what was that, spring 2008, beginning to hear from people who said like, "Hey, I'm not 20 years old or 30 years old or whatever. "I'm 60 or I'm 70 or older in some cases, "but I'm doing this too. "I'm doing this in my own way and here's my project "and I thought I was the only person." And in that time, since then, 10 years, I've held events all over the world, lots of conversations and meetups and book tour stops and other things with all kinds of people.
And it always makes me happy at these events when we have a pretty diverse representation of people. And I would say that's the case more often than not. Diversity in terms of racial or ethnic background, men or women, or folks with a different gender or sexual identity, people from different economic backgrounds and so on, but also, as mentioned, age. So I really do believe side of slang and all this kind of stuff that I talk about is for everyone. If you're out there and feel like you don't fit into whatever group that you imagine is listening to this podcast or doing these kinds of things, living uncomventionally or whatever it is, I just want you to know that you're not alone.
And I'm also glad that the media and the press in general is beginning to notice that too. I think more attention on this topic is only gonna be good for everybody out there who is trying to create something for themselves. All right, so getting onto this news article that I read, and once I read this article, I went and read a few others, kind of read up on the whole topic. And I'll give you my opinion about this. It's kind of a controversial thing, but it's not just what I think that's important so much as it is like, here's something you should be aware of if you're in the field of health coaching, broadly speaking.
And what brought this up? This was a lawsuit filed by a health coach in Florida. I believe her name is Coques del Castillo. And she was basically suing the state after being investigated and fined by the health department. They said that she couldn't be a health coach or dispense dietary advice without being licensed.
She said, it's my first amendment right to free speech. So what happened in this court case? The case proceeded. The court recently ruled on the party's cross motions for summary judgment. And the court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment and denied the plaintiffs.
Long way of saying basically she lost her lawsuit. Like the court upheld the state's decision that says, hey, actually you need to have a license before you can go around dispensing health advice. And so then this led to a whole series of other articles about the topic. And red one that I saw is like, hey, do you wanna make money giving out diet tips? Well, in Florida, you'll have to get a bachelor's degree in a state license to tell people how to eat better.
And so there's a little bit of bias or leading sentiment perhaps in that statement. But it effectively is true in the sense that the state is saying, we uphold our right to be able to monitor what kind of health advice people are giving out. So if you are a health coach in Florida, you absolutely should pay attention to that. You probably have heard about it already. But if you're a health coach somewhere else, or if you're just working in the world of wellness or nutrition, diet, fitness, et cetera, I think you may also want to pay attention to it.
You may want to scope things out where you live to kind of understand what you're able to do, what you're not able to do. And my opinion on this is, there's a lot of bad advice out there. And in the world of nutrition or health in general, I understand the need for some sort of regulation. Now at the same time, I also believe in alternative medicine, or at least I believe there's a place for that. It also seems pretty clear that there is just some gatekeeping happening here.
And in some cases, gatekeeping is good. Like you can't just go out tomorrow and say like, "Hey, everybody, I've decided to become a medical doctor, "therefore I am one, or I'm a dentist. "I'm ready to open up my practice." Like I think there's a good reason why there are laws against that. And at the same time, the field of continuing education, as we've talked about, there's a whole industry that exists to kind of prop itself up and to enrich itself. It's not just one industry, actually.
There's a lot of industries like that. So however it kind of plays out, it's a murky kind of thing. But I guess the overall point is, it's not whether you think this is good or not good. If you are advising people about nutrition or about health, then you need to understand what you're able to do and what you're not able to do based on where you live, as well as based on where you practice, right? Because you could be living in one place, but if you're serving people in another state, another province, another area, you might need to understand what the laws are in that place as well.
And then last but not least, the last thing I want to say about this is, for lots of businesses, the regulation in the US is very, very simple. So if you hear this, you're like, "Wow, this is daunting." Understand that there are a lot of things you can do where you don't have to worry about this pretty much at all. You can get a business license online for $50 or less. In some cases, you may not even need a license at all, and you can operate a lot of small businesses as a sole proprietor. It's just that for things in the wellness world, diet, nutrition, et cetera, it may be a bit more complex.
Okay, let me know if you have an opinion on that. If you disagree with me, that's fine, but I would love to know what you think, or if you have any experience with that. Would love to hear from any health coaches out there, as well as anybody on either side of that debate. [Music]
All right, let's go to the audio update. This one features Andrew, who has built a very successful hustle slash business, which has actually grown it quite a bit, as you'll hear, around the topic of humor.
So take it away, Andrew. - Hello, this is Andrew Tarvin, the self-proclaimed humor engineer from New York City. My side hustle is "Humor That Works," and was featured on episode 364. Since the podcast came out, things have been going well. I recently launched my third book called "Humor That Works," the missing skill for success and happiness at work, which was called the funniest business book I've ever read by my mom.
Another huge update is that my second TEDx talk, this one on the skill of humor, has now been viewed over 5 million times, and has led to a big increase in business. In fact, my revenue has doubled over the last year, all in part thanks to what one YouTube commenter called a talk that is pretty okay. My biggest learning recently has been how to delegate. For the first eight years of my business, I was like Frank Sinatra and always tried to do things my way. I did almost everything myself, but that's not sustainable or scalable, so I had to get comfortable delegating to others knowing that they may not do it the way I would, and that it may not be perfect to start.
But done is better than perfect, and you'll never help others grow without giving them a chance to succeed and improve. Along those lines, we are working to create more online content to share the message of humor to more people in more parts of the world. We may not be able to visit every country like Chris, but we can provide online resources accessible to everyone no matter what they do. You can see what we're up to at humorthatworks.com. All of this while I'm working to visit my last continent of Antarctica by the end of the year.
If any of you know any people or penguins in the region, or just wanna learn more about humor in the workplace, let's chat. Andrew, thank you so much for the update, and congratulations, 5 million views. Yeah, that's pretty awesome, well done. I also love the advice about delegating. I have to say I'm still working on that, but it's important advice.
So whenever I hear people talk about that, I'm like, yes, I need to learn that too. And indeed done is better than perfect. At least I have learned that one because if I didn't, the podcast would never go out. You gotta let go of perfection if you ever want to ship anything. Okay, as Andrew said, you can follow along with him at humorthatworks.com.
More of these to come, and if you have a question or comment, give me a call, 844-948-7853. You can also email podcast@cidestleschool.com. [Music]
Coming up on the program, we've got a feature about a woman who's a professional organizer and actually makes a change, pivots, as the kids say these days, to doing something different. Actually, it's much smarter, not just different, but smarter, and now she's making more money and having more fun at the same time. We also got something about Romania and a story that features a wooden, hand-carved, homemade, handmade, both of those, I guess, home decor hustle that starts with just $1,000 and is now earning six figures.
So lots of good stuff coming up. If you are listening, you're the reason I make this show. I said in the first episode, "How long ago was that, 952 days?" That's right. I said then that if you make the commitment to make this part of your routine just 10 minutes a day, a small but important commitment to yourself, then I too commit to supporting you in your quest to create that new source of income. Whoever you are, whatever your background is, whether you've had a hundred different businesses or this is completely new to you, whether you ever imagined you would be an entrepreneur, doesn't matter.
You need a side hustle, you need a second source of income, and I want to help you make that happen. And I also want to say thanks to other folks who've been working on the program. Producer Chuck Reed, content manager at Whitney Karinic, community liaison, Jed Chang, Kat Herter, Tina Hart, the official show cat, Libby Gillibow, colleagues from Cadence 13, and all of us at Team Side Hustle School are part of the Onward Project. What's the Onward Project? Well, it is founded, led, and curated by best-selling author Gretchen Rubin.
It's a collection of podcasts all about making your life happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. You can check it out at the onwardproject.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. This is a free listener-supported show. If you're enjoying it, I'd be super grateful if you'd leave me a quick little rating and review an Apple podcast. Just takes a second.
It helps other people discover the show. You can also tell your friends. Even better, show them how to subscribe. If you know somebody out there who needs another source of income, who needs a creative outlet, who needs more options, who hates their job, even if they love their job, it doesn't matter. Everybody needs more than one source of income.
Send them to us. We'll take care of them. I often say inspiration is good, but action's even better. It's because I want you to take action. I want to feature your story, and I look forward to hearing about it.
I also hope you'll tune in tomorrow and every day next week. Our episodes go online at 6.01 a.m. Eastern Time. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is, once again, Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
