Cuban Journalist Teaches Everyday Spanish Classes

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

If you speak another language, there is a natural side hustle waiting for you in the form of teaching, tutoring, or otherwise just sharing your knowledge. So today we'll look at a journalist from Cuba who immigrates to the US. At first, he speaks almost no English at all, but then learns the language and begins teaching his own. Muy bien. However, merely speaking a language doesn't qualify you to be a teacher.

That's another skill altogether. And as a teacher, especially a language teacher, it greatly helps to stand out in some fashion. So we'll consider how this guy does it, along with a few tips for someone else. Cuban journalist teaches everyday Spanish classes. It's coming right up after this shoutout to our sponsor.

Nibaldo Louisdis was 40 years old when he relocated from Cuba to the United States. Like many others from his home country, he dreamed of building a better life for himself in the land of the free. While life was indeed better in lots of ways in America, this doesn't mean it was easy. In fact, for Nibaldo and his wife, things were quite difficult. You see, in Cuba, Nibaldo had extensive qualifications.

With a bachelor's degree in economics and a journalism degree, you might think he'd easily land a job for a top national paper. After all, in his home country, that's exactly what he did. He worked as a journalist. But alas, in America, there was no big journalism job waiting. Nibaldo's qualifications weren't recognized, and making things even more difficult, he couldn't speak English very well.

Capitalism in a free market is what helped America prosper, but at that point in time, it was no friend of his. So although he was happy to have made it to the United States, for the first two and a half years in the country, he took low-level jobs at factories and cleaning restrooms and shopping malls to make ends meet. But anyone who can make it from Cuba to America is no slouch. Nibaldo had gumption, ambition, or what Spanish speakers might call gusto. He determined to work hard and improve his English in the hopes of getting a better job.

He turned to YouTube lessons and books to teach himself. Over time he improved, and soon his English was good enough that he had enough confidence to pursue a better job, one that would finally get him out of cleaning floors. It was Nibaldo's wife who suggested he try looking for a job teaching Spanish. He was outgoing, personable, and could break down complex topics into memorable lessons. She was convinced he'd love it, and now that he could speak both Spanish and English, he was a prime candidate for exactly that role.

So in 2015, four years after arriving in the country, he began looking for a job as a Spanish teacher. He applied for a position at a private school, and as fate would have it, he was accepted. Brought with his new career path, Nibaldo worked to become the best teacher he could be. Unfortunately, the job didn't pay as well as he'd hoped, so he soon began thinking of ways to make some extra money on the side. He was now in the USA, after all, where entrepreneurial activities were more feasible than in Cuba.

For a side hustle, Nibaldo thought he would try an extension of his day job. He figured he could find a few students and teach Spanish classes online or at night. Without any money allocated for marketing, he decided the best way to test the need for this service was to put an ad on Craigslist. It didn't take long for him to find his first customer, only two weeks to be exact. That's right, dos semanas.

He decided to charge $20 for his first lesson. In an effort to acquire more students, Nibaldo soon began posting videos on Instagram. For that, he had to come up with a catchy username, and he decided on "Spanish for every day." While education was the primary focus of his video lessons, Nibaldo also injected a bit of humor into them as well. To him, teaching doesn't have to be boring in order to be effective. In fact, it'll probably be more effective if it's not, so he comes up with funny phrases to use in those videos.

He also dresses in silly outfits to help with student retention. He attributes this as an important way for him to stand out from the crowd. By posting regularly and consistently and using relevant hashtags on his posts, Nibaldo was able to slowly gain more students. He conducted his classes online via video, often in Starbucks coffee shops around his local city of Louisville, Kentucky. That meant he had virtually zero startup or ongoing costs, and whatever he earned was profit.

Speaking of profit, he discovered that although $20 was a lot in Cuba, it was way too cheap for a Spanish lesson in America. So he gradually raised his prices, first to $25, then $35, and finally all the way to $40. He experimented with those prices, but it didn't seem to affect his ability to gain or keep students. As a matter of fact, some of his students have been with him for nearly two years, even if others only come for one or two lessons to learn about specific topics. But whatever the attrition rate, what he did worked quickly.

It continues to do so. Just eight months after his first customer, Nibaldo was earning $1,000 a month from his Spanish teaching side hustle, and that figure hasn't dropped since. For an immigrant from Cuba, the money is life-changing. It affords him the ability to buy several luxuries he wouldn't otherwise dream of. And perhaps more importantly, it allows him to send some money back to Cuba to improve the lives of his family back home.

All right, some tips to send out as a language teacher if you're out there and you're like, "I want to do this too. I want to do it in my own way." First of all, make it fun. Make it fun, make it not boring, make it something that people are excited to go to. I think there's a lot of people out there who would like to learn another language, whether it's a second or a third or fourth language or whatever, but it's kind of like being a writer. A lot of people want to be a writer.

They don't necessarily want to write, which is an issue, right? So you have to find a way to make it fun. Make the experience fun, make it interesting, make it compelling. Get people's attention. It's a very noisy world with lots of distractions, so whatever you can do to make it fun and attention-getting is good.

Use visual aids. So I was checking out his Instagram account, which is really fun, Spanish for every day. It's Spanish_for_everyday. We'll link it up in the notes. And like I mentioned briefly in the episode, he dresses up in these funny costumes.

He chooses idioms and slang, just real conversations. If you want to learn some Spanish phrases that you might not necessarily learn in your normal beginning Spanish class, it's helpful. It's helpful and fun. Also, you want to make sure that you are prepared for lessons. You want to make sure that you actually go into a lesson with an objective, not just, "Hey, what do you want to talk about today or what do you want to learn?

Here is what I want to teach you. Here is what you need to learn." And of course, we can modify it. Of course, we can make sure it matches your goals, etc. But I think it just shows respect for the learning process and for the student. When a teacher goes into an experience being prepared and with a plan.

And then last, I was thinking about this too. I'm not sure this is what Nibaldo has done, but creating group experiences can have some value as well. I was thinking in particular about Airbnb, like Airbnb experiences. I wonder if there's a way in your hometown of Louisville, Kentucky or wherever it is that you're from. There could be Spanish language immersion day trip or we're going to explore Cuban cuisine today or Spanish tapas or Mexican and Central American food or whatever it is.

Some kind of group experience might level up the individual lessons, at least for the ones that are in person. And of course, in this day and age, you can do online lessons just like he's doing. And so you're not limited to your hometown, there's just a lot of options and possibility out there. Okay, that's it for today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

We're going to link up Spanish for every day at sidehustleschool.com/962. Thank you so much, my friends. Muchas gracias. I'll be back again tomorrow with more. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.