This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
And today's story, welcome to Silence School, by the way. And today's story, a health and wellness graphic designer experiments with many options before learning that she works best with clients in the fitness and wellness fields. Now, how about you, dear listener, are you building a stepping stone path to your ultimate destination? Whatever your goal is, are you making progress? Are you learning as you go?
Now, here is a test, quick and easy two question test. Number one, have you recently tried to do something new or different? Do you have experiments? Are you experimenting? Are you trying different stuff?
And number two, does every part of your work feel effortless and harmonious? You can say yes to that. Every part of my work feels effortless, harmonious, but I am experimenting, I'm trying new things. Amazing, congratulations. If that's your situation, you are ahead of most of us.
If no, if there is some part that doesn't feel effortless, the follow-up is, so what is happening with the parts that don't, okay? So if you aren't regularly examining and addressing those things, chances are you're gonna become stuck and stagnated. Like you're not gonna grow, you're not gonna get further down that path to whatever your ultimate destination is. I was thinking about this as I was working on the episode. I remembered that in my early days of online writing, I would do anything for anyone.
If any publication or blog or anybody out there wanted me to do something, I would write for them. And among other things, I wrote a travel column for the Oregonian. That's my hometown paper in Portland. It was once a well-renowned newspaper. Now it has kind of gone the way that a lot of newspapers have.
The point is I wrote this travel column, a weekly column for two to three months, and basically nobody read it. Like I got zero feedback on it. It also wasn't very good. So there might be some connection between those two things or there might not be, it's hard to know. And then lastly, I got paid a very small amount of money for writing it.
So nobody was reading it, it wasn't very good, and I got paid very little to do it. So I kind of realized after a couple of months, this was a great experiment. Let's stop experimenting with this and let's try something else. So do experiment, but then learn what works and adapt from there. So I'll say a bit more about this at the end of the story.
For now, graphic designer runs intervals and wellness industry is coming right up. Stay tuned. [Music]
During college, Jess Freeman designed a T-shirt for a group on campus. In return, she earned a grand total of $10 and a free T-shirt. This was the humble beginning of her side hustle journey.
When she finished her degree in graphic design, she worked as an intern and communications manager at local churches. After a couple of years, she moved on to full-time work at a creative agency. Throughout her time working a day job, Jess often had a steady stream of freelance work as well. One time, a friend of a friend recommended her to some local moms who wanted to start a science subscription box for kids. Jess designed the instruction cards and booklet that came with the box.
Getting this job was especially helpful because she had just moved to a new city and didn't know many people. Another time, a coworker recommended her to a woman needing a website for her nonprofit. Jess had dabbled in website work, but didn't think she wanted to jump fully into web design. But she kept getting recommendations from others to build sites for local businesses. It took a few contracts for her confidence to grow, and she finally listed web services on her own website.
She began working with other freelancers to create their online presence and branding. Soon, this graphic design and website building side hustle was bringing in more than double her salary. So one Friday night when she came home from work, she told her husband she was not happy at her job. They talked it over and decided it was time to jump wholeheartedly into what she called Jess Creatives. She gave notice to her job on Monday, and after only three weeks, Jess had a wait list of interested clients.
One thing that helped was to try as many types of projects as she could. This way she could build her business and start zeroing in on what she was particularly good at. Jess says that finding her niche was a long process, and at first it wasn't even an intentional one. It started by making small tweaks to her own website, gently signaling to others, and perhaps herself, who her ideal clients were. In the process, she learned she loved working with female business owners in the health and wellness industry.
Jess naturally gravitated to that industry in part because she was diagnosed as a type one diabetic at the age of three, so she'd always been interested in wellness. She narrowed her focus by sending out an email to her health and wellness clients, telling them about her shift. She also asked them to spread the word to their colleagues. Next, she focused her social media platform towards health and wellness. This included a YouTube channel, a podcast, Instagram, a blog, and of course, her website.
During this time, she also engaged with as many wellness professionals as she could find, both online and offline. Her goal was to get in front of as many people in her field as possible. With an initial startup cost of just $20 a month for her website and a projected income of $80,000 this year, Jess' creatives is in good shape. Additionally, 90% of her clients now come from her desired field of health and wellness. But not everything has been as easy as jumping jacks.
She experienced some setbacks, including two big ones. Jess tried launching a course, which resulted in no sales. That's right, zero sales. She also tried to launch a live event, and no one signed up. That's right, zero registrations.
Looking back, she says she would have asked her audience what they wanted, instead of assuming that she knew. Another lesson she learned is to hire others for the parts of the work she doesn't excel in. Jess says she wishes she would have gotten help with marketing and hired someone to write the copy for some of her projects. She now believes it's critical to stay in your lane of genius. The best part of her experience has been the flexibility in her schedule.
Last summer, Jess was able to take a three-week vacation, and around the holidays, she consistently takes a couple weeks off every year. She plans to continue working with clients in the health and wellness field. She'll also keep producing her podcast and YouTube channel. In the future, she may expand into speaking and holding live workshops. This time, first making sure she knows what her customers really want.
[Music]
Okay, so let's go back to the beginning. Are you building that stepping stone path to your ultimate goals? Are you experimenting? Are you adapting? Now, what if you think, hey, that sounds great.
I wanna build that stepping stone path, but how do I do that? Okay, so here are two quick ideas to leave you with. Just two practical things that you can do today in your journal, or just even by thinking about it. If you're out and about, if you can't write anything down, two things. Identify something you did recently that went really well.
Maybe something in the world of side hustles, or maybe just in your day job, or something else, whatever it is, something that went really well. Then ask if there's a way you can do more of that thing. How can I do more things like that? How can I have more successes and more wins like that one I had when I did X, when I did Y, whatever it was. And then consider your to stop doing list.
Okay, I'm a big fan of the to stop doing list, which is of course the opposite of a to do list. The to stop doing list is all the things that you have to do or that you think you have to do, but you really don't want to do. Maybe some things that you probably should stop doing because they're keeping you from your creative pursuits. They're keeping you from your extra income. They're keeping you from time with your friends and family.
They're keeping you from doing a good job for your employer, or just doing something that is important to you. Just having some time and space to breathe, whatever it is. You're to stop doing list. You should always have some things you're thinking about. Hey, I need to reduce this.
I need to become more efficient about this, or just take it off my list all together entirely, outsource, delegate, or just completely, as I said, stop doing it. I really believe that most of us will be happiest at the intersection of what we are good at, what we enjoy doing, and what others value about us and our work. Okay, that's why I stopped writing that travel column, because I wasn't good at it, and I wasn't being paid well for it, and nobody cared. So those were three good reasons why I should stop doing it, and I'm glad I did. There's probably a lot of other stuff in which I haven't made the wisest choice, but at least in that one example, I did.
Hope that you can think of an example like that, and if you can't, well, start paying attention. Start paying attention to all the things that you do every day and ask yourself what you want to do more of and what you want to do less of. That's my encouragement for you today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/985, episode 985.
Thank you so much for listening, my friends. I'll be back again tomorrow, and I hope you'll join me. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
