This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hello, hello, and welcome back. This is Side Hustle School. I'm Chris Guillebeau, and we have just finished week number two. Ultimately, a side hustle is all about creating more freedom for yourself. So if you're out there and you've been listening to these episodes, whether you hate your job and you're trying to make a big change, well, a side hustle is your escape plan.
Or if you love your job and you have no plans to leave, well, that's great too, but everyone should have more than one source of income. And that's what a side hustle is all about. So for the record, I don't actually believe everyone should jump off a cliff and quit their job. But I do believe that everyone needs that additional paycheck, that source of money that's not coming in through their employer. Remember that no one will ever care about your career or your wellbeing as much as you do.
You have to create your own security. And that's what a hustle will allow you to do. The whole point of the show is to guide you along the path of starting that first or second or fifth hustle. And this is a mission for me. It's not just a project, it's not just a random thing.
I will judge the success of this whole show based on your success. So if you make a commitment to listen every day, I too will commit to supporting you however I can. And if you just started listening to the show, that's great, welcome. I wanna encourage you to go back and download the first batch of episodes. They're really short, you can listen to them whenever you want, but they will help set the tone for where we're going through the rest of the year.
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So when we look back on this week, there's a few things that stand out. We began in episode eight by looking at a guy named Tanner who set up a blog about cruises. So he and his wife went on a cruise vacation and they had a lot of questions before they left that they couldn't find answers to. So when they came back, he figured, they're not the only ones who have these questions. And the cruise line has its own website, of course, but that's kind of propaganda for them.
So he started a website, a blog, answering questions, and within a year, it's doing about $3,000 a month. Now, in fact, I went back and looked at my notes and I think it may actually be up to $4,000 a month now, which is awesome because $4,000 a month is approximately $1,000 more than $3,000 a month. So that's fantastic, but I didn't actually go back and edit that episode because I wanna make sure I'm always giving the conservative number. So if somebody is actually making more money, well, that's fantastic. But I give you real numbers, specific numbers on the show because if somebody just says, oh, I have a hustle, it's making some money, that doesn't really help you.
I want you to understand the specificity of how good a hustle can be. And there's a range of results and outcomes, of course, but all of them make a real difference in that person's life. So just remember, when you start your hustle, not everybody may understand. And it's important for you to kind of keep your eyes on the prize and say, this is why I'm doing it. Maybe everybody else is like, why are you doing that?
Why not just watch TV or something? But you know that you're investing in yourself and this is for you, not for anyone else. And then in episode nine, you heard the story of Oliver, the Craigslist wedding photographer. And as I called it, it's a classic side hustler narrative. Oliver didn't know how to do something, so he figured it out.
And when his friend asked him to be the photographer for her wedding, he could have said no, but he didn't. And he also could have kind of charged ahead, even though he hadn't done wedding photography before, but he didn't do that either. He found a third way to gain experience in an unusual fashion. And one thing I didn't mention before is that he's actually now done 100 weddings since that experiment. So when you think about skepticism, when you think about people who don't believe in your hustle, well, he's done more than $250,000 since starting his hustle.
So again, specificity, real numbers. We're not just talking about small amounts of money on the show. This is something that really can transform your life. Episode 10 was definitely the quirkiest episode of the week, all about Saddles for Pet Chickens, which I originally entitled Saddles for Pet Chickens. Yes, this is a thing.
And way back when I first started recruiting stories for the show, going back more than five months now, this is one of the first submissions that I received, along with the fish tank story from week number one. And it made me think, you know, this is crazy enough that it just might work. These kind of stories as an illustration of the side hustling perspective, people are either going to love it or hate it. And the point of these stories is to show that there are all kinds of ways to make money, and that whenever there's a need, there's often an opportunity. So coming up as I look at my schedule, there's a couple of other weird animal stories.
There's a guy who dropships live crickets to reptile owners. This is also not a joke. And remember, whenever there's a wacky story, remember, it's not just a story. It's a real hustle that makes real money for someone. And if you don't want to make vests for chickens or drop ship live crickets, well, that's OK, because I don't want to either.
But it shows you how you can learn about a lot of different hustles. And by the way, if you go to the website, sidehustleschool.com, you can actually submit a story there. If you know somebody who has a great side hustle that would love to be featured on the show at some point, you can send them there. Or if you're on your second, third, fifth, 10th hustle yourself and you have a previous success story, that might be great, we'd love to hear from you as well. Now, episode 11 was the ketogenic cookbook author who makes $1,000 the first day.
This was the story of Amanda MacArthur who started a project just kind of compiling her own recipes for this specialized diet and then sharing them with the world completely for free. And by her own account, the smartest thing she did for this project was even before she had any idea of selling something, she installed an email capture form to the site. It was only when she realized months later that more than 3,000 people had joined the list that she thought maybe I should do something about this. Maybe I should write an e-book. And if she hadn't had the email list, none of this would have happened.
Or if she did write the e-book, there wouldn't have been an audience of people out there ready to purchase. So one of the best things you can do when you're getting started is to start an email list. And also on that website, sidehustleschool.com, if you join the Five Steps to Hustle, which is a free email course, I'll actually tell you exactly how to do that yourself. Episode 12 was a great story from Stephen, the web developer who created an app that's now used by more than 40,000 people every single day. And as mentioned, this was the first story of the whole batch, more than 10 stories so far.
It's the first one that requires detailed technical knowledge. And so the biggest takeaway from that story isn't, oh, go and make an app, because most of us don't know how to do that very well. The biggest lesson is just the simple one that will reinforce over and over through the show. And it's start before you're ready. So Stephen wasn't ready at all when the time came to launch.
His app had a lot of bugs. It didn't look very nice. It didn't even do everything that he wanted. But if he'd waited, as you heard in that episode, there's a very real chance that someone else would have come first to that particular idea. Or he just wouldn't have had the momentum that came from being one of the very first apps in the iTunes store.
And again, this side hustle is one that became very successful and eventually turned into a full-time job and definitely a full-time income for Stephen. And finally, episode 13, the Waldorf teacher, the lesson there is that teachers are busy. And even in a private school where they have the privilege of fewer students and more prep periods, it still takes a lot of work to plan effective lessons. And so as a Waldorf teacher herself, Meredith Floyd Preston understood this firsthand. So she had her skill.
She had the obvious need. And then it was just a matter of transferring that skill to the people who were in need of it. So what makes a good hustle? This is a question we'll explore in the weekly recaps going forward. People get frustrated when they start their first hustle.
They make something that sounds good to them, but then it doesn't really take off. And so they give up. They think they're not suited for the side hustle world. And there are lots of reasons why something doesn't take off. You'll learn them throughout the year.
But one of them, one of the big reasons is that the project isn't truly focused on someone else's needs. There's not a customer-centered or a client-centered perspective. And that's really critical. You always have to think about what's in it for them, what's in it for that person on the other side, for the customer, for the client, for whoever the end user is. By end user, I just mean that person who's eventually going to benefit from whatever it is that you create.
And so that cruise blog story is a great example, because even though it began out of Tanner's experience, the blog really has nothing to do with him. It's all about other people who are going on cruises. And so when he started, he made a list of questions he had. And that's a great way to get going. But then as the project grew, now to $3,000 or $4,000 or more a month, it grew because he started doing more active research.
And kind of went beyond his own experience and said, OK, there were some questions that I had. But there's probably a lot of other questions that other people have. What are those questions? How can I find out what those are? How can I research the answers and then compile them in an easy, accessible, informative way?
And the same principle is true in most stories that we look at. So Stephen's app grew from his own frustration. But most people who use it don't know much about him. All they know is that his app makes their lives better. And that's what matters.
So this is always a good starting point. If you're beginning to think about your own hustle and think, OK, how can I take some of these ideas? What is the right thing for me to make? Well, we'll talk about that in lots of different ways. But the great starting point is, how can I make someone's life better?
I hope you've been enjoying the show so far. Coming up next week, a whole other batch of really fun stories, including a graphic designer who went from making minimum wage in her side hustle to making $250 an hour, and then that side hustle eventually becoming a six-figure business. And one of my favorite stories from a Washington DC federal analyst who builds a very profitable hustle by buying and reselling products. And this is an all-new category of hustle that we haven't really talked about much yet. It's the category of reselling.
And certain personalities will be drawn to this style of hustle more than others. So if you're left-brained, analytical, logical, have an engineering perspective, those kind of people tend to really like these kinds of hustles. And so I think you'll like that episode. And if you're right-brained, creative, something different, well, there's plenty of stories for you as well. Also, starting next month, in just a few weeks actually, I'll be testing something out.
And I would love your help. I have a vision to take side hustle school on the road and do intensive workshops where I teach you a specific method. And if you come to the workshop, you'll go away with everything you need to start your hustle within 30 days. So this isn't a new thing for me, just like the show. I've been working on it for months behind the scenes.
And it's just now going out to the world. Really excited to share it with you. So if you go to sidehustleschool.com/workshops, you'll see the first four cities that I'll be in for the workshop. And those cities are Vancouver, Canada, Seattle, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and Phoenix, Arizona. Maybe one more by the time this episode goes out.
So first of all, if you're in one of those cities, I'd definitely love to see you. You can sign up, see how the whole process works there. And if you see that, you think, well, that's great. But I'm nowhere near any of those cities. Well, that's where I need your help.
And on that same page where you can sign up for the existing workshops, you can put in your request for me to come to your city. You don't have to make any kind of commitment. You just write your city name. And I'll decide where I go next almost entirely on this feedback. Because once again, this show is for you.
This new workshop series will be for you. And I want to know exactly what you need, so that we can make sure we get your hustle up and running. If you're enjoying the show, I'd be really grateful if you'd go and just leave a quick rating and iTunes. That'll help other people discover the show. And I'll see you tomorrow and every day next week with more fun stories and actionable ideas.
I'm Chris Guillebeau, and this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
