This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello and greetings. You have arrived at the weekly recap for Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Since you're listening to the show, I know you're interested in investing in yourself, making active choices, doing whatever you can to create your side hustle, maybe your second side hustle, maybe your third, maybe your fifth, or maybe this is all totally new to you. That's okay too, welcome.
In this weekly recap, I tend to take listener questions, do a little throwback on the lessons of the week, and once in a while, something else fun. Now over here in my little world, I've got a lot of stuff going on. World Domination Summit is coming up this week, and the Side Hustle book countdown is now set to 71 days. So 71 days from now, the book will be out. It's got a really creative title.
It's called Side Hustle. I know we were sitting around a table. We're like, what should we call it? Subtitle is idea to action in 27 days. I always say that inspiration is good, but action is better.
Well, this book is all about helping you go from inspiration to action. A bunch of people have asked me about pre-ordering the book. Yes, you can do that, and yes, that would be awesome. Pre-orders help authors a lot, and you can pre-order the book from whatever retailer you want, from your local bookstore, from amazon.com, from barnesandnoble.com, from Apple iBooks, or any other source, and when you do that, hang on to your receipt, either your physical receipt or your email receipt. Anything is totally fine, because a bit closer to release, I am gonna have a pre-order bonus, and anyone who is pre-ordered at any point, from any retailer, will be eligible for that.
So I'll tell you more about that when we get closer. Speaking of bonuses and free stuff, something I forgot to mention last week, actually made a little mistake, and I titled the weekly recap something about your first email list, but actually didn't tell you anything about it in that episode. I apologize for that. We will circle back to it soon. But just for now, and speaking of free stuff, you can get a free trial of the service that I use for my email lists, at convertkit.com/sidehustle.
That is a free 30-day trial, and they don't actually have a free public trial. I do believe everyone should have an email list as you start your side hustle, and that service has served me very well. So check it out, and if it works for you, that's awesome. If not, of course you can cancel it without paying. That is convertkit.com/sidehustle.
Now I also got a note this week with a helpful tip that I wanna mention. This note came from my friend Chris Christensen, who has the podcast Amateur Traveler, and he actually has a bunch of different podcasts. I was on his show maybe, I don't know, three or four years ago. So he is somebody that I have learned from, and he's actually been listening to Side Hustle School all year, which is awesome. And he sent me this note.
He said, "One thing to know about a daily podcast, "by default, many podcast players "only download the latest show. "Not every show since the last time you connected. "That might be worth telling your audience. "I know I was getting frustrated before I remembered this. "Why is he talking about some show "about a flight attendant in a Super Bowl on the recap?
"I don't remember that show that week." And then I realized that my podcast player had just not downloaded that episode. So thank you, Chris, for that heads up. If I mention an episode that you don't have, it probably does still exist, and you can find that on sidehustleschool.com, or directly in Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You just might have to go back and manually download it. All right, so before we go any further, I wanna take a listener question.
This was a good one. This is from Amanda. [Beep] - Hey, Chris, this is Amanda from Elaborate Eyes Face Painting in Cleveland, Ohio. I've been listening to your podcast a few weeks after it started, and I love it. I listen to it all the time, especially on the weekends.
I usually binge listen to about 20 in a row. So as I said, I'm a face painter. I've been doing this hustle for seven years. It's great, I love it. But I've hustled so hard that I've hustled myself into physical therapy, and chiropractors, and regular massages.
And one thing that I've caught onto with your podcast is this idea of passive income, which is fascinating to me because as a face painter, I don't make money until I leave my house and go physically work a job. So I'm really interested in adding something, or adding more to my business passively to make money. And I guess in my world, in the face painting world, one of the ways I can think to do that is to use YouTube. And I can't think of any episodes where you've talked about YouTube as income. So I was wondering what your thoughts are on that.
All right, keep up the good work, love it, and I will keep listening, thank you. - Amanda, you're awesome. Thank you so much for listening, for binge listening, I should say. Hopefully at some point, you'll be listening to 20 episodes over a weekend, and you'll hear your question. And this is such a smart question, because as you pointed out, I definitely do focus on that concept of passive income, or creating an asset for yourself, or doing anything that's not just about trading time for money.
And face painting by itself, as you said, it's fun. You've enjoyed it, you've been very successful at it, but you've hustled yourself into physical therapy, which is not great. YouTube could be part of the answer. I've had a couple episodes about people who've done that. In particular, episode 18, which was quite a while back, but it's about someone who's built a very successful business, not just a side hustle, but a business, doing makeup tutorials.
And another episode 94, which is a bit different, but it's about someone using YouTube to help immigrants prepare for the citizenship test. If you have a hard time finding either of those, I'm gonna link both of them up on the show notes page, that's sidehustleschool.com/190. And remember, for any episode, if you're having a hard time finding it in Apple podcasts or wherever, just go to sidehustleschool.com/18 for episode 18, or sidehustleschool.com/94 for episode 94. I might have some more thoughts, but I do wanna ask our community, all the other listeners out there, if you have any advice for Amanda, you guys are often super smart. I've noticed in the workshops I do, I often throw questions out to the room, and the room has better answers than me, or at least some additional answers.
So if you have some advice for Amanda, I would love it if you could share something for her. And if we get some good tips, we'll revisit this in a future episode. If you've got something to suggest, just call the Hustle Hotline, leave a message, 8449HUSTLE, that's 844-948-7853. Thanks again, Amanda. [Music]
So looking back at the stories from this week, I was thinking a lot about this question of what if?
You know, a lot of side hustles get started when people ask this question, the what if question. So for example, on Monday we had episode 184, which is all about someone who's doing very well helping brides save money at weddings by renting the accessories. And how cool is that? Like every bride wants to have her own dress, obviously there's a lot of process and ritual to that. But are the headpieces that special?
Maybe not, at least for a lot of people. So Brittany asked that question, hey, I wonder if people would be interested in saving a lot of money by renting these. And in fact, they are, and in fact, she's successful. She's making money by helping people save money, which is a great combination. I also really liked episode 186, the hand grippers make for a $60,000 strong hustle.
This is a couple that makes that amount of money every year selling hand grippers. You know, those things that you can hold in your hand to increase hand strength. Now, of all the things you learn on Side Hustle School, you may have learned, or you may know already, but it was new to me, that competitive hand gripping is a thing. And apparently it's a sport, actually. So speaking of YouTube, go on YouTube and check that out.
And the problem here that this couple solved is that there was a bunch of different hand gripper manufacturers, but no way to compare the relative strength of them. And if you're really into competitive hand gripping, of course you want to know, how do I compare to somebody else? If I'm going to a competition, like how good am I? And so they asked that, what if question? Well, nobody else is doing this, what if we try?
Another episode, I think two episodes later, this website called AutoSlash that challenged the whole car rental industry made a lot of money with affiliate commissions and it was so successful, at least at first, that its partners essentially shut it down, the car rental companies. But then it rose from the ashes like a side hustling Phoenix. Which, you know, side note, what does a Phoenix do for its day job anyway? Who knows, but AutoSlash is now employing multiple people. And once again, the founders kind of asked that what if question.
What if we could automatically help people save money on their car rentals by using existing coupons and deals? So smart. So that's my challenge to you. What is the what if question that you can ask that might lead to your side hustle? Now, just a quick preview of what's coming up next week.
As I said, I will be hosting WDS in Portland, Oregon, but of course, we'll also be releasing an episode every day. Only the cat takes a break over here. So on the side hustle menu for the week, I have another story about a teenager. I always love featuring kids and teenagers on the show. And this is a story of a 14 year old who cooks up a storm with a class project turned side hustle.
So she was actually given the assignment to create a business, but not really. You know, it was just like an assignment, create an imaginary business. And she went and created an actual one, super cool. Also the story of chocolate tours in London, which turns into a full-time job. It's an overnight success that takes about 10 years, but last year it made more than $100,000.
And another animal story as well, just like I like featuring kids and teenagers. It's been a long time since we've had a crazy animal story on side hustle school. I'm sorry for letting you down. I too will rise from the ashes like a side hustling Phoenix and bring you the story of a woman who makes money releasing doves per ceremonial occasions. And these doves actually come back to her.
So it's a renewable resource. All of that and more is coming up this week on the show. I really hope you enjoy it. And since presumably you're enjoying it, at least I hope so. Well, if not, at least you're listening to it.
So that's great. If you're listening, you're the reason I do this. Every single day this year, I commit to supporting you fully in your quest to create that new source of income. And speaking of us, as we close out the week, I wanna give some shout outs to other folks who work on the show. Side hustle school is recorded on location at world domination headquarters in Portland, Oregon.
It is then lost at the Glaston Ferry Festival in England before resurfacing in Brooklyn, New York at the Panoply Studios. I was gonna say something about a Phoenix there, but I was like, nope, too much Phoenix. Can't overdo it. My production team is led by AC Valdez, also featuring Odelia Rubin. Show notes are by Whitney Corinna.
My cat, Liberia Guillebeau, is gonna be off this week. She's excited. She gets to go away to the Meow House, which is an awesome cat warding facility in Portland. It's basically like cat camp. So she gets to go hang out for a bit while the humans produce WDS.
Best alternate title of the week. For the episode, wedding bells ring brighter if the bride's not broke. We really wanted to call it, there's gold in them, they're wedding head pieces. Man, it's tough. Sometimes you have to let good titles go.
Side hustle school is part of The Onward Project, founded by bestselling author and my friend Gretchen Rubin. It's a collection of podcasts all about how to make your life better in all kinds of ways. Check that out, theonwardproject.com. And last but not least, if you wanna do something super awesome, you could leave a quick rating or review of the show in Apple Podcasts. It just takes a few seconds and it definitely makes a difference.
With that, I'm gonna sign off for the week. I look forward to hearing about your side hustle. Hope to see you tomorrow and every day with more fun stories and actionable ideas. Episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time every day.
And I hope you have a great week. [Music]
