After 8 years and more than 300 episodes, it was time to either 1) quit, or 2) make the show bigger and better. We voted for number 2. Here’s a peek behind the curtain and a preview of what you’ll be hearing next.
Category: Uncategorized
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289: How to Make $200 an Hour Playing with Kids: An Intro to After School Programs
May Najafabadi earned $12,000 in 8 weeks — working just 1 hour a day.
Her side hustle?
After school enrichment classes teaching crafts and jewelry making.
As a long-time entrepreneur in the e-commerce space, May was used to enrolling her son in these classes to buy herself an extra hour in the afternoons.
Over the last couple years though, she wanted to diversify her income away from Amazon and wondered if she could be the one selling those classes instead.
May chose arts and crafts, a subject her son enjoyed in first grade but didn’t see available for second grade and above.
With no experience working with crafts or teaching children May jumped right in with a lunchtime demonstration and handing out flyers to the kids.
“The kids went crazy, they just loved the crafts. It was a big hit,” May said.
With her hopes set on 6 or more kids for that first class, May had 18 sign up at $120 each.
She soon expanded to larger schools, with larger groups of kids, and hired helpers. She’s released a book, a training course, and hosts birthday parties and summer camps, and has hopes of franchising her model.
Tune in to hear how May has grown her after school class business and how you may be able to borrow this creative side hustle idea.
Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Make $200 an Hour Playing with Kids: An Intro to After School Programs
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In Praise of Incrementalism (Rebroadcast)
What do Renaissance painting, civil-rights movements, and Olympic cycling have in common? In each case, huge breakthroughs came from taking tiny steps. In a world where everyone is looking for the next moonshot, we shouldn’t ignore the power of incrementalism.
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#35 Robert Greene: Alive Time vs. Dead Time
In this episode of The Knowledge Project, I have the brilliant Robert Greene. Robert is the
author of 5 New York Times bestsellers, including The 48 Laws of Power and The 33 Strategies of War. He’s also written on mastery and seduction.
Robert’s books have been somewhat controversial over the years and have been called amoral, cunning, and even ruthless for what they reveal. Yet millions of readers, from mid-level managers to hip-hop royalty and corporate executives have revered his work as a sort of canonized scripture for the ambitious.
In this conversation, we cover a lot of ground, including:
- Why Robert believes his first book, 48 Laws of Power has continued to sell steadily for over two decades.
- What Robert calls “alive time” and “dead time” and how we can optimize each day to be filled with “alive time” and live the life we’re proud of
- The one skill that determines how far you’ll get in life, no matter how talented you are in anything else
- Robert’s research method and how he finds such unique and interesting examples
- What Robert looks for when he reads, and what qualities separate good books from excellent books
- How Robert developed his famous note card system to extract the meat out of anything he reads
- Why Robert insists on writing all his notes longhand even though it’s less convenient and less accessible than taking notes digitally
- What Robert’s daily routine looks like, particularly when he’s writing and researching for a new book
- What Robert considers to be the single greatest power any human has, and what we can do to strengthen it
- How having unfettered access to information is actually making us dumber in very important ways and what we can do about it
- How to fine tune your “bullshit detector” so you’re able to tell the difference between pretenders and performers. (As a bonus, Robert shares a few ways you can improve your bullshitting skills when it becomes necessary)
And a lot more.
Plus, Robert gives us a sneak peek into his newest project, The Laws of Human Nature, which explores the hidden motivations that drive what we do and say.
This interview is packed to the brim with interesting and actionable insights that I think you’re going to love. Grab a pen, a notebook, and a glass of wine and enjoy!
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288: What I’ve Learned and Applied for 49 Awesome Entrepreneurs – Part 5
At the end of nearly every episode of The Side Hustle Show, I ask my guests for their #1 tip for Side Hustle Nation. There’s always a great variety of responses, and I wanted to take some time today to go through some of my favorites from the past 50-ish interviews.
This has become an annual tradition on the show, and we just passed 5 years and 5.5 million downloads!
If you like this short-and-sweet meta-style show, be sure to check out the others in this series:
And even though my primary motivation is to extract helpful tactics for you, the listener, I can’t help but learn from my guests as well. You never know when inspiration will strike or where you’ll hear the one insight that has a huge impact.
These episodes are a lot of fun to put together, and give me an excuse to revisit some of my favorite moments and wise words from the show.
From the last 49 guests, the 3 most common #1 tips I heard were:
- Take action; learn as you go.
- Be persistent. It doesn’t happen overnight.
- Charge more. Don’t undervalue yourself.
While those might sound overly generic, don’t be quick to dismiss them. If all these really smart and successful people keep saying these episode after episode as their “#1 tip,” I think they’re worth paying attention to.
What action can you take today to apply those tips?
My #1 Tip this time? Make progress every day.
Full Show Notes: What I’ve Learned and Applied for 49 Awesome Entrepreneurs – Part 5
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In Praise of Maintenance (Rebroadcast)
Has our culture’s obsession with innovation led us to neglect the fact that things also need to be taken care of?
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E20: Deliciously Ella – Blogging Saved My Life
What a chapter this is, I meet food writer and entrepreneur Ella Mills, more famously known under the brand Deliciously Ella. Ella tells her fascinating story, about how she fell very ill during university, battling with both her physical and mental health and describes how the blog she founded in 2012 not only launched her career, but saved her life.
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287: Choose Financial Independence: A Case Study in Audience Building
10 months!
Just 10 months after starting his side hustle, Jonathan Mendonsa was ready to quit his 6-figure job and take the business full-time.
What’s the hustle?
A podcast called Jonathan co-hosts with this partner Brad Barrett ChooseFI.
“You need to either be first or be different. We couldn’t be first, so we wanted to pivot and be a little different,” Jonathan said.
When the project started, he was working full-time as a pharmacist, living a frugal lifestyle, and was an avid consumer of financial independence content.
From the offset, he knew that, “If we can create a show that’s information, accurate, good, entertaining, and also inspirational, that’ll be addictive.”
In this episode Jonathan shares some of the unique tactics and tips he and Brad used to grow their audience, community, and business so fast.
Tune in to hear how ChooseFI earned 2 million downloads in its first year, and how they monetize the show to support two families.
Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Choose Financial Independence: A Case Study in Audience Building
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338. How to Catch World Cup Fever
For soccer fans, it’s easy. For the rest of us? Not so much, especially since the U.S. team didn’t qualify. So here’s what to watch for even if you have no team to root for. Because the World Cup isn’t just a gargantuan sporting evént; it’s a microcosm of human foibles and (yep) economic theory brought to life.
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#34 Amelia Boone: Learning How to Suffer
Since the popularity of Obstacle Course Racing, or OCR, has exploded onto the scene, there has been one woman who has dominated the sport: Amelia Boone.
Amelia ran her first race in 2011 after some prodding from a co-worker, and though she says she stumbled her way to an unimpressive finish, she was smitten. She has since amassed over 50 podiums and two dozen victories, including the Spartan Race World Championship in 2013, and the World’s Toughest Mudder (three times!) in 2012, 2014 and 2015.
Oh, and her 2014 victory came just eight weeks after major knee surgery.
Though she vehemently denies it, Amelia is superhuman.
This interview is a little different than others you may have heard on The Knowledge Project but no less fascinating.
We cover a wide variety of topics including habits, reading, self-reliance, and training.
Specifically, you’ll learn:
- Why Amelia was drawn to obstacle racing even though running was something she despised
- The complementary connection between her sport and her professional work and how racing has made her a more effective attorney
- How Amelia fights physical and mental fatigue when most people quit (she even shares a story of how she dealt with a vacant support station halfway through a 100 mile race)
- What she does to develop grit and resilience so she knows she can rely on herself when things get rough
- Amelia’s “to-do list” trick that makes sure she’s productive — you’ll want to steal this
- How a serious injury taught Amelia some of her most powerful lessons about who she is and what’s important to her
- What Amelia’s parents did to teach her to be self-sufficient from a very young age
- How she learned to deal with setbacks, and how careful she is with the language she uses when she speaks to herself when things go wrong
- Why Amelia runs with a Sharpie and the same playlist she’s listened to for the past 5 years
- How Amelia transformed herself from a casual weekend warrior to one of the most finely tuned athletes in the world
Whether you’re an athlete, a weekend jogger, or the only exercise you get is the leisure stroll from the couch to the refrigerator, there are lots of insights and plenty of inspiration waiting for you in this interview.
Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/
Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/
Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish
