Down Time Hustle (Get a Startup Job, Part 4)

I've often wondered, and you may have also, can you be creative no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, even if you're the side lot of a Target? Let's find out. I gotta tell you, I've been pretty bad at making a regular vlog the last few weeks. I've still gotten something out every week, and I'm gonna get something out this week. That's what this is. And part of it is just making the decision that even if this isn't completely what I want it to be, or what I had on my calendar, or what I perceived it being in my mind that maybe or maybe not I was ever going to reach, making the thing, making the thing, that's what matters. And that's what I'm getting better and better at, just making the thing. So alongside that, I want to give you a trick that I have for creating content, whether it's written. It works especially well for video and vlogging. But here's the trick. When I'm stuck on something, if I know a particular topic that I want to cover, like I'm going over with a work at the work in tech series, work at a startup series, what I will think is that what if it was just a friend asking me a question? About this, how would I answer? And that's usually a really good place to start. If you think of someone asking you a question, for me, it's much better. It's much easier to vocalize that question. So that's what we're going to do this week. I had gotten kind of stuck on, you know, ending, not getting the backcountry job several months, nearly a year before I started talking with Noah at SumoMe, now Sumo. About working there, and that was where I was going to pick up, and I thought, that's a long time. Here comes a car, probably wondering what the hell is this guy doing. I wonder why they have plastic all over the side of their windows. But I was thinking, Matt, if I was you, I'd be asking what happened in between then. So let's talk about that. So I ended the last video saying that I'd pretty much given up, at that point and just wasn't actively seeking out those jobs anymore. I picked up a job working as a substitute teacher and a football coach and then lacrosse coach at Harding Academy in Nashville, Tennessee. And actually, I really love coaching. I really love teaching. I especially love coaching. Still do. And I thought my life was going to pivot that way, but I was still blogging. I was still reading. I was still still even unintentionally sharpening my skills. You know, the great thing about being a substitute teacher, it's actually one of the perfect part-time jobs that you can have because you don't put together lesson plans, you don't like do a whole lot of teaching. There are probably going to be substitute teachers that watch this that violently disagree. I didn't. And so, you know, I put on a lot of videos, people took a lot of tests, I did a lot of like just making sure that no great chaos broke out. And in those times, I wrote a lot. I scripted a lot of videos. I took my camera to the classroom, and when I had my, you know, period off, I would shoot videos on the whiteboard, and I would do whiteboard videos. So it was actually— it was still a really good time for my blogging, for my content. I sharpened a lot of video skills. I did a lot of editing during that time. So I was still able to find a way to continually develop while I wasn't even intentionally looking to, like, create that kind of job opportunity for myself anymore. If you're thinking about this in terms of a side hustle, or how do I get on people's radars while I'm doing something else, Anytime that you can create something that adds additional value to the work that they're doing, that is when you start to get on people's radars. And the great thing with the side hustle that I was doing, even like kind of accidentally at the time, is find jobs, find part-time roles. Substitute teacher is an awesome one where you can have like some extra in-between time that like you're not going to get say working at a grocery store, or if you're a barista. Like substitute teaching, now obviously they don't let anybody just be substitute teachers, but it does give you a little, like little slices of downtime that you can create while you're still making money. So another thing that I did there, and this was actually something that aligned with what I was able to teach some of the kids, was sketchnoting. So the thing that's become my primary side hustle I worked a lot on that because I could do a lot of sketchnotes while they were working on their tests or watching their video, and then I would show the kids and I would do like these mini lessons inside of the classroom of like, hey, why don't you try this out for, you know, if you're tired of, you know, writing, you know, just scripting notes down your college-ruled notebook paper, try these sketchnotes instead. See how you do. I bet you're gonna remember more, and I think you're gonna have more fun doing it. So that was, again, finding the alignment of something that you want to do more of with the things that you're currently doing. That's an amazing thing to do. Okay. Yeah, this has actually ended up being a pretty solid mini episode. The next thing that truly next week we're going to talk about is during that summer, this was summer 2015, I was running the Harding summer camp. Why do people— that guy's security. Why does he drive so fast? I guess you got to do something when you're target security. Probably not a bad job, actually, if you want to do something besides that. Might have some downtime. I think it was, uh, Nassim Taleb. One of his ideal jobs is to be a night watchman because you just hang out, you make sure nothing explodes, and then you write. You make the thing that you want to be doing next. Maybe that's what that guy's doing, or he wants to be a stunt car driver. That seems like a likely scenario right now. Anyway, I was running the Harding summer camp. I was hustling during my downtimes of the day, and I did a sketch note of a webinar with Ankur from Teachable and Noah Kagan from Sumo. And I shared that with both of them on Twitter, and that's where we'll pick things up next week. Thanks for watching this. Thanks for keeping, keeping tabs on me, keeping me accountable. I love doing these. And leave a comment, hit subscribe, share this with someone if you think it's valuable. Even if you don't think it's valuable, do me a favor, just share it with someone. It really helps grow, grow the audience and grow, grow the channel so that more people can be watching. All right, thanks so much. See you next week. Bye.