Transcript of AE 1177 - The Goss: More & More Aussies Earning Money Through Side Hustles

G'day, you mob! Pete here. And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news, whether locally down under here in Australia or non locally overseas in other parts of the world. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right? If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in the Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the Podcast Membership or the Academy Membership at www.aussieenglish.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes. The PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising. And that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it!

Okay, so "Record number of Australians turn to side hustles for an income boost". Aleks-.

Says he. Mr. Plant.

Mr. Side Hustle. "Aleks Nikolic", nikolich? "Works full time as a lawyer. She loves her job, but she's also passionate about sharing the career and budgeting lessons she's learned in life via her social media business. She runs her small business or side hustle, Broke Girl Wealth, out of her rented flat in Waterloo in Sydney's inner west. She makes a point to share the highlights alongside the mistakes and missteps, she says as she grew her career and also tried to grow her wealth as a young person in Australia."

So it is interesting reading an article about this where they're talking about, I mean, you think if you're a lawyer, you know, you would be swimming in it, right? You'd be loaded.

Yeah, it's not about making money.

But, well- and I imagine if you live in Sydney, even if you're a lawyer, you're probably still struggling. But so yeah, as a young Australian, she's obviously started up this social media business, Broke Girl Wealth. Obviously, go check it out, guys, if you're interested, where she's giving advice to other young Australians wanting to build their wealth. And she's done this as a way of making more money on the side from her normal full time job.

And the article talks about more and more Australians. And funnily, funnily enough it uses plants as an example who are monetising their hobbies more than ever. And so in the previous episode we were just ending, we were talking about AI being used to create artwork and at the end there you were mentioning me and the plants and having a side hustle to try and earn more money on the side. I guess that's sort of side hustle is right. You're hustling, you're working hard to make money on the side from your normal job.

But yeah, "Last financial year 167,000 businesses were created, an increase of 7% on the previous year. Of those businesses, more than 80% were non-employing businesses or sole traders."

Yeah.

"Many of them were Australian- Australians monetising a hobby. That's what our members are telling us, that they're an inherently flex- their inherent flexibility in the system, that there's an inherent flexibility in the system."

Sorry, who's the 'they' when you said 'they're members' or 'our members'?

Ah sorry, this is the Small Business Council, the CEO, Alexi Boyd.

Yeah.

"People may want to set up as a side hustle or earn some income in a different way, and that could take off and become an entirely new enterprise."

Yes.

And so that's what has sort of been happening with me recently in the plants. Firstly, it was that I was interested in adding a bit more greenery around the house and then I kind of dived in as a sort of intellectual exercise..

..as you do, yes..

.. I wanted to learn about how the plants work, what they like, how to propagate them. And I was thinking of, you know, maybe I'll start a YouTube channel and be a little creative so that I can use this as a way of being a hobby that also allows me to be creative and just relax and do something else. But then pretty quickly, the gears were turning and I was thinking, how do I make money from this? So I can really justify the amount of time that I'm putting into it so that it's not just say, you know, me drawing pictures of cats. For the fun of it and filling up books and leaving them on the shelf.

But me trying to have fun whilst also sort of working on my mental health and relaxing, but also generating an income and turning this into a side hustle, which is what I've ended up, you know, at least in the process of starting to do. I haven't really made much income, but I've definitely spent quite a bit on starting the business up.

Yes, you're still a long way behind.

Yes, but do you think more Australians now than ever, at least in your experience, the data says there are more of them. But in your experience, have you noticed more Australians doing side hustles to try and make a living? And is this a good sign or a bad sign if Australians are having to do this to try and..

Well, again, I think it comes down to the question of 'have to'. I don't- I don't think many people are going to turn their hobby into an income because they have to.

Yeah.

Because they're already doing their hobby. As opposed to a lot of people, certainly in in my generation and people who went out and got a second job, which is the equivalent in this case, would be 'I'm going to work at the local 7-Eleven or petrol station' and, or 'I'm going to go and stack shelves at the supermarket for 20 bucks an hour' or whatever it happened to be. So that often those jobs were unskilled but flexible hours. You could work from 10:00 at night till four in the morning and then get up at 9:00 in the morning and go back to your normal job.

You probably couldn't sustain that, but but that was the sort of thing that people were doing in that second job, or getting weekend jobs. When I was working, in the last couple of years that I was working full time, I was also teaching photography at the local community centre part time. Not to make money. I was getting paid to do it, but I wasn't doing thinking 'I need more money, I'm going to go out and do that job'. I was just interested in doing it and I've been a teacher all my life, so I thought, 'Oh, well, that's something and there's a community interest, so I'll do it'.

So I think there's a lot more people who are looking at saying, 'I have this hobby, how can I indulge in it more?' And sometimes I think it doesn't come from the head. Or, 'how do I turn this into a business'. I think it's more 'how do I make it pay for itself?' You know, if I'm- and I'll use myself as the photographer as an example, but if I want to buy more photographic gear, I want to travel to places. How can I allow my hobby to pay for itself? And that's by teaching or running workshops or taking tours or doing those sort of things.

In your case, it was you got interested in plants for a, an aesthetic and an intellectual thing. And then it was, well, 'how can I monetise this partly to pay for itself?' And then it's, 'well, this could turn into a business' as opposed to saying, 'I'm going to come up with a second business. Which hobby of mine is the best way of doing it?'.

Yeah.

Which is the sort of backwards way of doing it. So to get back to your original question, I think there are certainly anecdotal evidence that a lot more people are starting to do this. You hear of people doing it all the time.

Do you think it's because they're feeling pressured to earn more income or do you think it's that we have more time to invest in our hobbies and then it just becomes a natural course of trying to get an income to cover the hobby itself?

I think it's a bit of both. There'll be somebody who wants some people who want a second job and go, 'Oh, you know, I can teach.' So I'll go out and teach. Others who, it's the 'I need a way of paying for my hobby.' And then there'll be some people who are just, you know, and you're a bit like this too, of the entrepreneurial part of you overtakes the creative and the intellectual.

Yeah.

Fairly quickly, isn't it? In that the entrepreneurial then becomes the creative task.

Yeah. Well that's where they overlap, right.

And that's the, that's the- and I always look at it from the psychologist point of view of the intrinsic motivations are usually interest. The extrinsic motive. It's extrinsic motivation is usually money.

Mm hmm.

And the two of them can overlap if it's your hobby. Um, it's not going to. You've got very little intrinsic motivation to go and stack shelves at a supermarket. That's purely 'I'm going to get'-.

.. just, 'I'm massively passionate about'...

'I just love stacking cans of fruit. That's my job. Don't give me the drinks aisle. I want the cans of fruit aisle.'.

'I just need to line that shit up..'

Exactly.

And then I just..

.. stuff this up. They put the peaches where the pears are..

I'd do this for free.

Yeah, exactly. So there's very few people who do that.

I bet there's someone who does that in Australia. It just goes to the shops and everything.

Aye! I'm sure. I'm sure there are a few people who are..

OCD.

On the spectrum of OCD or autism spectrum.

Yeah.

Who just get off on that. And, and funnily enough they probably do have an intrinsic motivation to do that..

Well, as a side story, right. There was that guy with autism that we saw a video of recently at the- in America, at a checkout. I think it must have been for Wendy's or something. And it was it was amazing because the person ordered something and the guy would give the change, however much money or say how, however much it was. And he would rattle off facts about that year in history if it was a four digit or three digit..

Yeah, yeah $10.66. Oh, that was a battle of Hastings. And did you know that William the Conqueror was actually a bastard from blah blah blah?

He was insane. Just pumping it out, pumping it out. And it was really funny because it- I was reading the comments underneath this on Reddit and there were a few bunch of- there are a whole bunch of people that were like, 'this guy needs to be protected at all cost'. 'Do not let him fall into the hands of the enemy' and others that were like, 'how is he being so underutilised when he's clearly such a genius', you know? But then there were a few comments that were people saying, 'I also have autism and this guy is exactly where he fucking wants to be.'

Exactly.

And he's crushing it.

So what? But he loves it. He loves it.

Yeah. And they were like, 'Yeah, don't worry, guys. He is absolutely where he wants to be.' I thought that was amazing. But yeah. So do you think the average person can develop a side hustle no matter who they are, or do you think it takes a certain type of person?

Firstly, I don't know who the average person is.

You know what I mean!

No, I do. But I think- and it's partly around the, because you say the average person, and then everyone. But I'm not just being picky and arguing semantics, but I think most people can probably turn a hobby into some form of income generation, whether that turns into a business. And in a business, I'm talking about something that is actually going to make a profit. It doesn't have to employ anybody or whatever. But to me, a business is something that you don't just make money out of, like my photography is. I yes, I'm a registered business and I do make money, but I spend more money on photography than I make as a photographer. Because I'm not doing it as a job. And so I look at that: Is this a job? Or is this just a hobby that you make money out of?

So it's sort of like an offset as opposed to an income.

And I'm not doing it in order to make money. It just happens to make money. And so I'm happy to sell some images and I'm happy to do some teaching and so on. But I'm retired, and so that's I'm going to be doing this stuff anyway, so I might as well make a bit of money out of it. As opposed to somebody at your age sayin, 'We're paying off a house. We got kids who are going to be going to school and university and so on. How do I get more money? How to get more income?'.

So that idea of, if you are doing a hobby that is expensive and you are doing it to offset, make sure it offsets.

Itself, yeah.

If money is the issue. Or create a business out of it. And that is where the business is actually profitable. And then it becomes the, you know, you shouldn't necessarily be buying the new camera every year. 'Oh, but I can write it off as a tax tax deduction', but the tax deduction is not written off the whole price or I can business expense and so on. It's that the idea of of creating income is different from creating a business.

Well, I think that's been the hardest thing..

.. in a very long winded way.

For me, it's kind of like you go down the rabbit hole and- it happens with me. It may not be something that most people experience, but I always want to get into the niche more, usually more expensive things in a certain area, right? Like with bird photography, when I got into that pretty quickly, you're like, how do I get, I want to get the best pictures possible, how do I do? So you need the best gear possible, right? And pretty..

Well, at least you need expensive gear.

Yeah, well, all gear's pretty much expensive in photography. There's no, there's not really. Yeah, you can get into bird photography and then they spend 50 bucks.

'Yeah, I've already got a camera on my phone. That'll do.'

That's it. Yeah. 'I'm doing long distance bird photography with my, my iPhone.' Everything, every bird is a pixel.

Exactly right.

But I tended to- like with the plants, it's like, okay, I want to get into the rarer plants because- and it's one of those things where you're like, why are these more interesting? And I always find this, this fascinating with any interest. People tend to go down that, getting into the heart of the game..

The rare or not..

Yeah. And I don't know what that drive is, biologically. I don't know if it's a status thing where, you know, like rich people wanting to buy Ferraris, it's like, are you buying this for yourself or are you really buying it for other people to see that you have this thing that they themselves can't get, that there's a certain amount of prestige and it's it's desired.

And the average person can't just go out and get it right. Like if a Ferrari could be owned by just about anyone, would anyone have one, right? You know, or at least would anyone have one and drive it around with the same amount of pride and wankery that they do when they're carrying a Ferrari? Like, when was the last time you looked at someone driving a Hyundai XL and even noticed that they were in a Hyundai XL? You probably didn't even think about what car it was, right? But so I always think about these things, like with plants, because there is this sort of movement in the plant community, that I am now a member of, and see where you'll have this kind of like, people who go hardcore into the rare expensive shit and then people who reject those who go hardcore into the rare and expensive shit. Just out of the fact that they go into the rare and expensive shit.

And it's really interesting how, no matter what it is that you get into there, end up these subgroups of people who are, you know, and there'll be those. 'Well, I'm in the into variegated, expensive plants.' 'Oh, well, you can't afford them. No, Jesus, that's a pity.' And then there'll be those who are like, oh, everyone who gets- 'I didn't have any variegated plants because only wankers buy those. And I don't want to be a wanker', you know. So it's, it is really interesting to see these things develop and these behaviours and interests and- I don't know, I find it really fascinating.

Well I think your original sort of idea around the, you know, why are we attracted to the unusual? I think there's an element of us as humans that we are collectors. We- there's an element of us that says, 'oh, I've got one of these'. 'You mean there are five? I've got to find the other four.' And, and the collecting part is a bit about ownership and having possessions that are of some value. But then the second part of it is just the intellectual and creative challenge. People have- a stamp collectors.

There's three sorts of stamp collectors. There are the ones who do it as an investment. There are the ones who do it because they genuinely like stamps, and they are interested in the geography and the history and how stamps are manufactured and so on. And there are others who are just collectors and they just happen to be collecting stamps. And so there's always another stamp to collect or there's or- and I have, you know, friends who are- a friend who is a stamp collector, and he just collects stamps, but he collects shells. You know, marine shells. Stamps..

.. just stamps are just another..

From around the world. I collect Australian stamps. But in addition to his Australian stamp collection, he collects marine shells. So any stamp from anywhere around the world, he's interested in finding them. And that's the challenge for him.

Especially stamps with marine shells on them.

Yeah, well, exactly. So just 'finding'. But that's it. No, the stamps with marine shells.

I bet they he always wanted one.

He wants to find those. And that's, and that's the challenge, is that they're rare stamps with famous people's faces.

Ah okay. I thought you meant he was getting shells on one part..

.. he used to be, but then he got it. He crossed it over. And so that, 'stamps with marine shells on them' became a thing because they're rare.

Ah yeah.

And it's just an interesting thing to. How do I find the stuff from Vanuatu? From 1975.

I feel like that would be such a, a small group of people would ever resonate with that.

I know. But-

Who does he trade with?

Well, he doesn't trade. That's the thing is, he buys.

Yeah, I can imagine. Where are you going to go? There must be a subred- I bet there's a Subreddit, though.

There'll be..

.. seashells stamps.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, I mean, you know..

One user and it's..

He started doing this pre-Internet.

Yeah.

So then it was.

Oh man.

Yeah. You're on mailing list..

Imagine trying to..

Literally where every month somebody would send a catalogue of, you know, 'want stamps of Vanuatu from 1972 to 1979? Three of them had seashells on them!' 'Good. I'll get those.' Can you send your bank order away? And it comes back in the mail.

It's so funny. See, that's one of those things where I'm like. Why would you- if you have that kind of interest and passion for something, why would you focus on something that is not going to be able to make you money? Like, that? I mean, in my- I'm assuming. Perhaps he can make money from stamps with seashells on them, but it would be like..

Well, eventually yes, but-.

How do you not shift this on to something that you could apply the same amount of of passion and vigour and..

But how many..

.. and interests and ..

How many people- yeah, you use the Ferrari example.

Yeah.

Let's say vintage cars.

Mm hmm.

Yeah. People who rebuild vintage cars.

Yeah.

They're never going to make money on it. Because it'll cost them hundreds of thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars to fill little bits. It's the creative challenge-

That would- I would be thinking..

of making it authentic, and..

I would be thinking of other ways, right? It's like, how do I develop a YouTube channel and a following that I could potentially sell ads to via, say, a podcast or YouTube that allows me to do the thing that doesn't inherently..

.. they might not be interested in the entrepreneurial side of it. They just got this passion for doing a particular thing and making money out of it is never something to think about.

I don't know. It's one of those things I just wish more people had, that kind of interest, I guess. Because I know so many people- I've got a friend at the moment who's a, I don't know if you've heard of these, quiet quitters. You heard of that movement?

Yeah.

Where they they collect their paycheque, but they do nothing above and beyond what they need to at work so they-

.. 37 hours and 25 minutes a week and..

And he- I love him to death, but he's one of those people who is like, I just want my paycheque and everyone at work and and the job itself can get fucked. Like, I just don't care.

That's fun!

And yeah..

He does a good job..

But I know he has so much passion for some of these things, but he's just like, 'Oh, I could just never do what you're doing'. And I'm like, 'Man, you could. Anyone can do it. I feel like anyone could do what I'm doing' in terms of following a passion..

Yeah, but that's a..

.. building it up.

That's a- trying to think of the right word without being insulting. No, it's- it's am sort of..

That's something a loser would say, 'Damn, no, Pete.'..

No, not loser. It's a self indulgent view of the world. And not in a bad way. But it's that-

You're being overly optimistic.

Or you're projecting your interest and skills on other people in the sense of, you know. I can't sing. You and your mother can sing. Mm hmm. And-

You just need a try harder, Dad.

See? Yeah. And that's my point, is that.-

I understand why you can't sing..

It's just- you don't understand why I can't sing in tune.

Yeah.

I was good at sport. Yes, I practised a lot, but. And you were the same. You'd pick up a tennis racket and you could just hit a ball.

Yeah.

There'd be ten other people that would pick up a tennis racket. And the first hundred times they swung at a ball, they'd miss it. And so there are some- there are some people who have particular innate skills. We could call them 'talents', but they're not necessarily talents in a productive sense, but a skill that is meaningless to you.

Mm hmm.

But you don't understand why other people can't do it. And so there are plenty of people who do not have that entrepreneurial personality. And for them, it would be extremely, it would be emotionally draining. It would be frightening for them. And, yes, you could say. But get over yourself. You could do it.

Yeah.

Because the skills are learnable.

Yeah.

But they just look and go, 'Why would I put myself through that pain?'.

Yeah, well, and I guess that's the argument I sort of have with my friend where I'm like, you can. You're constantly complaining about your job and the dickheads you work with and the fact that you hate having to drive into work and do the 9 to 5. And I'm like, Here's what you need to do in order to build your own, quote unquote, empire business. That can be just a business of one and you earn it and a comparable income and everything. And I guess it is that thing of it being something completely novel and everything.

But my thing is always you don't have to necessarily quit your job and then begin trying to build a business. You can do the side hustle thing that a lot of people are doing and then hope and work on it, hoping that it takes off eventually and turns into a job that you don't see as a job. And I guess that's the biggest thing for me, that I'm always sort of ranting to him about, and plenty of other people and probably you guys on the podcast that from my point of view, I'm like this guy I would love to see living the life that he wants to live, doing the things he wants to do, and not being sort of attached to a job like a ball-and-chain stuck to his leg. Right. And so it is- that's the thing. I guess that's the thing that kind of irritates me about the world and the way it is. There are so many people in jobs that they fucking hate.

Yeah.

But they're quiet quitters who feel like 'there's no other way that I'll ever be able to make an income. And so I'll just do something I hate doing.' And then you sort of like you're selling a third of your life, right? 8 hours a day, every day for however long, and not liking what that third of your life is being spent on. So work towards being able to spend it on something you want to do. Even if you're earning a little bit more money, you may end up earning a lot more money-.

Or less, and be happier.

Yeah,

Yeah.

But yeah, I think there's a part of that, that is also, and we've talked about this previously about. Education is about learning how to learn. It's not about learning specific skills or knowledge. Because almost anyone can learn specific skills and knowledge if they work hard enough at it. But the learning how to learn, and part of that learning is entrepreneurship. And yes, it's a, it's a skill. And there's some knowledge around it, you know, and business practices and all those sort of things. But the 'learning how to learn' is, is that getting over yourself. It's this, you know, just because you're a good athlete doesn't mean you're a swimmer. There's going to be a point where you actually have to dive in the pool and learn how to float. Yeah.

Why do you think we shy away from that, the older we get?

Well, it's a fear of failure.

Is it fear of failure or is it fear of looking like a beginner?

Well, that's the failure part. It's the same thing. It's an element of that.

Because I feel like a lot of adults, and I remember saying this as a kid, adults were never comfortable being shit at something, you know, like as a sort of broad, stereotype. The average adult doesn't like being shit at something.. for your kid. You shit it everything.

Give a four year old a piece of paper and a pen or a crayon or a pencil, and they will just happily draw.

And an adult will be like..

I don't drawing, like I'm hopeless at it. And..

I didn't say the answer 'no' was an option. You need to draw something,

Yeah, just do something, make, create, make something. And look, I've done that. I mean, I've taken up watercolour painting in the last year just for something else to do. And..

I know, I've seen this shocking..

Yeah, I know. And I'm crap at it, but. But the thing is that, it's, it's that you just have to get over yourself in that, um, don't judge yourself by or your work by other peoples. Yeah. My painting is not as good as somebody else's. Who cares? Yeah. This is not painting- art is not a competition.

Unless you're entering an art competition.

And if you're entering into an art competition.

Make sure it's not AI.

Make sure it's not AI, go back to a previous episode. And so I think there is that- and it is, if you sit down in a, you know, I've taken a couple of a class in painting, and you sit down there and you look at other people's work and you go, 'Oh, jeez, this is really good.'

And then they'll come around and go, 'Wow, how did you think of doing that?' You go, 'What do you mean?' They go, 'I never thought of doing it that way.'.

The first thing was knowing that I suck. Yeah. And then the second thing was 'trying'.

Yeah. Exactly.

And I nailed it.

Yeah. Nailed it, got it. So. So I think there's that with whatever you're doing is that getting over yourself and learning that failure is not a failure. Taking a risk and not achieving is not failure. It's a learning opportunity.

But it's only failure if you don't learn from the mistakes you make. As much of a cliché as that is, it's like you need reflective practice, so you're failing if you're just randomly say, you know, you painting all the time, but never thinking about how would you actually improve the paintings you've done. You'd be failing if you're just like painting and then throwing it in the trash straight away.

Yeah. Exactly. And it's practice. You know, for the last few months, I've done very little, you know, put down a piece of paper and create a piece of art. I've done lots of, let's just paint 50 rocks on this page, do different styles of trees. And so every one of them is a subtle change from the previous one. And you do ten of them in 20 minutes, rather than saying, 'I'm going to spend 3 hours doing a painting that has rocks and trees and water and everything else on it'. And that way you're learning really quickly by repetition and by this sort of rapid reflection of going, 'No, no, I would be better if I did something else'. And you don't wait three months for the next painting where you've got a rock in it, you just paint another rock.

Well, I think you're also focusing on the micro scale. This is very reminiscent of language learning and jujitsu, Brazilian jiu jitsu, where it's kind of like you don't just think I'll go into an entire roll, an entire fight for 10 minutes and then try and reflect on how the fight went and then improve next time. But when you're a beginner, it's much better to be like, how is your hip escape?

Yes.

How is your triangle? And what are you doing wrong? How do you improve that one thing, about that micro scale..

And the next time you get in there, it's literally put yourself in that position and say, 'put me in that lock and I'm going to work out how to get out of it'.

Mm hmm.

Well, linking the things together as well. Right. So you're getting good at just doing rocks and then getting good at just doing trees and then doing a painting that has both rocks and trees.

Yeah. Yeah. So. So I think that, that idea that you can, you can- I hesitate to say that- and we always think about tell your children they can do anything. No, they can't. Yeah.

You can 'try' to do anything.

I was a reasonably good athlete, you know, a state level athlete when I was a teenager. I was never going to be an Olympic athlete.

Mm hmm.

No matter how much I trained and whatever. Because the best thing I was good at was at decathlon. And I was never going to be an 8000 point decathlete. I was a 6000 point decathlete. And yes, I could come 10th in a state title or of a juniors. I could come third, but I was never going to be the third, second, third or first best person in Australia because I was simply not built for it. I was a reasonably good basketballer. I, I'm not six foot six, so I was never going to be a point guard in the NBA. Forget it. It's never going to happen. I could, yeah, but that's something you just look at and go, 'Well, I'm just going to play basketball for the entertainment value. I'm not going to say that's my career, and I'm going to do everything I can to do it, to get there'. Not to say that there are not people with, you know, physical size limitations who are not very good at doing things that you would otherwise look at it and go, forget it.

You know, you can't become a lawyer. So but I think you can you can certainly overcome that: the fear of failure, by looking at it as, as a learning experience. I mean, Benjamin Zander, who was one of the great educators, look him up if you, if you get the chance. He was I don't know whether he still is, but he was the conductor of, I think, the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. But he also taught music and he taught education as well. And he's run lots of workshops and things and you can find little snippets of him online. And he uses the term that's, that's I really love. And that is when he's people are playing music and he's teaching them and they're doing things and they do something that they think is wrong, his immediate response is 'How interesting.'.

Mm hmm.

Not 'Think about it and learn how to do it differently'. But just 'think about why you did it that way'. How interesting. This is an opportunity to learn. Whereas if you can just do it, you just move on. Yeah. If you do something well, you just move on. You don't go back and reflect on how to do it better. You just assume that good enough is good enough. Whereas if you're not good enough, you'll think 'How interesting.'

I used to find those really talented people just the most boring people to talk to about that thing that they were talented at. Because a lot of the time they didn't know why.

They didn't know why, yeah. You don't know why you can sing.

Wow, that's a wow. I did lessons, so, you know, but-.

But you only went into singing lessons because you could already sing.

Yeah, but it was- I remember doing fencing and getting a fencing lesson from one of the Australian Commonwealth champions. And she was the most awful teacher because she would just be like, 'oh, just do it'. Like I'd be like, 'How did you do this?' And she would just be like, 'I don't know. I just sort of just do that'. And I'd be like, 'Well, that was a fucking useless explanation'. So I guess, you know, you need- I guess it's like tennis coaches never being as good as the, the people that they're coaching up at the top level. And it's like they don't need to be because they're not they're not trying to be better than them. They're trying to get them to be as good as they can possibly be.

Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah. Do you think it's something that you're going to see more and more people have to develop a side hustle? Because I guess coming back to it, I was wondering how much this is driven by the economy and wages not being, um, not moving, being stagnant. And are people developing side hustles because no matter what job they have, the jobs wage isn't increasing as much as inflation.

Because that's at least I guess. Sorry, I'll let you answer, but I guess that's why I've sort of developed this plant thing on the side. I probably could. In all honesty, I probably could have applied all the spare time that I've spent on plants to Aussie English and be in a better place. The hardest part is though that. You know, it's kind of like saying, 'well, I could have spent all day training for the marathon'.

Yes.

It's like, yeah, but sometimes you want a break, you don't want..

.. and also, there's also a..

.. time out.

Diminishing returns.

Yeah.

In that, you cannot- and I remember having a discussion with a previous boss, a president of the company that I used to work for when and he was the you know, he was the founder of the company. And he had 100% growth for the first three or four years and it was, you know, 'Oh Ian, if we can do this for the next five years' and I said 'it's not going to happen'. Thinks, 'Oh, no, don't be so negative!' I said 'it's not going to happen.' Just do the arithmetic. You're an engineer. Do the arithmetic. You cannot have exponential, infinite exponential growth. It's just impossible. There are the- things plateau out.

You know, you go on this S-curve where when you start off doing something, it increases rapidly. Firstly, because you're exploiting a niche in the market potentially, and the thing will take off. Secondly, you put a huge amount of effort into doing it.

Mm hmm.

You reach a point where you can't put any more effort into it, and then you have to start employing other people. And eventually it just, there's this diminishing return where there is a level in the universal market for any particular product or service that you're going to get incrementally closer to. But you have to put more and more effort in to get that little tiny bit closer every time. And I think that's true whether you're learning something or whether you're creating a business or you're doing any of those things.

So sometimes there is that, and I'll go back to my decathlon example of how do you train to be a decathlete? The temptation is to say, 'Well, I'm doing ten events. Let's just go out and practice the ones I'm good at.' No, because you can practice the ones you're good at. You're going to only get incremental improvement. You practice the ones you're crap at, you're going to get much quicker improvement in those. You know, the ideal decathlete, if you want to be an 8000 point decathlete, the ideal is get 800 points in every event.

Out of how many?

1200.

Yeah.

So, not get 1000 points in four of them and 600 points in in the others. You've got to work out how is that, what's the best way I can do this. And so, it's that finding the things that you can do that are going to give you the, you know, the next thing that's going to either interest you, which gives you that intrinsic motivation to do things more, or that there is a better market for, and so on. So, you know, there's always going to be that limitation of diminishing returns as opposed to the lag in starting up something new. And how long does it take to. Either generate an income or just turn into more than a hobby.

So do you think, though, going back to the original question, that I sort of sidetracked. Do you think more and more people are going to have to start developing side hustles or not even have to, but want to, as-

I think people will want to. I think it's, it's much easier to now.

Do you think it's also somewhat of a safety blanket too, where you have your income spread across multiple things and so you can feel comfortable?

But I think it's easier to now because a lot of these, and the original example that you came up with is- and I haven't even looked at this person's website or whatever, I'm assuming she is not doing 1-to-1, face-to-face workshops or consulting. She's running a blog and a podcast and, and those sort of things. So it's you put the amount of effort in and then it's just growth based on interest. You know, if you have five people interested, fine. If you've got 5000 people interested, better. If you've got 5 million people interested, you're making a fortune.

And so it's easier now with with social media and Internet-based platforms to provide services to people virtually that are set-and-forget, a bit like your business. You spend a lot of time and effort creating new content, but you create the same amount of content. If you have one user or if you have 10 million users, you're not in that basis. It's it's expandable without you putting any more effort in.

Mm hmm.

And I think- but which was impossible when I was growing up.

Well, you would have only been out of..

.. because the jobs..

.. that showed up to class.

Yeah, exactly. The jobs that I took, the jobs that I was doing in order to do that, it was you go and write a book or. Yeah, it wasn't go and create an online course. Yeah. And those sort of things. So or if you're not working in that field it was 'go and get a second job' was 'stacking things on the supermarket shelf'.

Well I think which is that other side of..

.. attainable but not expandable..

That you were talking about with, like needing to learn to learn, is the fact that we have access to the stuff that you can use to learn.

Yes.

More than we ever did in the past. So like with the plant stuff, a lot of the information that I've got, if not all of it, has been through the Internet using YouTube, or reading different blogs and everything. And that's effectively given me a crash course education in indoor jungle plants so that now I know which ones I need to buy and how to grow them and how to propagate them in order to hopefully sell them in the future and make a side income that sustains the hobby, if not more, brings more money.

But your side income will be done by selling online.

Yeah, exactly.

You won't be running market stalls at the local set..

Well, you could, but it's probably not as lucrative.

That's not lucrative and it's not sustainable.

Yeah.

But some people enjoy going to markets and they'd much rather sit at a market stall every fourth Saturday morning, or do the tour around where we live, where you can do one every week and talk to people. Whether you sell anything or not doesn't matter. You're just talking to people.

Well, I guess that's a privilege, though, to be in that position.

It is.

Or whatever you're doing, that you can just chill out.

But usually it's- that's not their business. Their business is that they're running a shop. And the shop's not open on Saturday because they do the markets. And because it's different or whatever. But so I think there's different ways of doing those things. But to back to your original question, I think, yes, there will be more people doing this. Firstly, because it's easier, and there are opportunities to. Secondly, because I think it is needed. Many people who are on, you know, an average income will be struggling with, you know. Now, particularly in that they've bought into housing markets with rising prices of houses and now mortgage rates are going up and so on, so the cost of living is going up. I think a lot of the cost of living at the moment is short term.

You can only hope.

Because- because of the fires and floods that we've had in Australia over the last two or three summers have meant that, you know, just fruit and vegetable prices have just gone through the roof because of scarcity. And the war in Ukraine has meant that oil prices have gone stupid around the world, and that's a completely different discussion. But those things will resolve themselves one way or another.

Yeah, whether it's two years, five years..

Five years that- yeah. It's not going to be a continued thing. But in the medium term, people are going to be struggling and they've got to have another way of earning income. So finding something that you're interested in is the best way of doing it. It's the old line of, you know, if you enjoy doing your work, it's not a job.

Well, and that's, that's why it's- it's hard. I've never had a full time job. That where I've been on a contract with a full time wage. And, you know, I was studying- one of that was I was studying for so long so that I could never get a full time job. And then I started Aussie English during the PhD and then gave it a shot as a full time job and ended up working. But yeah, I can't remember what my original point was. I think anyone should try this sort of stuff though.

Like it seems daunting, but anyone can become a small business owner, a an online influencer. And this is, I guess coming back to the plant thing. It's so interesting with YouTube and podcasting, a lot of the content has to be heavily curated and very short. And to the point, and you have to be so structured and..

But that's a skill in, that's a video creation skill.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And not just the technical capability of producing a video, but knowing how, it's a marketing skill as well.

No, but I mean, well, it's just a different, it's a completely different style of being online, for me. And that's, it's the side of it I don't really like. Where I have to think about, 'okay, this video needs to be under 10 minutes long'. 'I need to hit this rhythm with how much information I'm giving out.' 'I need to ask for people to take action', to give me a thumbs up and all of these things, or else the video won't do well and YouTube will ignore it. That side of it really shits me.

And I don't really like that anywhere near as much as making podcasts like this, where we just get to talk and give people content where they feel like they're hanging out with me. And the interesting part was in the English Learning World, podcasts are probably a little more like this, like yours and mine, although there are people that I know in this world who have the biggest podcasts in English teaching, and they're like, 'None of our episodes will ever go over 15 minutes because no one listens for that', blah, blah, blah.

And you kind of like, it's sort of sad. But when I went into the plant world, the channels that have done so well, that I'm really interested in and passionate about and love listening to, where they upload videos that aren't heavily edited and they're just hanging out doing shit with their plants. And they'll get thousands upon thousands, tens of thousands of views, where you're just hanging out with them and they're just talking to the camera and they're like, 'Today I'm going to repot this plant' and 'I'm going to chop this one up' and 'I'm going to tell you about my problem with my boyfriend.' And also when I walk the dog in the middle of it and do a little vlog on that' just- and yeah, but long form.

Yeah.

He was still to a very like, it had to have sort of rhythms, it had to be a story, it had to be short and punchy, so that the plant world one really interested me because there are so many people on there who- although there are certain skills you need to learn and become good at in order to do well, the content doesn't seem to be anywhere near as heavily curated, or need to be curated like it does in other places online. And it's almost, I think, that kind of content punished in this realm. Because I think people aren't coming there to get the information in the shortest period possible. They're coming to hang out. And that's what's been interesting about.

How sustainable? This is a question that I don't know the answer to. I've got an opinion, but as usual, that's uninformed..

Before that, I guess the point I was trying to make ultimately is that these people are just being themselves online, and the audience is naturally forming around them from other people who just like their personalities. And I think anyone can do that. You obviously you need to be able to put the videos up and film them and everything. But a lot of the time people hold back because they think, 'who's going to ever want to listen to me?' A lot of these people aren't experts.

They're just sharing their stories, pursuing a certain hobby and hanging out, finding a way to hang out with their audience. And as a result, they end up building an audience that they can effectively sell ads to on YouTube.

Yeah.

And grow, grow through that. So I found that side of it really interesting because they're just, it's kind of a form of entertainment where they're not necessarily educated experts in a certain area, and people drawn to them, are just hanging out with them.

Yeah.

More so than 'I've come here to learn this one specific thing. You need to hurry up and teach me or I'm gone.'.

Yeah. So I see the attraction in, excuse me, in that approach to, you know, running a video. But how sustainable is an audience when it's, it's the personal engagement. And for me, and this is probably more about me than the rest of the world, or the people creating this stuff. I guess I enjoy those sort of YouTube channels for a while and then I go, 'I'll watch ten of these. You've got nothing.' Now. There's nothing that I can get out of this other than knowing that, 'Oh, you bought a new plant.'.

Well, I think-

Because-.

I now know who you are.

Yeah.

I know about you, and I know that- and it's not fatuous. It's just shallow.

I think, though, part of it is, at least in the plant world, that you're watching their plants grow, seeing what they're doing, hearing about their wins and fails. And also on top of that, you're usually doing plant chores whilst you're listening to it. And so there are these sort of overlapping areas here that obviously make it work where I don't think it would work in the world of, say, language learning.

Yes.

Or I was thinking, how could I do these sorts of videos with my audience? But it isn't sort of a single thing that I think that they're already inherently interested in, that I could be doing, that I could then just chatter about over the top of.

You've probably forgotten your humble beginnings. You sort of did that originally. The Walks with Pete.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go back and see if you can find them.

But they were never videos on YouTube. I guess, I'm thinking about YouTube.

Yeah.

Podcast wise, 100%. I can just talk about whatever and hopefully the audience will, if they find it interesting listening to it, because they feel like they're just sort of hanging out with me and getting- and you, in this episode, and we can talk about whatever as long as it's in English, right? If I come up and start speaking in Hindi, they're probably going to be like, 'okay, this podcast, not for me unless I speak Hindi'. But it yeah, it's just been one of those interesting things seeing these tools like YouTube in particular, and I don't know if it would work as a podcast.

You couldn't. I don't think you could film these videos playing with your plants and turn it into an audio podcast and have the same sort of audience because people can't see what you're doing. Yeah, exactly. Whereas with..

'And if you have a look at this plant'.

Yeah. Which one? You just have to know what it looks like. Imagine your head. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah, I guess the whole point of me telling that story was that there are ways that you can create businesses online where you just get to be yourself, and also share your journey of learning something, even if you're not an expert at something. So I do thoroughly think, you know, give it a go, become- try YouTubing, you know, for whatever thing that is your thing, give it a whirl. Because I think every single person that I know that's made it on YouTube never started thinking they were going to make it. They just were piss-farting around..

Yeah, no..

.. playing with it. And then it took off.

Yeah. But I mean, I was just thinking, though, of an example of what I was talking about of, you know, channels that I start watching and then get, you know, basically just get sick of them.

You would be the most nightmare user, though.

Oh, I would! I would. Oh, absolutely. I completely agree.

I don't know any- which YouTube channels do you even watch for more than, say, a few months, Dad? Are there ones that you religiously go back to?

Oh, there's a few. But having been planning the build of a camper van.

Yeah. Oh, shit..

.. you get a YouTube channel coming?

No, probably not.

You heard it from be first!

But once you get sucked into the vortex of Van Life videos, you sit there and go, Yeah, I'm interested in builds. And most people are not talking about building their van because most people are more interested in either buying the van, or they build their van and then they're done. And what they really doing is talking about they're either live in it or they're travelling in it that's holidays, and they go, 'Yeah, this is my holiday in Spain and we'll go and do this' and yeah, that's really cool.

And there's a couple that I watched sort of not quite religiously, but, you know, got into them for a while. Then I thought after 20 or 30 half hour videos of watching these people travelling around, you go, they got nothing more that they can do. The 21st one is going to be a copy of what they've already done.

Yeah.

And it'll be entertaining, but I'm not going to sit and watch it for half an hour.

Yeah.

And, and then there are others, there's one, there's a, there's a lesbian couple who are British, who are hysterical. Without trying to be hysterical. And they know they're funny, but they're not trying to be funny, if you know what I mean. And they are, they're entertaining to watch. Because it doesn't matter what they're doing.

Yeah.

It's the fact that you just watching them and yeah, they're travelling around Norway and they're arguing with each other and they, and they just film and obviously there's a clever editing of it as well. And for one of them, that's her job, is just producing these videos. The other one has a full time job even while they're travelling and you know, so it's part of around that. So it's entertaining to watch, but most of them they are just talking about, 'and then we went to this national park and we found a bear'. Oh, (snoring sound) what? Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, well.

Yeah,

Probably where this episode ends.

We've run out. We've- sent me to sleep.

Yeah. All good. Well, thanks, guys, for hanging out with us.

Thank you.

Hopefully you've enjoyed these episodes. Just chilling out with this. I should- you'll have to let me know if you want any more 'Walking with Pete' episodes.

Walking with Pete?

Yeah. I feel like I need to hang out with the audience a little more and do those sorts of episodes again. But again..

Travelling with Pete and Dad in his Camper Van..

I always have that voice in my head. It's just like 'no one wants to listen to you, shut up..'

No one wants to be ...

Yeah. 'No one cares about your dead cats'.

Yeah.

I can't- I think that's a line from The Simpsons. Anyway, thanks for hanging out, guys.

Bye!

See ya!