FASTer - Issue #73

Side hustles need a starting point. Reddit is your friend. Let us not discount the value of others and their experience or that singular moment of clarity that you can achieve when you read some one else's point of view on a question, problem, mission that resonates with you.

If you aren't mining reddit you aren't trying hard enough and investing your time in the right places.

I will share some sub-reddits here that are worthy of your time.

r/EntrepreneurRideAlong (200K+ members)

A community of like minded individuals that are looking to solve issues, network without spamming, talk about the growth of their business (Ride Along), challenges and high points and collaborating on projects together.

r/AdvancedEntrepreneur (22K members)

Good amount of case studies and people sharing their progress reports.

High quality low volume post. Read/re-read.

r/Entrepreneur (1M+ members)

Million plus users, active, vast array of discussion. For days when my own internal sourcing is down to zero I can admittedly spend hours on here.

This is the lemon aide stand to the IPO spectrum sub-reddit.

r/sidehustle (150K+ members)

This is an idea factory on steriods. Comparative small membership but big ideas.

Mostly affiliate leaning but comes with a mix of out of the box things.

If you are short on time and only want to pick up things on the side, this is one for that inspiration.

Outcomes

Outcomes are better if you are better organized. Google/gmail helps. When I originally signed up for gmail, it was a revelation that If someone accidentally adds dots to your address when emailing you, you'll still get that email. For example, if your email is [email protected], you own all dotted versions of your address:(not for workspace just free gmail)

Wait..there is more, I recently discovered that you can setup task-specific email addresses too.

If you don’t want to create multiple accounts or aliases for specific tasks, just add a plus sign (+) and any word before the @ sign in your current address.

Messages will still reach you, and you’ll have an infinite amount of emails for different purposes.

Examples

If your Google Workspace email address is [email protected], you can:

You can even combine these addresses with filters to automatically label and sort your messages.

For instance, filters can automatically archive and apply the News label to all incoming newsletters sent to [email protected]. When you're ready to read them, click News in your list of labels to find them.

This saves me an inordinate amount of time and my mail box is pristine.

Automatically label and sort incoming messages using one of these addresses

  1. Open Gmail

  2. In the search box at the top, click Show search options

  3. Under To, enter your task-specific email address, such as [email protected].

  4. Click Create filter.

  5. Choose what you want Gmail to do to these messages, such as archive, apply labels, and marking as important.

  6. Click Create filter.

One New Thing (that I learnt some years ago)

That the Thai government is the reason there are so many Thai restaurants world wide. They do this to improve their image abroad, using a practice called "culinary diplomacy". They have invested in the creation, promotion and export of Thai chefs, cuisine & ingredients. I wrote a detailed blog post on the subject here.

TL:DR

The Thai government provides loans to Thai Nations in USD to launch Thai restaurants overseas also.

What you should be Reading

1.5 MILLION books were published last year.

Even if you read 200 books a year, it would take you 7,500 YEARS to read all of those books.

Focus on reading the best books, not the most books.

If you are inclined to consume the most wisdom per page, I suggest you pick up The Tao Te Ching i a series of meditations on the mysterious nature of the Tao--the Way, the Light, the very Source of all existence. According to Lao Tzu (a name meaning "the old master"), the Tao is found where we would least expect it--not in the strong but in the weak; not in speech but in silence; not in doing but in "not-doing." Compiled in China around 2,500 years ago.

Heres a translation for the public domain by J.H. Mcdonald 1996 .

Monetize your time

Monetize your Mind. If you don't you cant monetize your time. Your uniqueness is your greatest selling point.

How to monetize 

Old way

- Treat the project as a hobby

- Build and they will come

- Spend no time doing marketing

- Wait until you feel ready to launch

New way

- Talk to your audience

- Find a worthy problem

- Build an MVP

- Start marketing on day 1

-Charge to check intent vs waiting for final product

Made in Pakistan

The blare of bagpipes often accompanies many revellers' celebrations at this time of year.

But not all of the traditional instruments are actually made in Scotland as some may think.

With its history of repairing the pipes of British soldiers in pre-partition colonial India, Pakistan claims to be the biggest manufacturer of bagpipes outside Scotland.

The BBC's Nosheen Abbas went to a bagpipe factory in the city of Sialkot to find out how a little piece of Scotland ended up in Pakistan.

CNNs video below: CNN's Reza Sayah reports on bagpipes and other Western staples made in one Pakistani city.

One Last Thing

This is pretty deep. We continue to get played by this thing. Change the perspective change your outcomes.