The Side Hustle Show - Full Episodes - The 6-Figure Video Game Mom: How to Build a 6-Figure Business Teaching Video Games.

Yeah, it's kind of a funny little world that I have found myself in. So I've been in online education for the better part of 10 years now. And I started teaching for outschool.com and started by teaching English creative writing classes. But I've always loved video games, so I just put my video game twist on it.

You know, we would do descriptive writing, but Zelda or like, you know, punctuation, but Pokemon. And then my students just kept asking me for more classes on how to play the video games or help them with places where they were stuck. And so I started creating social clubs where kids could come and game in a safe online space together. And it just continued to grow and continued to grow.

And when you and I connected, like you said, I was making around 4,000 a month. And since then, I have hired on 14 teachers to teach with me. And last year we broke six figures. So a lot has changed.

That's really exciting. I didn't realize outschool had been around that long. So what was all the online, you know, starting with the English writing and stuff. Was that all outschool as well?

So prior to outschool, I was teaching kids in China how to speak English. That was my first online kind of immersion. I started teaching with outschool about four years ago, three years ago. 2021 is when I started on the outschool platform with the video gaming and everything like that.

Okay. So but prior to that, it was like a VIP kid type of service. Yeah, a kid exactly rocking the orange. Yeah, which was such a cool business.

And it worked well for a lot of folks in the States just be like, Hey, it's early morning. It's the time difference or time zone changes. And then the shoe, I might understand the Chinese government. So then we can't get through this anymore.

Like basically shut it down overnight. And it's like, okay. So but transitioning those skills. Hey, look, I know how to engage with kids online.

I have some credibility and expertise and experience in teaching. And maybe there's maybe there's a pivot here. You know, this is a new way to go. So outschool is this online group classes for school age kids.

I think it says age five to 18 or something. But like that sweet spot right in the middle there. And we're starting with English writing, but really any number of different subjects like it's become really, really broad. Obviously blew up during the pandemic when everybody was transitioning to remote learning.

But has remained popular. Have you seen demand fall off as we see people go back to school and back to play in person? There's always peaks and valleys in a business. And so I think outschool was at a really, really high peak in 2020.

But I don't feel like it fell off. It has just shifted, you know, instead of parents trying to figure out how to keep their kiddos engaged all day every day when they're used to sending them to school. Now it has become a supplemental learning. So now parents are like, Oh, my child is struggling with math or English.

I can find a one-on-one tutor on outschool. Or my child really wants to explore this part of their learning experience, you know, whether that's gaming or cooking, you know, those extra curriculars. And then they start to put them in those classes. And so they're still definitely that base of homeschool parents who use outschool for a variety of things.

But I also see a lot of parents who still use it as supplement for their child's learning. And I'm just going through some of their top categories. You may do the same to get inspiration of what you may be able to offer on here. We've got everything from coding to languages to history to photography to, you know, and then all of the, you know, basic academic subjects of, you know, biology and geography and stuff like this too.

And so they've added, I didn't know they had this like the tutoring and the one-on-one stuff. Is before, I might understand it was all like group classes. Yeah, and they have been putting more and more on this one on one tutoring because they're starting to see that parents really want that personalization with us teacher and a student. So they still have tons of group classes, most of my things are group classes, but they do have the tutoring.

And yeah, I totally agree with you, Nick. If, if any of your listeners are wanting to teach on outschool, look through those popular classes and try a little bit of everything. I kind of streamline my process when I talk about how I grew on outschool. But I was teaching like basic cooking classes for kids that was like Oreo dipping.

I was teaching multiplication music classes where we would like sing our multiplication tables. I did like a dinosaur dance class. So you kind of have to try a little bit of everything before you find what your real favorite and your passion is. Okay, that's helpful to hear.

So, you know, broad strategy number one, we call it the buy buttons theory. Like here is, you know, go where the cash is already flowing. Here's a platform example of where your parents know to go to look for this type of education, training, coaching, you know, tutoring for their kids, right? So you can go and put your buy buttons up for sale.

Like make it easy for people to do business with you, rather than you're trying to reach, you know, customers, clients, parents one-on-one, like much more difficult. Like here's where they're already congregating in a way. And then the second thing, you're testing out a bunch of different stuff. You don't know what's going to stick.

The cooking classes, you know, all this sort of thing. Well, what do you remember the first time when I was like, because it didn't cost you anything to put up a class or say, like, see what kind of reaction it gets? What was the first one that people signed up for? When I first started teaching, I thought for sure I was going to be teaching Spanish classes, because I'm fluent in Spanish.

I lived in Spain for three years, lived in Argentina for three years. And so I had Pokemon Spanish classes. And I was like, this is going to be it. This is what's going to like be my big maker.

But what I found was as I started teaching them, I did not enjoy it. I felt very stressed because it's my second language. I was like, I'm going to teach something wrong. I am an expert-ish.

Like I'm expert enough to teach the basics. But I was so scared of messing up. I was so scared of, you know, teaching a child something wrong and then then repeating it forever. That I was like, I don't want to do Spanish.

But that's what I felt like. I was like, that's the only thing I can do. That's the thing that makes me special. And so I was like, okay, maybe let's try all of these other things.

And they were all things I enjoy. I love cooking. I love music. I love creative writing.

That's why I got my degree in. And that was when I really started to see it. It was with the creative writing and the Zelda class. I would have students come and it was a five-day class where we would write about Zelda.

And I was like, wow, I can really use video games. And I love video games. I have my whole life. And then I thought I was like, okay, it's definitely going to be writing.

That's what it's going to be. I'm going to be teaching writing classes. And I connected with another educator on out school who was more successful than I was. And still is more successful than I am.

And I said, this is kind of what I'm thinking. What do you think? And she told me, she said, you know what? You've got a broad in this.

You are too little. She's like, you don't just have to do writing. She's like, do everything with gaming. And that really opened my eyes.

Like that advice was invaluable. Just going to someone who had more expertise than me. And so then it just snowballed and grew into what it is now. Okay.

One thing that she mentioned, both with the Spanish and the creative writing was kind of this, you know, picturing like the Venn diagram or the concentric circles of, you know, here's a skill that I have like Spanish. And here's another interest of mine like Pokemon or Zelda plus creative writing. And trying to make that a unique thing. Like something that could help you stand out in the marketplace.

And we see this with, you know, really lots of other service business. If I do, you know, video editing for YouTubers or I do, you know, product descriptions for Amazon sellers or, you know, something that just narrows it down a little bit that makes it stand out. It's a, oh, that's that's the one that, you know, my kid would be most interested in in the case of this platform. So let's talk a little bit about the mechanics.

So you know, putting up the class and you just, I think they caps out 10 or 12 people, right? But the max is 18. I usually keep my classes around 10 personally, because I don't, I don't like the huge, huge classes. Okay.

Now, but this has been helpful in figuring out, okay, well, what, oh, you know, what kind of thing can I possibly do? And right, thinking of those, you know, combining two things that maybe may not seem initially to be connected, but maybe there is a connection there and coming up with the niche that way. Yes. So you put it up for sale and say, this is, you know, creative writing for Zelda.

And then, you know, spinning that off into just straight up Zelda. Like, what's, what did that look like? Well, it was really funny. I still remember the day my husband and I were chatting and I was doing really well with the Zelda class.

And I was like, these kids keep asking me for a Zelda class where we just talk about Zelda, like no writing or anything. And I think I'm going to do it. And he kind of looked at me and he was like, okay, what's the worst that could happen? I was like, yeah, what's the worst that could happen?

No one in roles or something and it's fine. And it's a little wish. Oh, it's a little wish. Yeah, it was super low risk, but the students loved it.

And I, it was very interesting because early on in my teaching career without school, I did not feel like these classes had value. I felt like it was just like fun, fluff money that parents were using. But it's been fascinating. As time has gone on, the things that parents have told me that their children are learning from me and my teachers just from coming to class.

I have parents who are like, my child really has a hard time socializing at school. And when she comes to your class, she feels confident and she wants to socialize. Or my child, he had a really hard time at school because, you know, none of the kids liked games as much as he did. But then he came to your Pokemon class and he saw this community.

And so as time has gone on, I've really started to see this value of creating a place where kids specifically gamers can connect safely with other gamers because we have this in all sorts of different interests for kids. We have sports clubs and book clubs. But there aren't a lot of gaming clubs. And so it's kind of filled this little space that I didn't even know I was filling initially.

Yeah, now looking through the library of classes. I mean, there's different classic game clubs on every game event. Like, I don't know, I don't know why video game repertoire is a little bit limited. And some of these are really complex game like you bring up Zelda.

Like our neighbor, you know, let us borrow. I don't know if it's Breath of the Wild or one of these other ones. But like, it was a hardcover guide book. There must have been 250 pages.

It's like, this is an incredibly in-depth, complex world. It should go through and solve to beat this game. It's like, yeah, it makes sense that, you know, if I can hang out with other people, go through the same journey with me. And you know, whether it's building a business or whether it's trying to beat a video game, it makes sense.

Yeah, and it's amazing too. Because a lot of parents, when they see video games, they think, oh, it's a waste of time. But you bring up an excellent point that these games, especially ones that are on out school are very complex. You know, it's a lot of math in Pokemon, which a lot of people don't realize.

There's a lot of world building and character building in most games. There are some games where you are literally building a civilization. And so it is very interesting. The things that kids can glean just from playing video games.

Yeah, the very, the boys are very to Minecraft. And at one point, we're like, well, what? You know, we don't I never played this. It wasn't around when we were kids versus, okay, Zelda.

I have a basic understanding of from the kid and playing. But it's like, well, this is like digital Legos, in a way. It's like some of the stuff that they build, you know, by some built this like cool stadium with complete with like the football, you know, feel goal uprights and the seats and it's like in the lights. It was pretty cool.

So they have a good time hanging out in those worlds. But it was it. What was the initial reaction to putting up, you know, the Zelda only class and like what kind of enrollment to DC sound like you have a little bit of a student body that you could promote it to. Like from the English writing or from the other classes that you had.

So it wasn't, you know, coming in completely cold. Like do you have any to try that initial interest, the initial enrollments? Well, that's one of the best parts about out school is that I am not the first person to do this. I'm not the only person doing this.

That proof of concept already existed on out school, which definitely helped a lot was parents knew this was a safe place for kids to game together that it was an adult in a verified space. So that is a big part of it is that parents understood that this was something offered on out school. I definitely did a lot of my own internal marketing to my students who were in my writing class. And I said, Hey, we were doing this in writing.

Would you like to come and try out the Zelda class where we play Zelda together? And it's interesting because I still have some students who have been in the exact same Zelda class. It's a group of like six students and they've been together for about three years now. This group of six students, they meet twice a week every week going on three years and just have this amazing friendship between them and it's it's amazing.

Yeah, that is really cool. That was kind of the next question a little. How sticky is it? Like if it's structured as you know, it's less like SAT prep tutoring.

Like after the test, you know, it's it's over. Like I don't need the city. I don't need the service anymore. But it's like here, you know, you kind of come initially for the content and then end up staying for the community is a common theme amongst, you know, membership type of businesses.

It's just like, yeah, it seems like people do tend to stick around or the, you know, lifetime value to put it in marketing speaking like tends to be quite high here. Exactly. And it's very interesting because with my business model versus a more traditional teacher, I am constantly innovating and creating new classes. So like Breath of the Wild that you mentioned is a Zelda game that came out in 2007.

Tears of the Kingdom came out last year. And so I have to create a tears of the Kingdom class, right? And then Pokemon, the next generation of Pokemon comes out. I need to create a new Pokemon class.

Whereas if you're doing multiplication, multiplication is always the same. You know, so it is interesting because I do feel like I am constantly innovating and adding more games that the students want to play. But you're absolutely right that they stay for the community. Even after students have finished Zelda, because I guarantee those kids who have been in that class for three years, they finish Zelda a long time ago, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they want to stay together. They just, they love the community and they love the teacher. Like I can't speak highly enough about my teachers.

They stay for the teacher and for that validation from their peers. That's why they stay. Okay. How do you decide on pricing here?

A lot of it is looking at the competition on out school. So when I started teaching on out school, my prices were significantly lower because I was a new teacher. I didn't have any experience teaching on out school. And then as my classes filled and as I got reviews and there was that social proof with classes finished and reviews, I could start to raise my prices little by little.

And then what ended up happening was my classes were so full that I continued to raise my prices. And then I thought, well, I can't teach any more classes. I need to start to build a team because there's still a demand. More parents want different times or different games.

And I can't teach all of them. And so then I started to build my team up. Is there a target price that you're at now per hour or per session? I don't know how they structure it.

Some of them seem to be 50 minutes. Some of them seem to be a little bit shorter. Yeah. Right now we're charging about $17 or $18 for a 50 minute class per student is where we're at.

And that's pretty standard across out school. They also have some recommendations that out school puts out. They say, this is our recommended pricing based on what we've seen in the market. And so go right in that point too, which helps.

Okay. So starting, so it sounds like strategy start out a little bit lower to build up enrollment, like make it lower risk on the parent side. And then you can level up from there. So if I'm doing just basic math, 17 bucks per class, say I have 10 kids in that class, $170 for an hour.

Pretty great hourly rate. Now out school is taking 20, 30% what's their, what's their fee? 30% 30% Okay. So even then, knock 30% off the top.

I'm still over $100 an hour teaching a video game. So this is, this is pretty cool. How do you have it set up with your subcontractor teachers? Because this is what's really cool is it's allowed you to go really broad on the catalog.

Yes. Look, we can, we can make classes about a ton of different video games and really cast a really wide net there. Which you wouldn't necessarily either have the time to do or expertise to like, I don't know all these different games. So I think that's really cool.

But curious how that is structured in terms of payment and I have something else on that. But I'll let you do that one first. Yeah. So the way that it works is out school pays me and then I pay my subcontractors.

So they are my independent contractors. And I have a payment structure. The way I've done it is based on number of enrollments in a class. And so the more students that are in a class, then the higher the teacher is paid versus if there's fewer in the class, the less they're paid.

And then it allows them to scale as much as they want. Because some teachers are more comfortable with a bigger class or a smaller class. So it's kind of choose your own adventure in that way. Okay.

So they can earn more if there's more students in that. It makes sense. It's more work. Exactly.

It's more work. Yeah. Exactly. It's more work when there's more kids, more chaos, right?

You have to have more organizational skills. And it also matters what game it is. There are some games like Fortnite, for example. You really can't have more than about eight total in the class because you're in two groups of four.

Whereas a game like Pokemon, you can kind of have a little bit more because you can break off into smaller groups. So a lot of it depends on the game too. How many students we allow in each class? Is there a minimum number of students?

Like you get one enrollment. You still have to show up and do the thing for 17 bucks. I'm a big believer in showing up for the one enrollment. Not all teachers are.

But what I have found is that even showing up for that one learner where obviously you're not bringing in a lot, right? 30% of 17 is not a lot. But it's worth it because the parent sees you showed up for my kid even though my kid was the only one here. And those students usually stick around for a very long time in rolling multiple classes because the parents appreciate it.

And sometimes parents will enroll and there's one kid and then they say, I don't want my kid to be alone in the class and then they withdraw their student from the class. So it's kind of a little bit of both. Yeah, it's like, well shoot, this is like, you know, one-on-one private instruction for the price of a group ticket. You know, so it depends on the parent and depends a lot on this.

If they were coming in, yeah, if they were coming in for the social club aspect of it, it's like, oh, snow is no longer that social. Exactly, exactly. So a lot of it just depends on the parent or on the student. But we do.

We teach the one student when they want to be taught. If they want that one-on-one, even at that group price because the other thing going back to social proof is a lot of times we'll get one student. And then over the next three or four weeks, you know, another student comes in and then another student. So sometimes it just takes a little bit of momentum to build it up.

Yeah. That makes sense. Not everything is going to be sold out right out of the gate. And it's interesting that it sounds like out-school gives you the flexibility to say, ah, sorry, we didn't have enough or we're going to, you know, postpone this until we have more students where we did an episode on Airbnb experiences.

Like, I want to host a local walking tour or, you know, a guided meditation. It was the example that we did on that show. And there was like, if one person signs up, you're doing the thing. And it was like, okay, I got to drive out to, you know, Red Rocks in Sedona or I think it was.

And it's like, yeah, you know, it was early on, not really putting in that time. Like you said, to build up that social proof, hopefully get a good review, create a raving fan. They tell some people, and hopefully it's snowballs. But, yeah, it's just curious about that.

Yeah, totally. Is there any best practices that you found in creating your out-school listing to make it stand out? It was interesting that you mentioned, well, there were other people doing this, which, you know, if I'm on the outside looking at it, it's like, well, that's discouraging somebody peep me to it. But you say, I know, they still room to add my own unique flavor to do this and stand out and be able to compete.

So I'm curious if you found any best practices in those out-school listings or those game descriptions or those class descriptions. Well, it's awesome because out-school does have recommendations. You know, there's a lot of on-site training with out-school. And so a lot of these questions as new teachers are coming in, there are these resources available.

What I have found personally is building relationships in the class is the number one thing you can do connecting with the student. And that is where you're going to have success because you're right. If you go on out-school, there's tons of Pokemon classes, all sorts of them, right? There's all sorts of Zelda classes.

And by connecting with my students. Were there three years ago, or is that like a byproduct of you being like, hey, look, you can make money talking about Pokemon. There definitely were three years ago, not all of the games that I teach. That's something else that is very unique about my business.

I don't hire teachers. I hire gamers. So parents know when their kids come to my classes that we don't just know about Pokemon. If your child is also playing, you know, this other game, chances are we know about it, right?

Or we know enough to talk about it. So I think that's one of the biggest like differentiators between me and some of the other teachers on out-school is that I and my teachers, we live and breathe gaming, right? Like we have gained our whole lives. We're in the midnight line to get the game.

Like that's us and the kids feel that. Yeah, it's so cool. And you got, well, it's Miss Devon's video game universe on there. So I talk under this umbrella.

It gives you the freedom to go a lot of different directions. And the brand makes a big difference. You know, when parents see that brand and we have videos for each class, you have descriptions, you have thumbnails. All of those different things.

I try and make them cohesive so that parents understand the experience that they're going to get. That we are a very high energy, fun organization on out-school, right? And that their kids more than anything are going to be accepted in our classes. I try and make that very apparent to parents that everyone, everyone is welcome in our classes.

And we will make a space for every single child. That's a huge part of what makes us us. Okay, building relationships, you know, connecting with those kids as individuals, as members of this group class, cohesive branding, thumbnails, anything else that you found that helps people make it. Give you a chance for the first time.

When I have a brand new class that I'm trying to get momentum, there are groups where I can post coupons, right? And I can network with other teachers that I know have kids and I'll say, hey, does your kiddo want to try this class? And you can give me some feedback. And so networking with other parents and other teachers on out-school makes a huge difference because they'll pass your name along also.

I have a lot of good friends that are more on the educational side of out-school. And when they need a gaming class, they send them my way. So creating those relationships helps a lot too. Is there a messaging platform where you could blast out to your, you know, I imagine hundreds and hundreds of students at this point or whether their parents and say, hey, we've got a new class coming out or I can promote my teacher friend who's doing math classes or something like to do some on platform marketing that way.

Not in the way that you're thinking there's not an email system or like MailChimp or constant contact where you can blast an email. I can reach individual parents. Out-school has, out-school owns the client book, right? So they send out the big email.

So every time I list a class, out-school sends out to all of my followers, hey, Ms. Devon has a new class here it is. Okay. And then I can then reach out individually and say, hey, your son, Tommy, was in my class.

And he mentioned that he really wanted to learn how to play this game. I now have a class for that game. If Tommy would like to come, here's a coupon off for the first class, see if he wants to come. That is what is really the successful thing is connecting with parents and students individually.

Because we all know what a mass email looks like, right? We all know when our name is just filled in and it doesn't feel personal. But when I can say, I know your child likes this game. I created this class with your child in mind.

Here is a bonus benefit for being my long-time client. Then the parents are like, wow, Ms. Devon really took the time to think about my child, which I did. And then they'll enroll in the class.

Okay. That makes sense. So out-school is handling the bulk, you know, automated messaging. They see that you've had a new class.

We'll go out and promote that on your behalf. One of the benefits of being on the platform is trying to do this on your own. But then still the kind of grassroots ground floor, one-on-one gorilla marketing of like, hey, I know this kid. I think he's going to enjoy this.

You know, thanks for being a loyal customer. And it's interesting too that a lot of the classes are set up. They're open-ended. They're recurring.

And so, you know, if you get that one-time enrollment, hopefully it turns into, you know, a multi-year relationship with you. The question that I had is if it's, you know, Ms. Devon's video game universe, like people come in. Expecting you or the expectation set now.

Well, if it's this other certain game, it's going to be one of my other instructors. Like, how did you balance that early on if people were, you know, expecting you when your energy? It was very hard early on because parents would come for me. I was the brand, right?

Their students had only met me and seen me. And so, when I started to do, when my teachers started teaching for me, as I would have them kind of come and piggyback in a class or shadow. Once they were approved to teach on out-school, have the background check and everything, I'd let the students and the parents know, hey, you know, I have this new teacher, and I'm teaching them how to teach on out-school. And then they'd get to know that teacher.

And then I'd slowly start to try and send kids their way. But you're absolutely right that each teacher teaches differently. And so, there are still some students who will say, if Ms. Devon's not teaching it, I don't want to be there.

And that's totally fine because I also have students who say, if Ms. Nancy's not teaching it, I don't want to be there, you know. So, it takes time, though. And that was one of the hardest shifts from being a solo person to becoming a brand.

Was in-stilling in these parents, the trust that I have found good people for their students. Yeah, I imagine that's really hard. This is really a challenge for a lot of freelancers, too, who start out selling their unique skills and expertise. And if they, you don't want to go and scale that business into more of an agency model like you have, it's like you said, it's that training, it's that resetting expectations, it's the trust and the vetting of like, I don't know, I promise this person is as good or better than me, but you try to get over that initial hurdle if you really hammered home that personal brand.

Yeah, and what I like to do, too, in my class is, I talk about my other teachers all the time, you know, if we're in a class, and someone, one of my students, mentions they like art, I'm like, oh, you know, I have a teacher who is fantastic at art. I cannot draw a figure, you know, but I talk about my other teachers. I'm like, oh, you want to learn more about Pokemon strategy. I have this teacher who is amazing at Pokemon strategy, or you want to learn more about design.

I have this teacher who is fantastic at design. And so I think there's a lot to be said about talking about your contractors and building them up, because then parents hear that, even if they're just in the other room, and students hear that, and then they see that you trust these other people to take care of your classes also. Okay. Shem, is there any target margin or percentage that you'd like to be at, you know, in a perfect world for the subcontracted classes?

In a perfect world, more than margins, I look at it as like student numbers. If I can see how many students are enrolled in a class, that really, that's kind of the number I like to look at. So right now, we have about 300 recurring students every single week. I would love to have it be at like 400 or 500.

Okay. Did you think that's a factor of adding more, adding more inventory, adding more classes? What do you think we'll get you there? Adding more classes, more times will definitely help because outskill is an international platform.

So I'm trying to put more times on the schedule for like Asia and Europe, because we've got a lot of like evening in the US. So I'm trying to branch out time wise. We are definitely adding more games, always adding more games to our catalog and also doing more self-paced classes, which are pre-recorded classes, and trying to go into that academic world with the video game twist a little bit more. Okay, talk to me about those.

That is potentially more scalable or less hours for dollars, even if you're not, even if you kind of build yourself out of that role in a lot of ways, where you know, now you've got other people showing up and doing these classes, but it still takes their time. And so if you can do this pre-recorded thing, that's kind of an interesting angle. And so that's something else that outschool allows you to do. Yeah, and it's really cool because with the pre-recorded classes, they've just revamped the whole, it's now called self-paced classes, and they've revamped the whole thing, which makes it a lot easier for teachers to upload content.

But if I were to do like my Zelda creative writing class that we've been talking about, I can teach that live, and I can also have it pre-recorded for parents to purchase. That way, if their schedule doesn't fit with my schedule, it's like, well, if you can't come Thursday at 5 o'clock, here's the course, and you can do whatever you would like to do it. What's the price point on those? So far what I've seen from the market is just like a couple dollars less than the live classes in my niche.

So I'm thinking around $15 per self-paced class per student, but that's another thing is that with pricing, you kind of have to play with it a little bit. You have to see where other people are at, what parents are willing to pay, and then how much time it takes you to put into it. That's something I'm still working on. I haven't put up any self-paced classes yet, but I'm hoping to do so very soon.

Okay, yeah, it's something. Again, you can create something once, sell it over and over again. Like, I love that model. So that's pretty exciting.

Have you been tempted to branch out and say, I don't know, because there's like a technology component to processing the payments and the enrollments, in this case, streaming the games and everything. I'm looking at the 30% fee times 300 students recovery. It's like, it adds up to a lot over the course of a year. Is there a standalone Ms.

Devon coming soon? I've played with this idea a lot, and I have my own website, MsDevin.com. And I've played with this idea a lot, but the value that outschool has, even though they're taking 30% is immense. So every time I look at building my own platform, the amount of startup cost it would be, the amount of marketing it would be, the amount of building that, like from absolute zero, it is overwhelming.

And I'm not an expert in that by any means. And so I'm more than happy to give out school the 30% for them to take on that really heavy lifting. And now what I think I may do one day is have a standalone website where people can purchase my self-paced classes, rather than live classes. So I can upload the content, email it.

That's something that I feel like I could do a little bit better. I'm better equipped to do that, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. But I don't know if we will ever step away from outschool. I don't have any reason I would ever want to.

The clients are so good, the client book is massive. And I'm happy to give them my 30% for the business that they bring me. Yeah, and I'm glad you said that. I think it's an important perspective to keep in mind, because it's like, yeah, on the surface, it seems like a big percentage.

In exchange for, well, what would it take to build this on my own? It might take a lot more than 30%. It might take a lot longer than I think it's going to take. Because we've got other people, like freelancers on Fiverr, and I think Fiverr is 20% or 25%.

And it's like, yeah, but they brought me that customer. Like, my cost of customer acquisition is that 20%. It's flat, it's fixed. Without that, I'd have zero business.

It's like, yeah, you don't have to invest a lot more time in to go out and finding customers, especially in this case, you don't have access to that bulk email list that they do. Or similar to Amazon, or Amazon, if you're selling an e-commerce product, they're not giving you that customer data. And it's like, that's ours, you know. Yeah.

And I think- And I think- And I think- And I think as entrepreneurs, we very much have the mindset of, well, I could just do it myself. And we can't do it ourselves. We can do everything ourselves. But at some point, you need to hire people who are experts.

So I like to think of it as rather than building all this on myself, I've kind of hired out school to be my marketing expert and my, you know, my book management expert. If I think about it in that perspective, I'm like, oh, well, this is great. I'm only paying you 30%. And you are bringing all this to the table.

Whereas if I were to do this on my own and hire my own person, who knows what that would look like? Yeah. No, that's a good perspective. Anything else that you do on the marketing front to drive people from outside of the platform into your video game universe?

I do have a TikTok page where I talk about gaming and how parents can be more supportive in their kids' gamings and healthy gaming habits. And so I use my TikTok platform a lot that has definitely helped bring some students over. I love doing interviews like these. I was on the Kelly Clarks intro and talked a lot about the video gaming universe and everything like that.

And so just reaching out to people and talking to people and connecting. Like that's really all it comes down to is finding people to connect with. And so I just try and find a lot of different avenues where I can meet different people. I'm going to an unschooling conference and I'm speaking at that this summer.

And I'm sure I'll connect with people there. And that's really what it comes down to is you just have to find people to connect with. Man, that makes sense. You know, playing the both the social media game, like breathing into the supportive community.

Like, who do I want to reach? You don't want to reach parents of kids who, you know, like the playing video games. How can I support them and encourage, like you said, healthy gaming habits doing the media thing? How did you end up connected with Kelly Clarkson?

Well, it started with my local news station here. And for any entrepreneur out there who wants more media exposure, you have to go and find it. You know, I kept waiting like, I kept waiting for like to be discovered. You know, I was like, oh, one day someone's going to show up and be like, oh, you play video games for a living.

And I was like, no, what's going to do with that? And so I started and this was how I connected with you, Nick. If you remember, I just started sending out emails and I said, hey, I've got this story to tell. I'd love to tell it to you.

And so that went to my local news station. And then from there, someone at Fox saw it and they put it on their website, didn't interview with me. And then someone from the Kelly Clarkson show saw that one and reached out to me when the Mario movie was coming out. And said, we'd love to have you on the show.

And so it's just putting yourself out there. Yeah, I'm digging through my archive email here. So we have March 16, 2022, sharing my side hustle is the subject line. But I do this one-on-one, you know, still called media outreach and flatter that the side hustle show would be considered media.

I currently make over $4,000 a month playing video games. I only work around 20 hours a week. And we have $4 under the age of 10. Like, yes, you know, this is checking all the boxes.

Fantastic story. You know, it's so that's, I mean, that's what it is, you know, to get on media radars. Like, you gotta learn, you know, speak the language that they, of the stories that they want to tell, right? And this is a perfect example of that.

Like, wait, you could make money doing this. I never heard of this before. Tell me more. And that's the important thing, you know, as people reach, as you reach out to media, you have to consider who you're reaching out to.

Because that email I sent to you, I sent it to you very specifically because I knew what your podcast was about. I knew what interest it you. I sent a very different email to a different person, you know? And so you can't just send out, it's like, it's like everyone says, you have to tailor your resume.

That's basically what I was doing in a unique way, you know, you have to understand who you're speaking with. Because this is a connection. This is a relationship, you know, I bring something, you bring something and we connect. And then we both have a great time with it.

So for anyone trying to do media outreach, I just try it, you know, the worst that happens is nothing happens. And that's where we were before anyway. Have you seen a spike in enrollments after some of the big like TV exposure? When they get, when they hit right away, yes.

So after the Kelly Clarkson show, I had several enrollments and parents would message me and say, I saw you on the Kelly Clarkson show. Or if I have a TikTok that does really well, I'll have a kiddo usually who's like, I saw you on TikTok. Or when I'm posting my YouTube videos, I was posting some playthroughs for a while. And I would mention my classes and students would say, I was watching your Zelda playthrough and I saw you teach classes and I enrolled.

So they're definitely not the bulk. The bulk 100% comes from the outskool marketing team. But there are some who sprinkle in, you know, from those other places for sure. Do you have an example of a TikTok that has done really well?

Well, my very best TikTok was actually when I was hiring. I put out a TikTok when I was hiring my first wave of teachers and it blew up. It exploded on TikTok, which I was not expecting and it led to 6000 applications to teach. Oh my gosh.

That's a video game teacher. How do you filter through those? Oh, Nick, it was a beast. I had like a five step process.

I had application one application to they sent me a 90 second video. They sent me a three to five minute video and then we did an interview. It was crazy. Like it was insane.

But I did see from that a lot of enrollments come through because parents were like, oh wow, she's expanding her team. She plays all these different games. And so I would have students enroll from like that one or I have a couple where parents will ask me specific questions. I had one where a parent asked, you know, my son has ADHD.

Could he come to your classes? I said, absolutely. And that parent enrolled and several others did too. And so social media, you know, it's kind of a, we, it sounds like an old song and dance, but social media really can be super powerful if you use it in the right way.

Yeah, it's just kind of putting in the swings. You know, you never know what's going to hit. It's just like, you know, some, some guests have called it like the rule of a hundred. Like I got to create a hundred pieces of content.

Yeah. Just to find, you know, the one or two that hopefully has a little bit of viral pull, but 6000 applications. Yeah, you got some attention for that one. And even though it was targeting the teacher side of things, this naturally like, oh, you know, there's the other parents are going to be watching.

Like, oh, this would be perfect for my kid. Exactly. Yeah. And so just also being true to my brand across all platforms.

I've done a little bit of twitch streaming and we were family friendly stream because I wanted parents to see what their kids would be experiencing in the class. Same with like my YouTube channel, totally family friendly, same with my TikTok family friendly. And so across everything I keep my brand consistent so that parents know what they're going to get just like when you go to a grocery store, when you go to a, you know, any chain store, it has to be consistent. Otherwise, your customer gets confused.

Yeah, I was going to ask about the YouTube side of things for, you know, filming tutorials or like how to get past this boss or how to, you know, solve this challenge in this particular game. You know, if that kind of content, it's very transactional like solve my specific problem. I don't know if that would lead to more enrollments or if you played anything, played around with anything like that. I have a little bit.

I actually started my YouTube channel because my students had specific questions that I didn't have time to cover in class. So a great example is there was this big puzzle in Zelda and it is so hard. It is so hard because there's no instructions. You just show up and do it.

So I had a student ask me, he said, hey, can you help me with this? And I said, you know, we're not going to have time in class today. But I'll make a video and I'll put it up on YouTube and you can watch it. That way you have your answer and everything like that.

And so then what happened was that video was a problem that a lot of people had in the game, right? A lot of people were struggling with this shrine. And so more people would go and then they would watch it and they'd say, oh, thank you so much for explaining this. And then some of those people who watched it were kids who then enrolled in my classes.

And so it's very much like we were talking about with like the self-paced courses, just in a little bit of a different format. It's just that passive marketing that's always going. Yeah, I love this YouTube strategy kind of like just question and answer YouTube. It's like, it's probably not going to go viral, but it's going to solve somebody's specific problem.

You know, people are typing it in. This was, you know, Gabby Wallace was teaching English in Japan. I want to say like this has been probably 10 years since we did this interview. And this was her like, I'm going to create these, you know, English language lesson tutorial videos for my students, the ones I'm seeing in person anyway.

Like, I'll just put it up on YouTube. Like here's it's faster than you know, be meeting with you in person again. Here, just watch this. And then, you know, low and behold, other people are watching this stuff and like built this whole like English language learning empire, you know, on the back of these videos that really weren't intended for that going on.

But, you know, it kind of a numbers game, you know, certain percentage of people are going to watch and then ultimately enroll. And I love this. So my best performing YouTube videos like stuff I made 10 years ago, like how to keep. You had stopped drop box from taking up like your local storage space.

I was like annoyed by this. It was like a personal like like, hey, it's supposed to be cloud storage. Why is it on my hard drive? Like, oh, there's this little, there's this little check box.

It's like, that's still one of my best performing videos. It's like really kind of dumb stuff in a lot of ways. But, you know, answering these type of questions, I think that makes a lot of sense. You know, where TikTok is kind of like, you know, viral is going to disrupt your feed maybe or it's like kind of interruption marketing.

YouTube is very much Q and A, you know, how to solve this specific problem. So you can kind of target. You can maybe more strategically in the classes that you got over there. So right now we've got dozens of dozens of classes, a dozen plus teachers, a little bit, you know, dabbling into the self-paced classes.

Is there anything else of primarily outschool as far as, you know, what's bringing the cash register? Any other revenue stream? So we haven't touched on. I have a couple of other projects that I'm working on that are not specifically related to teaching on outschool, but they came from that.

So I had a company reach out to me a couple weeks ago and they said, hey, we have this app where kids can play Roblox and parents can monitor their Roblox playing experience. We would like you to create a video for us. And so that kind of stemmed from my TikTok where they saw that I was a gamer who was focused on education. And they said, we would like you to make a video for us.

And so I've had a couple of companies reach out to me in that UGC kind of space where it's like, we would like you to make content for us because your brand aligns with what we are looking for. And we think that you would do a good job with this messaging. And so I've had a couple of those start to pop up and it's definitely something I'm interested in pursuing further. But a few of those have started to pop up a little bit, which I did not anticipate.

It wasn't something I expected to see come. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. That's like bonus bonus money.

New income stream unlocked. Right. What's what's typical for a rate for those? It's kind of the Wild West.

And it's like, I don't know what to charge for that. Like, you know, or do they come to you with a price? Well, I do a lot of UGC for user generated content if any of your viewers don't know. I do a lot of that for outschool.

So they have a marketing team. And so they brought me on as one of their. So I'm in a lot of outschool YouTube videos. And so I use that as my baseline.

And I was like, how is this sound? You know, I knew it was a small company. And I so I kept my price pretty low. I was like, you know, around 150 200 for a video, a 90 second video.

They were like, yep, that sounds great. Absolutely. But then I've had bigger companies reach out to me and offer me well over, you know, a thousand dollars for a video because they have a bigger budget. And so the UGC world, I am still just barely getting started in it.

But it is an interesting space where you can approach people and people can approach you and you can kind of tailor your prices based on what people want. But it's a new, it's a new side hustle for me. Nick. This is a new one.

So I'm excited. It is exciting. And I mean, the prospect of getting paid a thousand bucks to make a 90 second video. I think that will be exciting for a lot of people.

Yeah. And then for anybody else, like on the marketing side, if you're turning around and like, I want to hire a bunch of influencers to promote my thing. Like, okay, here's, you know, here's a potential avenue to go and do that. Something that has kind of been on the back burner to do list for me.

It's like, I, you know, have not not a ton of desire to be the, you know, the TikTok face myself. But if there's other people who want to talk up the side hustle show. Like, okay, sure. I think we'll hire some influencers maybe in that way.

And it's interesting when people talk about being a content creator. I think a lot of people think it has to be my personal TikTok. But that's just kind of your starting point. I don't make any money from TikTok.

I have, you know, 15,000 followers. I don't make a penny. But the way that these brands both found me was through my TikTok channel. And so just having that kind of as a portfolio is also really, really awesome resource.

Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. What's surprised you the most over the last, I guess, two years since we last spoke in three years since starting the, you know, going deep in the video game world. I've been a side hustler my whole life, right?

I've always wanted to stay home with my daughter. So I've done a lot of side hustles. But I have always been the independent contractor. And now I am the boss.

I'm in charge of these teachers who teach for me and getting over the imposter syndrome feeling. It is real. You know, when you start to have to, when you're hiring people and you're now in charge of making the decisions for, you know, their schedule, their pay, all these things. I have very often felt I am so not qualified for this.

Why, why me? You know, why am I in charge of this? But then I have to stop and think and I'm like, you know, I'm in charge of this because this is what I have built. And even though it feels like there's a million other people who could do a million things better than I can.

In the end, it really is me who's going to be the best to making these decisions. So imposter syndrome has been massive, I think. Yeah, I don't know. Well, the only don't cure for imposter syndrome that I found is is what you're doing doing the work, doing the thing and coming out on the other side and saying, well, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was.

But can you give me a sense of a day in the life or a week in the life now? You know, are you still doing any classes live or is that 100% on the on the team? I am slowly shifting out of all life teaching. So when we spoke last time, I was teaching about 20 hours a week.

Now I think I'm down to about three. And I'm planning on getting that to zero by May. I'm planning on being done live teaching because I do want to focus on self-paced classes and other content that can be consumed by parents in different ways on out school. So I don't do any life teaching anymore.

And it's in a lot of ways, it's really hard because I love these students. You know, I've connected with them. And so not seeing them is a very hard thing. But we, I mean, part of it is we have a really big move coming up.

And so I may come back to live teaching, but at the same time, it's like, I think my role has changed so much. Now I need to be, you know, the eye in the sky. I need to be in charge of admin and messaging and payroll and helping my teachers succeed rather than my own personal classes. Being the ones that are succeeding.

So it's a big mind shift change. And it sounds like you're having fun in that new role. Like the fear would be what I really love doing to what I want classes. And, you know, but logic and all the business gurus say you got a scale, you got a higher.

Yes. And then worst case scenario, you find yourself in a new job that you don't like. You're like, well, that's not what I wanted. And I've talked to a lot of teachers on out school who have reached out to me and they said, you know, I should I become an organization?

Should I start to hire teachers and do the process you did? And I always told them, I say, do you like to manage people or do you like to teach kids? And if they say I like to teach kids, then I say, do not do not scale any further. Don't do it because you are not going to be a teacher anymore.

You are now a business owner and you have to take it very seriously. And so my job now, I love people. You know, I love working with my teachers. I love managing it.

I love all of that. And so it works for me. But if you're not a person who wants to manage that sort of stuff, don't do it. You know, just don't do it because you're going to be miserable.

You're going to be like, man, I miss what I was doing before. But if that is something you want to do, then absolutely scaling makes sense. Yeah, it's a different, different skill sets that you're playing a different game. And growing from there, you mentioned the self-paced classes, you mentioned the goal of growing to 400 to 500 recurring weekly students.

What else is on the horizon for this year? Well, I just barely hired on seven more teachers. That's what brought us up to 14. And so one of my biggest goals is filling their schedules.

That's like what consumes my thoughts all the time. I'm like, okay, they are depending on me to fill their schedules to find classes that will work. And so innovating, creating more classes, going down different avenues. I really do want to do more in outside of outschool, but more in person.

I really want to be educating parents on how to help their kids game. Because a lot of parents don't help their kids game in a responsible or healthy way. And it's just because they don't know how. And that's that's the big part of my business that I'm extremely passionate about is I really want parents to be better at helping their kiddos game.

So looking at different conferences that I can speak out, looking at different avenues where I can share this message. I've thought about all of those different kinds of things. But those are kind of my main priorities right now. Yeah, there's definitely a path to being an influencer in that space.

I know my wife follows someone in that niche. I don't know if it's like, you know, at video game mom or something. But it's the healthy gaming habits, you know, the benefits of video games, the problem solving, the sense of progress, beating this level, the stick to it, of like dealing with a tough challenge. Like there's a lot of benefits from it.

We can say that I benefited from doing this as a kid too. Like you can see it with our kids too. It's like, you know, it's not, I mean, it's not passive. You know, it's it's not just sitting there and you know, vegin out in front of the TV is like you're actively using your brain, hopefully in, you play these things.

Absolutely. And that's a thing that a lot of a lot of parents don't understand because they just see their child, you know, gaming for hours and hours and hours. And they're like, oh, they're just wasting their time or whatever. But you know, you mentioned Minecraft.

I don't know if you knew this about Minecraft, but you can make automated engineering machines, which is amazing in Minecraft. Like it is a very complex game. So you can have it be that, you know, this machine plants the seeds and then once the seeds have grown, this machine gathers the seeds and then they take those seeds and take them over here. And then they make the food that your character needs to eat.

And so like that process, it is an amazing engineering thing that kids learn, but they're playing a video game. And so yeah, those are some of the things I really want to work on more is helping parents, you know, not be so scared of games. Yeah, it's not just completely wasted time. Sure, you know, I maybe would rather you be outside or you know, have some balance of outside time and physical activity.

But, you know, if it's, you know, during the cold rainy wet Northwest winters, hey, live it up to some gaming. Well, Mr. Devon.com, D-E-V-Y-N.coms where you can find her. We'll link up the outschool page as well.

Appreciate you joining me, sharing the insight on how all this stuff works. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side hustle nation. You just got to start. That's the first thing and start and try a lot of different things when I look at my outskill journey and all of the classes that I taught, all the things I tried and did not succeed at.

It's okay. You just got to do it and you have to be okay with sometimes things not working out, but if you just keep going, you'll find your side hustle and it's the best. It's great to have a side hustle because you really don't have to be dependent on the schedule or the wins of another person. So that's my number one tip, I guess.

That was one that I had wrote down too, like this call to just test out a bunch of different stuff. It's throwing the proverbial spaghetti at the wall and you're going to see what sticks and what you like doing, what kind of reaction it gets. There's a lot of better because it's a little bit similar to all I created 50 different listings on Etsy or I put up 100 different YouTube. It's like, you've got to test the waters with this stuff.

I put up a dozen different classes or I put up a dozen different fiber gigs and it cost you hardly anything to do that. And you see what starts to resonate in the market. That was definitely one thing that I took away from this and then the other things like going where the cash is already flowing. Yes, on the surface, 30%, 20% whatever the platform cut is, that's going to look expensive, but it's like in exchange, this is my outsourced marketing department.

This is my outsourced admin and a really a lot of a lot of things are taken off your plate in exchange for that. So that was something else that I put down. If you are listening to this, make sure to go check out the previous interview with Devon from 2022. You see where she was at at that stage.

And if you're not sure where to start in the side hustle show archives with over 600 episodes to choose from, go grab yourself a personalized playlist at hustle.show to stay answer a few short multiple choice questions. You can do it from your phone and the machine will spit out the custom curated playlist that's going to be most relevant and impactful for you. And you can add that to your device learn what works. Go make some more money.

Again, hustle.show for that. Big thanks to Devon for sharing her insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. As always, you can hit upside hustle nation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.

That's it for me. Thanks so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the side hustle show hustle on.