Q&A: Our listener won a contest to live in Airbnbs for a year!

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Have you ever won anything? Have you won anything in a contest, a sweepstakes, a reality show, something else? I was thinking about that question as I worked on this episode. I'm not sure if I have, at least not anything interesting, which probably means that I haven't, or at least I haven't won anything that's substantial. But guess what, true story, this is super cool.

One of our listeners in the UK won a contest out of more than 300,000 applicants to live anywhere with Airbnb for a whole year. I think the way it works, if I'm not mistaken, he can actually live a bunch of different places with Airbnb, so pretty cool, right? They're actually gonna take his whole family around the world, so he's now wondering how to maximize the publicity that his family will receive. So awesome question, what a scenario to be in. I have several comments and suggestions for him, and I also solicited some additional feedback online.

So let's go quickly to get to his question and then see if we can be helpful. Our listener won a contest to live in Airbnbs for a year. His story and my response coming right up. [Music]

Hi, Chris, James Ladsby here from the West Midlands in the UK. I'm a doctor, surgeon, and a researcher, and I discovered your podcast probably about 12 months ago now.

But during that time, I've listened to all of your back catalog, including all your books, and thank you so much for all you do for this community. It's the perfect listening on my way to and from work. I'm writing to you because we have a fairly unique opportunity, I think, with my fiance and our six-month-year-old son, and we've been selected from 315,000 people to live anywhere with Airbnb for a year, traveling around the world and experiencing what it's like to remote work from lots of different locations. We share your love of travel and are really excited for this, but we also wonder whether there might be some commercial opportunities, perhaps to create and market a new product or perhaps just in terms of a travel blog and Instagram for young children. But with your background and expertise, we're wondering if you had any thoughts of where we may be best to focus our attention during this COVID travel recovery period.

Thanks, Chris. [Music]

Hey, James, first of all, congratulations. First and foremost, that's incredible. That is amazing. You'll have to let me know your Instagram or a blog or whatever you end up with so that I can follow along and I'll share it with all our listeners as well.

So second, way to think ahead, also, I've known a number of people, at least a few people who've had experiences like these, maybe not quite like winning this particular contest, but they've had something where they've had massive media exposure, you know, they've been on a reality TV show or they've otherwise had their 15 minutes of fame and they're trying to figure out, you know, how can I leverage this in some way? As James said, might there be some, you know, commercial prospects as well? And I think what it comes down to is, to leverage that attention, you have to make it easy for people to follow you. They might hear about you, you know, from Airbnb or from a news story, but you have to make it easy for them to follow you. And you want to give them a reason to stick around also.

So you absolutely should have an email list. I would say first and foremost, more than social, you absolutely should have an email list. It's something that will serve you well for years to come. So whatever website you end up making, you want to do everything you can to encourage people to join that list. And you also want to encourage them to follow you on whatever other networks as well.

As for the travel blog, I mean, that's a crowded market. It's a tough market, even though James obviously has a major advantage with all the publicity that he'll be receiving. So I think it needs to be more than just, you know, watch us travel the world and work remotely. I mean, some of the attention is gonna come for that already. I think it needs to be that and something else.

So the angle of James being a doctor, a surgeon who wins this award, that's interesting to me. There could be something else as well, but I think the watch us travel part is either a hook that gets people interested or something that's just a bonus to the main thing. And what is that main thing? Well, I don't know, but I think that's the key point. You know, in terms of the commercial interest, it has to go beyond just the watch us travel and work remotely.

But I absolutely agree there's a lot of opportunity here and mostly an incredible experience. So let's not forget that. More than any money-making opportunity, James has the chance to travel the world with his family for a year paid for by Airbnb. So hopefully James will come out of this with a new business, but I also hope you have a wonderful, unforgettable adventure. As I said, let us know how it goes.

And listeners, if you have a question or if you happen to win a contest to travel the world and stay for free for a year or something else, whatever it is, come to www.sidehustleschool.com/questions. We will continue to feature them throughout the year, along with updates from James and other people out and about around the world doing exciting things. Thank you for being part of this community. You are amazing. I hope you'll come back tomorrow.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]

- From the Onward Project.