Ep. 3411 - First $1,000: Software Engineer Crafts Balloon Sculptures
Side Hustle School
Chris Guillebeau
4.7 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2026
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week’s First $1,000 segment, we hear from an engineer who takes out his daytime frustrations on a series of side hustle balloon sculptures.
Side Hustle School features a new episode EVERY DAY, featuring detailed case studies of people who earn extra money without quitting their job. This year, the show includes free guided lessons and listener Q&A several days each week.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Software engineer crafts balloon sculptures. |
| 0:10.0 | Well, this is a fun one. |
| 0:12.0 | Welcome back to the podcast. |
| 0:13.0 | Welcome to Side Hustle School, everybody. |
| 0:15.0 | My name is Chris Gillibow, your host. |
| 0:17.0 | Today's episode is part of a feature we call your first $1,000. |
| 0:22.3 | Your first $1,000. |
| 0:26.4 | How does somebody have a side hustle idea, turn that idea into reality, |
| 0:29.6 | create a product or a service, and make a thousand dollars. |
| 0:31.7 | And then they often go on to make much more. |
| 0:35.6 | But we are interested in the point of origin because so many of our listeners out there are trying to get going with their first |
| 0:37.8 | side hustle or maybe their next one, but it's so important to get initial revenue. I really |
| 0:43.1 | disagree with this idea of like waiting six months and building out comprehensive business plan |
| 0:48.1 | and doing all this market validation. I think you're going to validate your idea by getting |
| 0:52.2 | some revenue. And then of course you might want to tweak or adjust or make some changes as you go along. But enough of my soapbox because we want to give you a story. Today's feature comes from Steve Chandler in St. Paul, Minnesota. By day, he works as a software engineer. By night, he blows up balloons. That's right. Let's hear the story from him. |
| 1:12.5 | I'll come back at the end with a few words of wrap up. |
| 1:17.4 | Yeah. |
| 1:21.4 | Hi there. This is Steve. I'm a software engineer by day and a balloon artist by night. |
| 1:31.0 | Or you could say I bring a whole new level of creativity to my 9 to 5. It all started when I was |
| 1:37.4 | asked to create some decorations for a friend's birthday party. Always been a bit of a DIYer, so I figured |
| 1:43.3 | I can give it a shot. I started by |
| 1:45.4 | watching some tutorials online, and before I knew it, I was creating all sorts of balloon creatures, |
... |
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