Hey everyone, what's up? My name is Nazra. I'm a Gap Year ambassador and I'm here to help you out on your Gap Year journey.
If you don't know who I am, I also made an introduction video that you should definitely check out on this channel.
In this video I want to help you figure out how you can finance your Gap Year. If you really like the content, please make sure you like and subscribe to this channel. I'm also going to be mentioning a few organizations and companies that I have personally found in use, none of this is sponsored by the way, these are just some great resources that I know of.
Let’s just jump right into it! The 3 tips that I have are, one finding where and how you can find traditional jobs. Second is if you want to start a side hustle how you could start going about that and then the third is finding unique and interesting experiences, and curating an interesting year for yourself.
When you're thinking about financing your Gap Year, one thing that I do want to mention is that because you're not in school, you're not spending in school and so you are saving a bit of money. If you're, you know, anxious about money and whatnot, I hope that at least helps calm some of the anxiety down when you're thinking about money.
The other thing is that if you are trying to finance your Gap Year, you have to have a clear understanding of what you are financing.
Is it your next year in college? Is it going to be the next few years in college and university or is it going to be some travels for your Gap Year? Do you want to go on some interesting experiences and just have some spending money knowing how much money you need and being able to calculate how much you are going to need to finance is super, super important and being able to make certain decisions.
The other thing is also to make sure that as you're earning money that you are budgeting as well.
This video is not going to be so much about budgeting. If you would like a budgeting video, please drop a comment in the comment section below and we can definitely make tips for budgeting video as well, but some quick budgeting tips is using apps like Mint that actually track all your budgeting habits and spending habits.
You can also link it to your bank account if you have an app for your bank account and that can also be a really helpful tool to just make sure that when you are also making money that you're spending it wisely and not losing a lot of it to coffees, which I definitely do spend a good amount of money on coffee, so I really I can resonate with you if you're like that and Mint is very, very helpful for that.
Getting on to the tips if you are looking for a traditional job kind of a local job, If you'd like to work in retail, for example or at a restaurant. Or just make some money on the side, I would highly recommend trying out Job sites like, indeed.
I'd also really, highly recommend going in person like, especially if it's a local shop and it's close by. It's trying to find the manager having your resume printed out and actually trying to meet the people that might be hiring you.
Even if a store isn't hiring directly, I would highly recommend going around your neighborhood, seeing where you would like to work and still handing people your resume making a good first impression, saying hello in case they do have a job opening over the next few months and just putting yourself out there.
The other thing is I would highly recommend also getting LinkedIn if you're not already on LinkedIn. I really think you should get on it.
If you do get on LinkedIn, make sure that your profile is completely well set up, meaning that you have a headshot in there, that you have all your volunteer experiences listed, that you have your school experiences listed that you've already started to connect with people from school or extracurricular activities as well.
LinkedIn is a great place to find jobs. Also, you can also apply to jobs directly through LinkedIn, and I really, really think it's an extremely helpful tool to also find.
Other people that can do that other people who you might not have even met yet, who can help you find a job who you might be interested in working with. So I will share a bit more about that a bit later. and work with so I will share more of that I will share.
Those are three quick directions that I would lead you to if you were trying to find a more traditional job. Is just searching through job sites, getting a LinkedIn and then going in person in local stores.
Now for if you would like to start a side hustle and work on an interesting project over the next year. I don't know if I would recommend this fully for financing something that you might really need, but if you were looking to see if you could make some extra money and then also make money sustainably over the long term, I would recommend taking a stab at a side hustle, and even if you fail I really think it could be an interesting and great learning experience.
One thing that I would recommend is starting your own YouTube Channel and I know that a lot of people and a lot of my friends are like if I started a YouTube channel like what would I talk about or what would I do? Or would anyone be interested in what I have to say and the answer is, Yes!
YouTube has been around for a while. I know that a lot of people have been making YouTube channels over the past few years but there's still room for you and there's still room for your interesting content, which I promise is interesting. So taking a stab at YouTube is actually something that I would highly recommend if you are into either video editing or if you have an interesting topic that you would like to talk about if you'd like to build a certain type of community. If you would like to try building your brand out a little bit more.
If you like Vlogging, there's so much to love about YouTube, and if that's your jam then I would highly recommend starting a channel and then knowing what it takes to start monetizing your channel as well.
Usually that's 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours, so looking a bit into that and seeing if that's something that you would like to spend your year on to see if that's something over the next few years that you could make money from as well is something that I do recommend.
The other is playing around with interesting other ways to make money, like dropshipping for example.
And seeing if you would like to start again like your own brand or sell a product online, drop shipping.
If you don't know what drop shipping is, it's basically being able to sell products without having inventory of them, so a third party usually holds your inventory and that way you don't have to actually pay to buy all your products. You can kind of pay to set up your products and then your customers who end up buying it will actually buy it from that third party itself.
If you're interested and learned something that's a little interesting to you or peaking your interest, it's a very popular way that it's becoming a more popular way for people to make money as a side hustle.
I would recommend checking out Shopify, which is a platform that allows you to drop ship. So if you want to Google or search up YouTube videos on Shopify or drop shipping, it is something else that I highly recommend.
Those two streams, if you can dedicate a good amount of time to figuring that out if you're passionate and you're curious about that, it can become a really good revenue stream, so I would recommend checking it out if it's something that you’re potentially interested in.
Then the third category of trying to find a job and financing your Gap Year, especially if you're looking for an internship type experience, or you would really like to work in a certain industry.
So, for example, if you're really into fashion, or if you're really into engineering, or if you're really into literally anything and you want some more experience in that field or you'd like to just explore a different field of interest and want to work with someone in it.
This next tip might literally change your life. I actually have personally used this over the past few years so much so often and it's landed me some crazy cool opportunities.
It's gotten me to be able to work in Australia last year, which was a really cool consulting experience and to be flown around the world to work with interesting people, so I highly recommend doing this next thing if that sounds interesting to you.
Alright, so this next tip is really on the basis of how there's so many interesting people working on really interesting things around the world, and if you're really interested and passionate about something, and like I said, say its fashion.
I would highly recommend taking a month to Deep Dive into that topic to create some content on what you learn about what you learned regarding that topic.
So make some YouTube videos on it explaining what you're learning, or write articles, generate content to show that you have been spending a bit of time learning about this topic that you're really passionate about and that you have the drive to really and you have the drive to learn a bit about it on your own.
And then what I would recommend after you spend some time learning deeply about this project and creating some content around it, is find people in the industry who you would want to work with now aim for the stars.
Don't try to be realistic because I am telling you that it is realistic to work with anyone that you would want to work with that you could really land a really cool internship experience or dream job with this and what I would recommend is try to find these people on LinkedIn and try to connect with them on LinkedIn or even find their business emails through sites like Rocket reach and reach out to them so you can literally cold email them.
Cold emailing is when you're not already connected to someone, but you're emailing them with a hello and ask. Email whoever you would want to work with, or whoever you would even just want to learn from, tell them your name. Tell them you know, say hello, share with them the content that you made.
Tell them how you're passionate about this project. Tell them what your future aspirations are and just start off by asking for a call. You can also outright ask for an internship and say that's something that you're interested in, but ask for a call.
See if they would be down for you to learn from them and for you to ask some questions from them and see if there's any opportunity for you guys to work together for them to be your mentor for you to be an apprentice of sorts. Really try to show your interest and enthusiasm for the thing that you are excited about.
Now if you've never done something like this, there are so many tools online to help you out with it. Like I mentioned, there's the term cold email which is about emailing people who you've never really come in contact with before, and so if you Google Cold email templates.
There's a whole bunch of templates that will come up that help you figure out how to construct a cold email that you can use with your first few interactions. When you're doing this process, make sure to also follow up with people.
I find that most of my responses come from when I followed up with a second email, so definitely do that because people are usually busy and they skim through your email and they'll come back to it.
This trick honestly, like I just mentioned, has helped me so much over the past few years. I've been able to connect with so many losing people around the world.
Some of them I didn't get to work with, but then I got to connect with and I got to learn from and have interesting conversations with, and it is really one of the best ways that I find to really accelerate yourself and it'll accelerate your career and your network and meet some genuine interesting people.
It only takes a few hours, but it can really change the course of your Gap Year. It's something that I highly recommend and you can definitely try asking for paid internships as well.
Something I recommend for internships or for a job that you've never had is actually negotiate with the person to work with them for free for a month or two, and if they think that you are adding value, then coming back to that conversation and seeing if they'd be down to hire you full time or for almost like a Co-Op/Internship season and so that you can actually get paid for doing something that you love.
Definitely with this one dream and shoot for what you think is even the impossible. It's really this trick, I can't stress it enough really could change your life if you actually need some support with cold emails or figuring out how you can really do this or even feedback on some of the content you create, like the articles for the videos showing what you've learned, feel free to