This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Side Hustle School listeners, welcome back. This is Chris Guillebeau here with another story for you today. Now, earlier in the week, I told you the story of Nathan and Catherine Spaccarelli, a nomadic husband and wife who have traveled the world with their kids and started a fulfilled by Amazon business that supports their travels, allows them to have more choice and opportunity in their lives. Today, I've got a different kind of travel story, some interesting lessons in this one, including a comment on how to price your service. I get a lot of questions about that, so I'm gonna give you a very simple rule of thumb.
And this project might be interesting to people who like to plan and who are good at putting together lots of different action steps and seeing them through. That is definitely an undervalued skill and people in certain professions tend to have that skill perhaps more than others. So I often talk about transferring skills and using the skills you already have. Well, here's a very real world example of that. And then lastly, just a quick mention of a travel course that I offered you on Monday.
If you'd like to learn more about travel hacking and how to see the world without spending a lot of money, we're trying something different. You can just send a quick email, a blank email in fact, to travel@sidehustleschool.com. We will automatically send you that free course by email. And if for some reason you don't like it, of course you can unsubscribe. So that's travel@sidehustleschool.com.
And today's story is coming up right after this. [Music]
Accountant Roshni Agarwal and her engineer husband Jeff are keen travelers. Whenever given the opportunity, they're always down for a new experience. And as an avid deal hunter, Roshni is always on the lookout for a money saving adventure. When she found a big discount on tickets to Chile, she knew it would be the perfect 30th birthday gift for Jeff.
Jeff had been wanting to go to Patagonia ever since hearing about a friend's expensive guided tour the year before. Roshni bought the discount tickets and planned the trip, but kept the destination and itinerary a surprise from Jeff until just before they left. Upon returning from their adventure and telling their friends how they saw penguins, hiked Patagonia, and explored the desert all in one week, the common response was one of awe of how much they were able to do in a week and for how little money too. Well, it just takes planning, said Roshni. When a friend joked that he would pay to have them plan a trip like that for her, the idea of their side hustle was born.
It was called the vacation hunt. The vision behind this hustle, which officially launched just a few months ago, is that most busy people don't care to research or plan their own vacations, so they simply either end up not going or going to the same few places repeatedly. And as seasoned travelers, Roshni and Jeff have planned trips for themselves, friends, and family for years. Their experience guides them in being able to provide a unique service. And through the vacation hunt's surprise vacation packages, they make it easy for travelers to go somewhere new and perhaps somewhere they didn't think they could afford.
So here's how it works. A traveler for the vacation hunt completes a questionnaire detailing preferences for activities, dining, and accommodations, along with a requested length of trip and the number of travelers. The vacation hunt then determines the location they should go based on the answers and books airfare and hotel on behalf of the traveler. The traveler learns of their destination when they receive tickets and itinerary, as well as personalized activities, dining and transportation tips, et cetera. But Roshni and Jeff also like to keep it fun by sending clues in advance of where the person's gonna go.
Now, as I worked on this story, I thought, you know, some people are really gonna like this idea and some people aren't. So again, just keep in mind, this is side hustle school. It's not necessarily something for you to go and do. It's for you to learn and think about, okay, is there a market for people who would want someone to plan their vacation? Even if I would want to plan it myself, maybe I wouldn't want someone to surprise me with a destination that I had no idea about.
Well, that's fair, but there probably are a lot of people who would like that. So keep that in mind. The vacation hunt's first official customer was a friend of a friend. They had made a simple website using Squarespace, spent less than $300 on the whole thing. And this order came out of nowhere from a customer who booked a package without any prior contact at all.
The moment was surreal and Roshni had to read the order a few times before believing it was true. But it was true and they got to work planning a trip. Roshni and Jeff work on this project together. They consider it a true partnership. Jeff is better working on the website.
Roshni is better at social media and marketing. And when it comes to actually planning the trips, they work together. Roshni told me we often have different ideas of fun and it helps to bounce ideas off of one another. Roshni and Jeff also did their research when deciding what to charge for this service. This started with timing a few friends' planning trips, which included researching the destination, making an itinerary complete with dining activities and transit, then booking and printing it all.
They discovered it took about 10 hours over the course of a few days to do all those things. So then they thought about what that time would be worth to them and they built that price into their package offerings. I took a quick peek at that Squarespace site that Jeff had made and it looks like surprise packages start at $750 a person for an All-American Adventure and $1,200 a person for an international intrigue. Those are just some fun names they chose for their packages. Since the vacation hunt is a service-based business, overhead is low.
There's some minor ongoing licensing costs, as well as printing and mailing fees for the surprise packets. But really it's mostly about the amount of time they put into the project. Customers are coming by word of mouth, friends of friends and coworkers. They haven't yet done a lot of outside marketing. They wanna make sure they perfect the model before they start trying to reach a lot of other people.
But so far it's working. And they especially enjoy the satisfaction they get from seeing people have great trips they wouldn't have gone on without their help. They're also noticing that their surprise packages have been most popular for special events like honeymoons. So far they've planned three honeymoons and they've really enjoyed doing that because they feel like they're part of helping another couple start their lives together. The vacation hunt was profitable from month one, the biggest limitations are time, and Roshni and Jeff are definitely putting their planning skills to good work.
[Music]
So congratulations Roshni and Jeff. I think there are several things we can take away from this story. First of all, transferring the skills you already have, but one of them was an accountant, the other was an engineer. I think it's probably fair to assume that people in those professions tend to be detail oriented, good at planning, good at seeing different steps. So it's only natural if they have a passion for travel, especially the planning side of travel, that that would be a good side of slow for them to pursue.
And indeed it seems like it is. Now also I mentioned pricing your service. So there is a lot we could say about pricing. We'll do a whole special episode about it because I know people have questions. But just to get you thinking, here's a very simple rule of thumb, which is almost exactly what Roshni and Jeff did.
When you're providing a service and you're not trying to quit your day job necessarily, this is your first venture into the side hustle world. Probably the most important thing you need to think about is what is my time worth? You can start by thinking about the income you make for your day job. You might be on a salary, but what is the rough hourly equivalent of that? I would suggest that your side hustle income should be a floor.
Whatever you make in an hour for your day job, you want to make at least that, if not more, from your side hustle. So then when you think about putting together a service, like this vacation hunt package, you don't necessarily charge hourly, 'cause that's not always a good idea, but you think about how much time it's gonna take you to provide the service, and there might be some experimentation involved there you might learn as you go along. But if you can get an idea of what's involved, and then you go back to, okay, what is my minimum hourly income? Add a little bit of extra time because there's always more to be done. Even though we like to keep things simple, there's probably other steps you haven't considered when you're first outlining something.
And that's how you can come up with that number. That's how Jeff and Roshani came up with $750 a person for domestic trips, or $1,200 a person for international trips. And I think it also says on their website, if people don't want a surprise or already have a destination in mind, which seems like an important secondary market, they also offer trip planning and booking services starting at $150. So it seems that's somewhat flexible depending on what people need. Anyway, I hope that is helpful to you as you think about your hustle, and hopefully you're not just thinking about it, but doing something about it.
Because inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/174. If you have a comment or question for the show, give me a call on the Hustle Hotline 8449 Hustle. Wherever you are, I hope you take one step today to get closer to the freedom you want. I'm Chris Guillebeau "This is Side Hustle School." [Music]
