This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Oh, hey there, greetings. Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Question for you today, a little throwback question. Go way back to when you were a kid.
I know for some of us it was like 200 years ago, but whenever that was, did you ever want to run off and join the circus? In today's story, I'm gonna tell you about someone who did exactly that, or to be fair, she's created her own circus. It's a bird, it's a plane, or actually it's an acrobatic performance troupe. It started as one mom's side hustle and it now employs 14 people. How about that?
And speaking of nostalgia, today is National Little Red Wagon Day. Did you have a little red wagon when you were a kid? Or do you still have one? Who knows? So happy Red Wagon Day, and stay tuned for this up in the air side hustle story after I say thanks to today's sponsor.
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Emily Tiller had always been a dancer. She trained classically before taking up fire dancing and then aerial acrobatics as a way to keep fit. Three days after she married her husband Brooks, they went to China for four months. Brooks is a physical therapist. He got a job there training China's Olympic athletes.
Emily had brought her silks and acrobatic gear with her, so the whole time they were overseas, she would train every day without their athletes in the Olympic gym. Then the couple moved back to the US and specifically Nashville, Tennessee. They were looking for ways to make some extra money. So Emily thought about her acrobatic skill. She created a Facebook page where she posted pictures and videos of her work and offered to provide performances for parties, groups, corporate gatherings, whoever would hire her.
At the time there wasn't much of a circus presence in Nashville and Emily offered a unique service. In her first year, she was hired by all sorts of different kinds of organizations. St. Jude's Children's Hospital, the Food Network, the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Nashville Opera, breaking down musical barriers while she was up in the air. It worked well.
Emily could fit in the gigs around her job at a health company. She already had basic equipment and outfits and she soon met other performers that she could bring into larger events. Her act was called Beyond Wings and it had lifted off. By the second year, Emily was doing a gig every other weekend. When she had her first baby, things really started to fly.
She took maternity leave from her day job at the office and doubled down on Beyond Wings while rocking her son to sleep. She would get in touch with new clients, update the website and social media and work on building up that team of performers. She met more dancers and performance artists through friends and even brought in a street artist. She ran into, well, on the street. At first she planned to return to her day job, but then she worked out that with an average of two gigs a month, it made more sense for her to stay at home.
During this time and then again, when baby number two came along, the business grew in leaps and bounds. You see, becoming a mom didn't clip Emily's wings. Not being able to perform herself at this point, she needed to delegate. So she became an expert in finding and managing other performers to her own high standards. Meanwhile, Brooke stepped in to help with rigging and venue inspection and he even learned to perform himself.
Now with an army of hula hoopers, fire breathers, jugglers, aerial artists and contortionists, Emily is hitting the big time. Beyond Wings took in $5,000 their first year. It now brings in at least $60,000 a year after paying 14 full-time performers. The cost of the event varies a huge amount. It really depends on the amount of time the performer's requested, what the client wants, what kind of facilities are available and so on.
An event could be quoted at a couple hundred dollars all the way up to $10,000 or more depending on those factors. Beyond Wings does everything from small birthday parties for kids to huge productions for corporations and major organizations. Now there were some upfront costs to get things off the ground. Most importantly, an aerial rig, which cost $5,000. Aside from that, they kept spending to a minimum by using a free website and the costumes and equipment Emily already had.
Over time, they chose to invest in professional photography and videography to really show the world what Beyond Wings could do. They also expanded their range of equipment to find new ways to wow the crowds. The growth of Beyond Wings is impressive, but there are no circus tricks here. Emily puts her success down to consistent high-quality delivery. This type of business requires jumping through hoops in more ways than one.
Safety is critical. Either Emily or Brooks will visit a venue before booking a gig to make sure that everything meets safety standards. They now work with a team of trained riggers to cover all their events. And when there's fire involved, like the kind of fire that's supposed to happen, you know, with the fire breathers, Emily brings in a local fire marshal. Now here's something I thought was interesting.
Aside from staying safe and certified, Emily and Brooks have faced one other challenge. Many of their friends and family see Beyond Wings as just a fun hobby. They don't understand the unusual lifestyle that comes with it. But for Emily and Brooks, their choices mean they're able to live and work on their own terms and spend more time with their young kids. They've never doubted their decision to grow a circus side hustle into a showstopper of a business.
A few weeks ago, Beyond Wings ran nine performances simultaneously across four different states. Next, they hope to take their acrobatic extravaganza even further and expand across the U.S. They're certainly off to a flying start. Well, this is our first time to feature an acrobatic performance troupe on the show. Unless I'm mistaken, and I'm pretty sure in this case, I'm not mistaken.
I always love finding different ways that people are thriving in the new economy. And in this case, it's the new economy, but it's a very old skill, circus performance. Now, speaking of skills, the skills needed to run this kind of operation are quite different from those actual performance skills. So in this story, I thought it was interesting and insightful how Emily transitioned and developed and kind of gained some new skills. 'Cause she had that background in performance, but then after she had two kids and the business is really taken off, she realizes that she needs to put more attention on developing talent, on doing the actual client work, building up their assets, all that kind of stuff.
So it seems like she's much more of a facilitator or a manager now. And not every performer has those skills. Like there's a lot of people who are super talented and lots of stuff, but they haven't really cultivated the skill of working with people. So in some ways, this is not that different from someone who has a technical skill, like let's say kind of an internet skill of programming or something with engineering, database management, like whatever it is, that skill is valuable. Like you hear stories all the time of people who've been able to monetize using that skill in some way.
But your task at hand is not so much to develop that skill further, but to develop these soft skills of working with people, of learning how to craft a coherent message for your offer, learning how to encourage referrals, deciding on pricing, taking time to build the right infrastructure and foundation, especially at some point, if you want to go from side hustle to full on business. So I love seeing how Emily has done that. Congrats to her and Brooks and Beyond Wings. I would love to catch a performance at some point. Maybe some of you will have the chance in Nashville or somewhere else.
That's all for today. Thank you so much for listening. Inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is better. Today's up in the air show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/452. If you've got a comment or question for the show, give me a call.
The Hustle Hotline is 844-9HUSTLE or 844-948-7853. I'm gonna go jump through some hoops, but I will be back tomorrow. Hope you'll join me. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
