Outsource Date Night With This Sexy Side Hustle

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

[Music]

Outsourcing is everywhere these days. You can get all kinds of people and companies to do all kinds of things for you. You can order your lunch. It will come to your home or office. You can get Prime Now delivered in two hours, sometimes less.

You can hire a virtual assistant. You can pay somebody to stand in line for concert tickets or to return items to a store or all kinds of things. And now, at least if you live in South Florida, maybe you can even delegate your preparation for a romantic evening in your choice of PG or non-PG rated environment. This is the brainchild and income generating project of two best friends. It brings in at least a couple thousand dollars a month, sometimes up to $5,000, all in the name of romance.

Welcome to Side Hustle School, the only podcast bringing you daily stories of real people creating freedom and options for themselves through the form of a side hustle. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I have a quick thank you to our sponsor and then get ready to outsource your date night with this sexy side hustle. [Music]

There are friends, and then there are friends who will go the extra mile for you. Tranika McLeod, a social worker from Florida, wanted to go the extra mile for her best friend, Taveka Collins.

The two friends have known each other for decades, but it wasn't until Taveka's wedding night that they accidentally stumbled upon the idea to turn their love of love into a side hustle success. To do something special for the matrimonial couple, Tranika and other bridesmaids snuck off and decorated their honeymoon suite with candles and rose petals artfully scattered throughout the room. A honeymoon survival kit and other love items were placed throughout the suite. It was romantic, tasteful, and surprisingly, the beginning of a business. After Taveka's honeymoon, which it seems like she survived thanks to that kit, the two best friends began to plan and execute numerous romantic rendezvous for their significant others, family, and friends.

They called it romance on the go, and they spent a few weeks testing their date nights with people they knew would give them honest feedback before launching just in time for Valentine's Day. That way, they thought they'd have at least a few paying customers. But it turned out they had more than a few. Within the first month, they had dozens of people wanting romantic date nights for their loved one. According to Tranika, they were shocked that so many people were interested.

We couldn't believe that an idea we had on a honeymoon night could have sparked this. However, to be clear, just because they had people interested didn't mean they were exempt from having to market themselves. Tranika and Taveka had to advertise their romantic packages so people would know it wasn't just a Valentine's Day thing. They wanted to be a year-round business, so they had to create packages for birthdays, anniversaries, wedding nights, and just because evenings. These two friends spent the majority of their first year working out logistics.

They needed to build vendor relationships with wedding planners, musicians, car services, personal shoppers, and florists so they could build specialty packages to offer to their clients. Being good side hustlers, they were frugal, startup costs were just about $600, and they determined the package pricing based on the cost of their products, which they usually buy wholesale to save more. Because of the personalization of their packages, prices might change a bit depending on what the clients want. And let's take a look at those packages. What do you get for your outsourced romance setup?

Well, you can choose from PG-rated to not PG-rated. For example, the Rendezvous birthday package starts at $150 and includes 300 silk rose petals, 20 LED candles, a birthday banner, a bouquet of balloons, and a personalized mini cake. Meanwhile, the Naughty and Nice package, this is the one I usually order on a Tuesday afternoon, it starts at $240 and includes those rose petals, the LED candles, but also romance dice, massage oil, a mask, and a bondage item. Unfortunately, this package does not include a cake, which is a little disappointing to me because you apparently have to choose between bondage or cake. I always thought they went together, but maybe that's just me.

There are other packages and of course everything is customizable. Now let's talk about the bottom line. Tranika and Tabika are bringing in anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 a month, depending on the time of year. Their busiest seasons are around Valentine's Day, naturally, this year they brought in $2,000 that week, but also the wedding season and other holidays like Christmas and New Year's. Romance on the go is dependent on one of the main tenants of any successful relationship.

And I don't mean just bondage or cake, I mean good communication. The two friends credit their business and their friendship to staying organized and always being in communication about meetings, vendors, and planning. They also use weekly accountability task sheets so that they each know what tasks they need to accomplish. Beyond that, they admit that they couldn't keep this going without a healthy dose of patience. They have to be willing to deal with other people's visions and guide their clients who say, "Do whatever." And they can do a lot.

Outsourced romance planning is now available, at least if you live in South Florida. It's a little love and a little hustle to bring busy couples closer together. [Music]

All right, a couple of quick comments on romance on the go. First of all, about that partnership thing. I think it's important to have clearly defined responsibilities and tasks to ensure that your commitment to the business and to one another is met.

A lot of people start side hustles with their friends because they like their friends and they have an idea and they think this would be a good partnership. And sometimes they run into difficulty because one partner ends up being more committed to it than the other, or one of them just has more time. So in their case, I really like this idea of the weekly accountability task sheets so that they know which tasks they each need to accomplish. I could see that as being something that's motivating and also just helpful organizationally because you don't have a lot of time to work on your side hustle. And so if you know exactly what you need to accomplish, that is almost half the battle.

So good for them. And then last, being a local business and doing the setup for these experiences themselves, they don't really have a lot of room to grow. Like they could keep doing more experiences in their local area. Maybe they could charge more, maybe they could get a team. But I almost wonder, you know, depending on where they want to take this, I almost wonder if there could be some kind of franchise model where other people could license their idea and then recreate it elsewhere.

So just some food for thought there. It is a fun project, really well done. So I would encourage you to check it out. And as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Hope that you find these stories inspiring and I hope that they help you in some way as you're doing your own thinking and planning and hopefully taking action.

Today's show notes, including links to romance on the go and some of my favorite naughty and nice cakes. All right, sidehustleschool.com/623. That is for episode 623. Thank you for listening today. You're a rock star.

I hope you'll join me again tomorrow for our weekly recap. My name is Chris Guillebeau and this is Side Hustle School.