This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey, what's up, welcome back. This is Sadistle School. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. I have been hearing from a lot of listeners recently, and I try to pay attention to common themes and questions. One thing I noticed is that a lot of people are stuck looking for a unique idea. They're looking for something that's never been done before, where they are the
inventor of it. It's revolutionary, it changes the world, etc. Nice work if you can get it, but you don't actually need that unique idea. You can start a lot of income generating projects that are not necessarily brand new, and that's totally okay. So be reassured, I will reinforce that as we go along. But once in a while, I do hear about something that actually is
totally different and special. And so that's fun too. And when I saw this story come through our submission form, I was excited. I thought this is really interesting. And you may have read about it in the headline, which is brides made for hire post on Craigslist earns $20,000 a month. It's one of those things that sounds completely made up. But like every story you
hear on the show, I assure you, it is real. I'll tell you all about it in just a moment. Jen Glantz has never been married, but she's walked down the aisle dozens of times. It all began two and a half years ago, when she was asked to be a bridesmaid by two friends on the same day. At the time, she already had another two weddings on her upcoming calendar.
A different friend said to her, you know, it's like you're a professional bridesmaid or something. Little did she know where that comment would lead. That night, she wrote an ad on Craigslist, offering her services as a hired bridesmaid, doing anything from planning a bridal shower to handling difficult parents. It was partly tongue in cheek, but the ad went viral. And the next morning, she had more than 200 inquiries from brides and wedding planners interested in hiring her. She hadn't thought this plan through very
much, and at first, wasn't sure what to do. How would it work exactly? How much should she charge? Even though the wedding industry is enormous, as far as she could tell, no one had ever offered this kind of service before. After some trial and error, she landed on a range of pricing options depending on what the client wanted. The most expensive
was $1,500, and it included planning help, consultations, and even the occasional therapy session. For an additional $500, she would actually attend the wedding and walk down the aisle, although the bride also had to pick up the cost of the dress. For those for whom $2,000 and a bridesmaid dress was too expensive, she also created options to assist the maid of honor for just $150. This wasn't a career, or at least it wasn't intended to be. Jen is a professional copywriter and a teacher based in New York City. A lot of
her work is freelance, so when the bridesmaid for hire hustle began to take off, she put some of her other projects on hold. Interestingly, the first side hustle of being a bridesmaid for hire turned into a second one, since Jen was deluged with unsolicited job applications as well as hundreds of emails from other women who wanted to start a similar business. Not one to miss an opportunity, Jen created a course called Become a Professional Bridesmaid that sells at least one copy every day for $249. With startup costs of less than $1,000, the project now earns $20,000 a month. About 35% of the income comes from the training program and the rest comes from the wedding packages. She typically works with 5-6 brides
a month, some are in-person wedding services, and some are just the wedding coaching packages. As another unexpected outcome of this project, Jen also received a book deal from Simon & Schuster for a memoir entitled Always a Bridesmaid for Hire. My first thought when I heard this story was, "Why did no one ever think of this before? What an amazing idea." The wedding industry really is huge. It's actually a billion-dollar industry in the U.S. alone. There's also a whole different pricing scale when it comes
to weddings. If there's a service or a product that could be used for a wedding or some other kind of event, it's often going to cost more if it's for a wedding. Just for the simple fact that this is how the industry works, everyone involved, or at least let's say, a lot of the parties involved in that industry, kind of work together to maximize pricing. If you can convince someone that they need a particular wedding service or product, you've almost won the whole battle because the pricing consideration is secondary. Jen describes her role as having four parts. It's one part personal assistant, one part social director,
one part on-call therapist, and one part peacekeeper when someone is having a meltdown. If you have ever been a bridesmaid or otherwise been in a wedding party, or maybe even just been to a wedding, you may know that meltdowns are not uncommon, even on what is supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life. I often say that if you have a crazy idea, you should follow up on it to see where it leads. That's exactly what Jen has done. Now she has this multiple six-figure business, all because she followed through. It may not
happen quite like that for you. You may not have an idea you feel as unique as hers, but so when you listen to these stories, ask yourself, "How could I apply this in my life?" or "What kind of idea does this give me for my project?" As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. This is episode 83. If you want to see the show notes for today, just go to psilosleschool.com/83. And by the way, if you want to submit a story for the show, you can do that right on psilosleschool.com. Go to the contact section, and there's a place
where you can fill out a form. This is if you have a side hustle of your own already that you'd like to share, and if you know someone whose story we should feature, send them there so that they can fill out the form. I hope you know you were awesome today. I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Psilosleschool. I'll see you tomorrow.
