This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Oh my gosh, guess what? Well, first of all, this is Side Hustle School. I'm Chris Guillebeau. But second, this is episode 100. We have made it through our first 100 days.
I'm having so much fun. I hope you're learning. And I want you to know I'm learning from you too. I'm building this show in real time. Everything about the whole process is very much listener informed.
So it's been fantastic to hear from so many people by email, social media, in the workshop series I've been doing, around the world as I travel, and really the best is yet to come. So if you've been listening for a while, thank you so much. If you're new, welcome. Let's make something really fun together. Now I have a great story for you today, of course, since it's day 100, but I also want to let you know we have a new hustle hotline that you can call.
And if you have a question or a comment for the show, you can leave that on the site, sidehustleschool.com. But I also know that a lot of people listen while they're driving, at the gym, or otherwise when they can't really get online. So if you want to contribute, just call 844-9HUSTLE and you can leave a message or you can ask a question that we may play on the show. So that's 844-948-7853, or just remember 844-9HUSTLE. Now today's story is about someone who ends up making millions of dollars from a side hustle.
And of course, that's not how it always works, but sometimes it does. And I think you'll agree this is pretty cool. I'll tell you all about it in just a moment. [Music]
Several years ago, on a Saturday night in December, Nick Gray was on a romantic date, taking a private tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As snow fell outside of our New York City, he and his companion traveled through the Met's dimly lit hallways and cavernous rooms, filled with sculptures, paintings, and Egyptian artifacts.
According to Nick, that night, something magical happened. He fell in love with the museum. As for the date, that didn't work out so well. Nick says he barely remembers her, but instead he was entranced by the artwork all around him, documenting more than 5,000 years of human history. And these observations quickly turned into an obsession.
Nick spent his working weeks selling avionics equipment, a job he happened to be very happy at, but he started spending every free weekend at the Met. He began offering free tours of the museum to his friends and family, which mainly consisted of showing them his favorite things. He says he was having so much fun doing the tours that the first time someone tried to offer him money at the end, about 20 bucks, he said no thanks. But these weekend tours were quickly becoming a very full-time hobby. So given his newfound love for museums and desire to share it, he decided to set up a side hustle.
The idea was to offer fun, non-traditional tours at the world's best museums, starting at the Met in New York. And by this point, he had increased the quality of his tours using library research, conversations with other guides, as well as turning to the trusty friend of every student who's written a paper in the past 15 years, Wikipedia.com. His friends started telling their friends and their friends started telling their friends. At one point, a popular blog wrote about his tours and the next day, Nick received a thousand requests to sign up. He officially launched his company, Museum Hack, a few months later, offering public tours for $59 a person and private tours for $99 a person.
And the business was pretty simple to start. Nick financed almost all of his startup costs, including a website, by charging for the tours. And he attracted most of his customers simply through word of mouth. After guests went on the tours, they would post and share about them on Facebook and Instagram, bringing in new signups. Nick wanted to tap into a whole new market of museum-goers, essentially people who thought they hated museums, which Nick admits used to be him.
Therefore, his tours would be two to three times faster than traditional ones. They would be led by entertaining guides and would incorporate games throughout. One of the taglines he uses is, "This isn't your grandma's museum tour." And in fact, one of the most popular tours he created is the consistently sold out Badass Bitches Tour, a feminist celebration of women in the Met. It's safe to say that all of this effort has been a huge success. In its first year, Museum Hack made about $40,000 in sales, and in the following year, this increased, no joke, 12 fold.
About two years after launching the tours, Nick's side hustle officially became his full-time gig. He still loved his day job, but this was becoming quite an endeavor. In 2016, more than 18,000 people went on private tours, including 26 guests who got engaged while they were on their tour. Museum Hack has now expanded beyond New York. It's in Washington, DC, Chicago, and San Francisco.
Nick has more than 50 guides. And last year, the company did over $2 million in sales. Nick plans to keep expanding to more cities around the world with his mission of showing people that museums are awesome, but he's also a side hustler at heart. So he's already busy with a new hobby, this time hosting a pioneering style of cocktail parties, which he's naturally testing out on his friends first. [Music]
Well, I don't know about you, but I thought that was a pretty good 100th day story.
If you've been listening, you know that the show often features people who make a couple of thousand dollars a month from their hustle. And that's awesome. It's very empowering, especially the first time you do it. But I also wanna make sure you know that sometimes a side hustle can turn into much more than you first expect. And we've seen this in some of the other stories.
I think "Today's" is a great example of that. So with our 100th day momentum, I wanna make sure that your vision isn't too small and that you have set a goal and that there is something that you're working toward with your hustle, or at least your ideas and what you're thinking about. Like I say, every day, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Got lots of fun stuff planned for the next 100 days. To find the show notes for today's episode, go to sidehustleschool.com/100100.
And in celebration of 100 days, everything in the store is 20% off. Well, just kidding, there actually isn't a store. I should probably have a store at some point, but right now, everything is free, just like the show itself. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please tell your friends about it.
This is a listener-supported movement. I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." I hope you'll join me for the next 100 days. [Music]
