River Guide Submits Side Hustle Job Application

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

When a Wyoming river guide experiences difficulty in his company's hiring process, he uses his knowledge to build a job application software platform that checks all the boxes. Navigating the rough waters of a turbulent season, he has a plan to stay afloat. How did he figure this out? Where did the idea come from? Stay tuned, I'll tell you.

What will happen next? It's hard to predict the future, but I'll try. Last but not least, will there be more river references? On that point I can say, absolutely, I do try to stay current, but I don't want to be mainstream. Thank you so much.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. This program is called Side Hustle School. River Guide submits side hustle job application. That story is coming up after this shout out to our sponsor. Ian McIver is more comfortable wearing sandals than dress shoots.

It should come as no surprise, then, that he refuses to work a typical office job. Instead, Ian goes with the flow, literally. He's built a career for himself as a river guide in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He's somewhat of an anomaly in this regard. You see, like many resort towns, the population in Jackson Hole is incredibly transient.

Most people come in for a season, work for a while, and then return home. They go on to other jobs and careers. But Ian paddled in his own canoe. He spent the better part of 20 years in the town and became an accomplished guide. In fact, he became so involved with the company he worked for that he was responsible for hiring those transient workers.

It was a big hassle. Finding, screening, and interviewing candidates was like swimming upstream. Every season he had to repeat the process over again. And during his 20-year career, Ian hired over 2,000 people, an average of 100 per year. He knew there had to be a way to make the hiring process easier.

So in 2016, he came up with the idea of a software platform to simplify everything. It could be used by small businesses to fill out job profiles and publish them on a webpage. Applicants could then apply through the site. The business could vet them and follow up with the ones they wanted. Ian was confident in the concept and felt it would greatly help businesses like the one he worked for.

However, there was one big problem. They don't teach computer programming and river guide training. Until he could figure out how to bring his idea to reality, he'd be stuck on the shore. At first, he hoped to attract an investor. But he soon realized that this goal was a lot like trying to catch water in a net.

It doesn't work well. So he decided that the traditional startup route wasn't a good fit. Fortunately, there was another way. River guiding attracts an eclectic bunch of people, including some with a lot of different skills. Ian remembered a guide he used to work with named Daniel Frenner.

After his time as a guide, Daniel had gone on to learn programming. Ian contacted Daniel, explained his idea, and offered a partnership. They'd each have a share of the new business. Daniel would build the software, while Ian would be responsible for marketing. They spent the next couple of years creating a beta version.

They called it JobAplex, short for job application. A name is streamlined as the product aimed to be. Once they had a working version, it was time to find their first customer. For that, Ian tapped his existing contacts in Jackson Hole and managed to sign up one of the local bars. They employed around 100 people at any given time, and were always going through applications, sometimes losing them, under a mountain of existing paperwork.

They signed up right away upon hearing Ian's pitch, and that first customer helped them sign up a couple more. While JobAplex didn't receive a raging rapid of interest, there was enough that they managed to get their first several customers on board. The pricing model was set at $39.99 a month, or you could purchase a whole year for $399, also 99 cents, a 15% discount. The uptake of customers was slow, but this was partly by design, because Daniel felt it best to test with just a few users. Those users would help them find and fix the bugs, before opening the service up to more people.

This deliberate process, combined with them having a good network within the industry, helped things grow. Before long, they had a good pool of customers, and were generating over $1,000 a month in recurring revenue. A very positive start for a new software tool. In those first few months, over 700 people applied for a job through their system. That brought them to March 2020, when a waterfall by the name of COVID-19 was fast approaching.

So far, they've managed to safely navigate those treacherous waters. None of their customers have cancelled, and in fact, Ian sees this as a huge opportunity. When things begin opening up, businesses will need to streamline their hiring process even more in order to get things moving again quickly. That's why he's decided to offer the software for free for 60 days to any business that signs up before September 2020. It should take all the risk out of trying it out, while at the same time help them realize the benefits while their business is getting back on its feet.

If you're struggling or paddling against the current, just remember, you'll eventually hit calm waters. So with the recent pandemic, we've got something like the last number I saw was 36 million Americans out of work, you know, obviously in lots of other countries, similar statistics, similar percentages, some higher, some lower. The point is, it's no small problem, I would just encourage you or remind you that some of the most successful companies in history, including some tech companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Uber, they were all started during recessions. Those ones I just mentioned were started during the 2008 global financial crisis, but you can look back in history, and I think it was Microsoft, and then further back beyond that, many others. So recessions, depressions, disruption, all these things present opportunities and possibilities, which is what I'm trying to speak to people about in different ways every day.

So congratulations to Ian, Daniel, and their team on the job app clicks software. You might be interested in that 60 day free trial that they're offering. And you can find links to that as well as anything else I mentioned in the episode on our show notes page at sidehustleschool.com/1263 at his for episode 1263. Thank you so much for listening. You are a rock star.

Be sure you're subscribed because so much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.