This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, what's up friends, listeners, community. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Excited to bring you another story. I've been bringing you stories of real people out there who are finding a way to create new options and freedom and security for themselves through the form of income generating projects. Been doing that for three and a half years now, which is hard to believe.
I mean, in lots of different ways I've been doing it for more than 10 years, but through the form of this podcast, Sidus will school and I'm so grateful that you are part of it. If you have chosen to make this part of your routine, then you are very much part of it. You are the community whenever I'm like, hey friends, listeners, community, that's you. So thank you so much. I hope something you hear is helpful to you in your own journey, in your own quest to create that freedom, those options and that security.
Now in today's episode, I wanna talk about a desk worker who finally manages to get in shape. This is an IT manager who'd been struggling for a while, but finally figured some stuff out. And then he starts a personal training side hustle that ends up, well, it ends up working out, like working out, you know, exercise, you get it? Okay, well, I also want to use this story as a framing for this question of like, how to use your personal success as a model for others and what not to do, okay? Because we've had a number of these kinds of stories where someone makes a life transformation of some kind, and then that then becomes the basis of their side hustle.
But I think it's something to be very careful about. I think it can work really well or it cannot. So what's the difference? I'm gonna break it down a little bit at the end. A lot of people end up frustrated when they can't replicate the same success they hear about.
And so I think I know at least a couple of common reasons why that is the case. So the story, IT manager gains income after losing weight. That story is coming up after this shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
Dwayne Douglas has a demanding day job as an IT manager. Like many people who work all day at a desk, he had developed some unhealthy habits.
Little exercise and poor diet meant he was never able to get into the physical shape he wanted. One day he decided enough was enough. He began looking for fitness tips and a plan that would enable him to lose weight, get in shape, and achieve a level of health he'd always wanted. Taking radical action, his commitment paid off. Soon he was leaner, stronger, and happier than ever before.
Coupled with this new drive was a desire to teach what he knew. And some of his family and friends had seen Dwayne's transformation. It made him think, was there a possibility for him to turn his love of fitness into a side hustle and make a little extra money? Surely making money training people couldn't be much harder than getting in shape yourself. By the way, I'm gonna come back to that at the end.
Stay tuned. Dwayne decided to take the plunge and become a personal trainer. He set himself a modest goal, to make enough money to cover his child's daycare costs. And with that, he began an all-new warm-up routine. First, he had to get certified and purchase some basic equipment.
For Dwayne, that meant a few resistance bands and a suitcase to haul them in. In lieu of a studio, he planned to work out of the trunk of his car at the local park. The total cost was a lightweight $200. Next, he had to find clients. Dwayne had heard many times that the money is in the list, meaning a list of emails.
The only problem was Dwayne didn't have a list, so he had to get creative. Luckily, he started his side hustle during the age of Groupon. And I suppose Groupon is still around, but this was Peak Groupon. He viewed the site as a pre-existing list of potential clients. He could leverage their millions of customers and having his business listed on Groupon would give him instant credibility.
Unlike a lot of other personal trainers who saw using discounts as devaluing their service, Dwayne was pumped to try it. He felt if he could get customers in for a single session, even if it was discounted, he'd have the opportunity to generate repeat business. And it worked. His first client lost 40 pounds and had a total body transformation. Soon he had two clients, then three, then four.
Before long, he was making more than enough to cover his child's daycare, as well as move the operation to a small office space. By now, Dwayne had also figured out that once he signed up a client to a monthly plan, they stayed for an average of four months. Depending on the training program, that meant each client generated anywhere from $400 to $1,200. This gave him a solid revenue number and more confidence to continue using Groupon. As his skills at converting customers increased, he knew offering a heavy discount wouldn't be a problem because he could make that money back.
But unfortunately, the Groupon muscle train didn't last forever. And eventually Dwayne found it to be a subpar marketing channel. He had to switch things up and begin trying new strategies. He had now been personal training for several years and he'd finally built his own list, albeit a list of cell phone numbers, not email addresses. This proved to be a blessing in disguise because he noticed SMS had a much better response rate than email, often hearing back from more than 90% of people he contacted.
He used this to successfully reactivate many of his old customers. Now, along with the change in marketing came a change in his overall business model because once the pandemic, you know, that whole thing, coronavirus, COVID-19, once the pandemic hit, he switched it up again, teaching an online training course he calls Virtually Fit. During his in-person training days, Dwayne saw profit as high as $3,000 per month. Again, this is on the side after his day job. While that's taken a hit for the moment, he's not too worried.
He's still got that day job and he's confident his new online training will grow. Even as people return to physical gems. [Music]
All right, so let's break this down a bit. And congratulations to Dwayne. So I look forward to hearing what happens with Virtually Fit and all else.
But let's also look at the broader situation here. You know, what can go wrong in a situation where you're like, I've had a life transformation. You know, I have been able to achieve that breakthrough that I struggled with for a long time, but finally made it through. You know, now I wanna turn it into a side hustle. And I think the biggest thing that can go wrong is not everyone is a teacher.
Like it's not enough to figure out your own situation and say like, here is the magic process because being a good personal trainer or a good coach, a good consultant, you know, anything like that where you're trying to impart knowledge, that is a skill in itself. And if you don't develop that skill, your customers or clients or whoever's coming to you for whatever service you're offering, they're gonna become frustrated because they were initially inspired by your transformation, but they're not seeing the results that they want to see. It's just not working for them for whatever reason. And a good trainer or a good coach always tries to figure out what that is and tries to figure out, okay, you know, people are motivated differently. You know, what worked for me might not work for this person, but there could be something else that's gonna work.
So if you're in that situation, you have to be a good listener. You have to understand that people are coming to you because they want a personalized experience. So they already are motivated, at least in some way, because they're choosing to come to you, but, you know, it's your job in that situation to figure out how can I translate, you know, the success I've had into something that can work for other people. And it might be a little bit different for different people. Again, that's why I'm offering personal training.
So consider that, especially if you're interested in imparting your knowledge in some way, you have to think about how can I best communicate this knowledge in a way that's going to be accessible and relatable, and will best set up that learner to succeed. That learner, the client, the customer, whoever they are, I want them to succeed. So how can I structure my process accordingly? How can I adjust as I go along in response to them? That's my encouragement for you today.
Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1275. I also want to give a shout out to the Money With Friends podcast. Check them out wherever you listen to podcasts or at moneywithfriendspodcast.com. I got to be a guest for a whole series they did recently, and it was a lot of fun.
So you can learn something and also hopefully be entertained. Again, that's called Money With Friends. If you've got a comment or question for the show, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. And wherever you're coming or going today, take care of yourself, do something to get closer to a goal you believe in, and of course, come back tomorrow. Thank you once again.
My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
