Notes from Chris

Episode 1298

In graduate school, Cherini Ghobrial had a close-knit group of friends. They’d often spend days and nights discussing dating, travel, and religion as well as their aspirations, dreams, and goals. Looking back, Cherini views those times of connection as some of the best of her formative years.

Things changed though, after she graduated and moved back to Atlanta. Cherini, a first-generation Egyptian American, started working full time as a pharmacist and struggled to find the same deep connections. Although she was often out socializing and meeting new people, the lack of any true connections left her feeling lonely.

She wasn’t alone in feeling lonely. Millions of people everywhere are more connected yet feel more isolated.

Those people needed a new kind of medicine, and Cherini began working on a prescription. She wanted to create a tool or game that would help people move on from small talk quickly.

What she decided on was a simple card game of random questions and topics. A player would flip over a card and read out a random thought-provoking question, something like “What is something that brings out the best in you?”, and the players would then discuss the question openly.

She made a basic version with paper folded in envelopes and tested it on a few friends. They agreed that the cards helped them feel more connected and liked that they didn’t have to come up with prompts on their own.

The next play was for Cherini to have the cards made officially, and launch this as a real product. A product she called unCURATED.

With the list of questions finalized, it was time to start visualizing and actually creating the unCURATED game. At this point, Cherini partnered with a friend named Niki. Niki handled the design of the cards and knew how to keep printing costs low.

With a strong design, website to match and a few pre-launch sales under their belt. Cherini and Niki hit social media to keep marketing unCURATED. They created Instagram stories to share related content. They also found it useful to post reviews to their Instagram grid to bolster social proof.

In addition, unCURATED was also featured in the Washington Post after a journalist reached out.

From there, sales kept trickling in through the website, with each one making Cherini and Niki feel fantastic. They’re making a few hundred dollars a month so far, and they feel like they’re doing this for much more than the money. Their side hustle has given them a deeper sense of meaning and purpose by helping to move the world forward in a positive direction.

 

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  MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Check out Cherini and Niki's deck at her website, unCURATEDco.com.
• Gumroad: the platform Cherini and Niki used to originally sell their product.

SEE ALSO:

• Engineer Makes $64,000 Selling Nerdy Playing Cards on Reddit: It started with a single Legend of Zelda playing card she drew for a friend and posted on Reddit—then it became a side hustle selling more than 6,400 full decks.
• Magician Brothers Make Money Appear From Playing Cards: Twin brothers turn their art of “cardistry” into a highly profitable business. It’s all fun and games as long as they don’t let their profits vanish….
• Shy Expat Uses “Deep Questions” Cards to Spark Conversations: A video marketer designs playing cards he calls “Ask Deep Questions” to help spark conversations and create meaningful connections.

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,

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