This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. Just what happens to be today the first of September, episode 1340. Of course you could be listening to it later, but this episode kicks off, commemorates a new month, maybe even a new season. Now that I think about it, a new season, a new quarter, all kinds of stuff.
We have had so much change in 2020, as I am sure you are well aware. And it's been interesting to see how different people are navigating it. New businesses starting up, some of course struggling, but others thriving. So just lots of adaptation all around. Now today I've got a good story for you.
It comes with a bonus lesson of why you shouldn't ask people to sign an NDA. This is a little bit of my own kind of thing I'm gonna add to it. The story is a good story on its own, but I just happened to notice when I was working on the notes for the story, that there's a little bit about this NDA thing, non-disclosure agreement. My opinion, my pretty strong opinion, is that most of the time, you should not ask people to sign this kind of document before you tell them about your business idea. It's just kind of off-putting and not usually necessary.
But as for the story itself, not to detract from that, the story is about a book lover who exhausts her network's recommendations for LGBTQ books. She identifies with that community. She identifies as queer specifically, and she's struggling to find books with relatable characters. So she goes and creates her own subscription box service. This book lover is one of our longtime listeners, which is very cool.
I'm always so excited when one of them launches their project. And in her case, it's not even brand new. She's been doing it for more than a year and has learned a few things along the way. So let's learn from her as well. Book lover creates LGBTQ+ subscription service.
That story is coming right up. Stay tuned. [Music]
A few years ago, British cancer researcher, Georgia Manion Crace, who identifies as queer, began to intentionally read more books that featured people like her. She loved being able to see herself in the characters, but more than that, she appreciated being introduced to the experiences of people she would otherwise have never known about. Reading these books impacted her life, and she wanted more.
Unfortunately, finding books like these became more and more difficult. Georgia searched for an LGBTQ section in her local bookstore and couldn't find one. She then turned her search online, but in her words, the selections were woefully uncurated. Most of them just included covers of shirtless men on horses, and Georgia wanted something more. After she exhausted her network for recommendations, she started spending more and more time finding new books to read.
She quickly found herself wishing that someone would just send her an interesting new book to read every month. Unfortunately, such a thing didn't exist, at least not yet. Although Georgia had never done anything like it before, she decided that she was going to create her own queer book box subscription. She wasn't sure exactly where to start, but she knew the biggest question was where the books would come from. For that, she turned to Gaze the Word, an iconic bookshop in London.
Georgia loved the atmosphere of the place, and she didn't want to create competition with them. Instead, she set up a meeting with the bookshop manager to discuss working together. Now, here's a good lesson. Most of the time, NDAs, or non-disclosure agreements, are not only overrated, they're also negative. Georgia's friends with corporate jobs encouraged her to bring along such an agreement, which immediately set the wrong tone for the meeting.
However, even though the manager didn't entirely understand what Georgia's idea was all about, he agreed to sell her books on a discount. So her first major hurdle of where to get her books from had been cleared. Georgia now prepared to launch her first box. As a longtime listener of Side Hustle School, what's up, thank you, Georgia, she says that she knew she needed to set up an online landing page and build up social media buzz. She designed a logo and also signed up for MailChimp, Shopify, and Buffer.
This was all new for her, and she was afraid of failure, but she was even more scared of someone else beating her to this idea. Pushing through the discomfort, at the end of 2018, she was ready to launch Queer Book Box. She built it as an LGBTQ-friendly book subscription dedicated to getting the best books into the hands of people who wanted them. The night of her launch, she prepared an email for everyone on her mailing list and posts for all her social media accounts. Then she headed out to the Globe Theater to see a Shakespeare production.
She had shared with her mom that her goal was to get 10 subscribers within the first month, but she was really hoping to get 30. She was just afraid it wasn't going to happen. However, by the end of the show, Georgia had already met her secret goal. In fact, in her first month, she had 50 subscribers. Queer Book Box continued to grow thanks to thoughtful marketing.
She focused her efforts mainly on Instagram, since it seemed that's where people were engaging. She created a three-month content program to ensure that her feed was diverse in its content. She didn't want to just advertise her service, so she created posts that included book reviews, author profiles, and answers to reader questions. Once a week, she also posted something specifically about Queer Book Box. Happily, she kept getting more and more subscribers.
She was thrilled with the success, but it also meant that the work of sorting, managing, and packaging all the boxes was getting more and more challenging. By the time she hit 150 subscribers, it just wasn't feasible for her to keep doing it all herself. So she decided to bring in a fulfillment company. And despite some initial hiccups, for the first time, it felt like she had a real business. Now let's talk about the logistics.
I've already mentioned a few services she used, Shopify, Buffer, et cetera. Queer Book Box offers three different boxes to cater to a variety of budgets. You can order the basic box, which simply includes the book of the month, the original box, which adds a bookmark and related content, or the all-out box, which throws in some fun extras. Georgia is already producing at least $1,000 a month in profit, and she couldn't be more excited. It's allowed her to speak to authors she loves, choose and champion books from independent publishers, and create something special in her community.
The service's second birthday is coming up later this year, and Georgia has plans to keep it growing. Although Queer Book Box already shifts to Europe and North America, Georgia hopes to expand to the rest of the world. She's also looking to create more customizable boxes, or include more fiction books in the box. She's also getting ready to buy a house, and hopes that Queer Book Box will provide her with extra income to put toward the mortgage. [Music]
I'm gonna leave you today with a quote that comes from Georgia.
I really enjoyed this when I was looking through all our different notes in the research we did for the story, and by the way, congratulations, Georgia. Thank you so much for moving forward with this project. I'm so glad it's helping a lot of people, and I hope that more and more people will subscribe. All right, so here's her quote. She says, we're coming up on that two-year anniversary, right?
And she says, "Much of what I did when I started seems like a blur. If Sidus Little School taught me anything, it's that the difference between knowing how to do something and not knowing is doing it. I designed my brand logo website. I signed up for services like MailChimp and Shopify. I spent much of the time being so nervous and scared of failure that I felt nauseous.
But the only thing worse than failing would have been watching someone else create something that I wanted to make instead." So there you have it, the difference between knowing how to do something and not knowing is doing it. You know, three years in, three and a half years into this program, if that helps somebody, then I am happy because I love to see and hear stories of people moving forward and taking action. Perhaps even you, our listener. Do you have a story like this or are you working towards something? There is something out there for you as well.
Once again, congratulations to Georgia. Her website is queerbookbox.com. We will link it up in the show notes page, of course. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. That notes page is sidehustleschool.com/1340.
One, three, four, zero. Thank you so much for listening. Much more is coming up as we enter the month of September and beyond. All right, my name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Sidus Little School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
