This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hello, hello, what's up everyone? Welcome to Sada School School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. For the past 1,388 days, I have been bringing you daily stories, tips, questions and answers, analysis, commentary, all focused on the theme of creating a money-making project without quitting your job. We have an amazing community of people all over the world who are doing that in lots of different ways.
So I'm very fortunate to be able to tell their stories and hopefully encourage you along the way as well. So thank you for listening. Now, this is our classroom feature. Every other Monday, we look at a specific topic related to starting or growing your project. If you would like to check out any of the archives, just go over to the classroom page.
That would be sidehustleschool.com/classroom. And there you can scroll back and take a look or have a listen to anything you might have missed or that seems particularly relevant to you. And by the way, I always encourage you to use your time well. So if some of those topics that you see there are basic or they don't apply to what you're trying to do, then that's okay, just skip them. We have plenty of other episodes and stories and many more to come as well.
So today, I wanna look at the topic of customer complaints. I've been getting some emails about this. I actually get asked about this all the time in general, especially from anyone who wants to share some kind of message online, like they're worried about being criticized. And then if they sell something, if they sell a product or a service, they're worried that people won't be happy about it. So I thought it would be interesting to go through a few examples from the archives and consider how our case studies have dealt with some challenges as well as what we can learn from that experience.
'Cause ultimately this is about learning by proxy. You hear somebody's story and you think, how can I apply that to my life? And I often say at the end of the stories, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better because I hope that you'll not only be inspired, but you'll be able to apply something to your life. That is always my goal. So first of all, as I look through our archives, more than 1300 of them, I was reminded that so many money-making projects start out of a complaint or a dissatisfaction, something that bothers you, something that troubles somebody else.
And then they're like, I should do something about this. I shouldn't just complain, I should actually go and start something. Now that's not necessarily the focus of dealing with customer complaints, but I just noticed it as I was looking at all the archives. I was like, wow, so many stories fit this model. A couple of examples here, an operations manager moves to a new state and she wants to find a Mandarin-speaking nanny for her daughter.
It's a bit of a struggle. So then she ends up starting a network to connect people like her. Then there was a programmer who was always forgetting his friend's birthdays. He wrote a script that would check Facebook for him and post happy birthday messages on his behalf. And then from there, he created a web browser extension called Birthday Buddy.
That ended up bringing in passive income month after month, year after year. We had a story of two women who create a swimwear brand for D cups and up. They could not find good swimwear. It fit their body type. And they thought, you know, we're not the only ones.
Again, just a couple of examples there, I found so many. So it's obvious that complaints can be an interesting genesis or inspiration. But what about when someone is complaining about your business? When it's not just, you know, I'm just satisfied, but, you know, I'm just satisfied with you, or there's a problem here. What do you do about that?
Okay, so these kind of fit into a couple of different categories. Sometimes it's just a logistical issue. There is something that you just sort out, some kind of problem in your processor workflow. I was looking at episode 661, a Seattle Seahawks fan kicks off six figure sports app. Now this business actually came about because of a complaint.
Another one of those, this guy moved to a new state and wasn't able to watch his favorite sports team. So he created this app that essentially solved that problem. But then when he was featured in the app store, all of a sudden he started getting tons of downloads and then began receiving a lot of complaints because he had overwhelmed his web host. So this guy was kind of the victim of a success, which can happen, you know, if something really, really blows up. So in that case, the solution was, you know, he had to upgrade his hosting plan.
Pretty simple, he just had to call his web host and say, "Hey, apparently I've crashed, you know, my server because I'm getting a lot of traffic." And they say, "Okay, what you need to do is pay more money." So he does that, problem solved. Another earlier episode, 331, all American hits home run with baseball apparel hustle. I didn't actually realize those two things were sports themed back to back until just now. But in this case, the guy was shipping out lots of baseball apparel, jerseys and such. And the neighbors began to complain about all the trucks that were coming by and all the deliveries.
He was just doing this from his house. And at first it was fine, but then, you know, they began to get a lot of orders. So in that case, again, it's a logistical plan, not quite as simple as just calling your web host. But in his case, he had to get a warehouse and start thinking about, "Oh, how do I actually, you know, run this business towards not just the side hustle out of my house?" So those are logistical issues. You know, it's like there's a problem.
What is the logical solution? I'm going to, you know, address that. But other times it might be more interesting because other times you have made an incorrect assumption and you may be able to learn something if you can kind of dissect the complaint a little bit. And the example that I liked about this comes to us from episode 950, 950, vegan food lovers sprout plant-based festivals. And the woman featured there was named Kendra.
Kendra in our survey notes said, "One thing that I think is key to our success is that when people have complaints, we do our best to really listen to what they have to say. Taking the time to follow up with people who are unhappy isn't always easy, but it really has been key. And when we first started, I thought our business was going to be all about pizza, and it's not. I also have spent hours listening to people's insights about what they didn't like about our events. Listening to this feedback and making changes based on what they have to say has made our events so much better.
And it really pains me, Kendra says, "When I see other businesses deleting comments or having knee-jerk reactions, because I think they are missing out on some amazing insight." So I really like that. Again, episode 950, if you'd like to go back and listen. You can always access any episode I reference by going to sidehustleschool.com/the number of the episode. So forward slash 950 in this case. So here the solution is to ask what you can learn from complaints.
Again, maybe you have made some incorrect assumptions, and if you can correct those assumptions, if you can have the courage to admit that you're wrong, essentially, like we're all wrong about things all the time every day, but when you can course correct, then your business is going to be so much more powerful, so much more helpful, and hopefully also profitable. We're going to take a quick break for a sponsor message when we come back your assignment for the week. [Music]
So some concluding thoughts for today. A lot of times a complaint is an opportunity. Not every time, but a lot of times.
Like you can learn something from it, you can make an adjustment, you can then use that information to serve other people better as well. I do want to mention that other times the customer is not always right, and it's okay to stand your ground. You may sometimes hear a complaint and acknowledge that person and say thank you for sharing, but you're actually happy with the way that you do it. Because you know that it's the right process, or you know this is the right product for lots of other people. So then this gets into the whole issue of like, do you give people what they say they want or what they really want that we've talked about before?
And there's also a question of do you give them what they need or what they want? Because those things can be different as well. Now my last thought, my last important parting thought is the worst thing is to not have people care in the first place, so just remember that. Like if you never get a complaint, you're not going to get a complaint. You're probably not reaching enough people.
That complaints are inevitable if you grow, but you will have far more happy customers and clients. And that's ultimately what it's about. You want to address any challenges, you want to look out with pride and say, look at all these happy people. And so your assignment for the week is to think of two ways to make your customers happier. And that's if you already have an existing side hustle.
What are two ways you can make your customers happier? Remember that happiness is not exclusive. Like hopefully you could make them happier in a way that also benefits you. There's a real reciprocity here. And if you don't have a hustle yet, if you're still working through your ideas and such, well, just as you develop that project or that process, think about where are the problems going to come up?
If I was on the outside, what might I not be happy about? Or what might I be less than thrilled about, let's say? And what could I do on the front end to perhaps head that problem off at the pass? Thank you for joining me today. As I said at the beginning of the episode, you can read notes for this in every classroom episode this year at sidehustleschool.com/classroom.
This has been episode 1388, 1388. Do come back tomorrow. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Lots of good things are coming up throughout the rest of the year and I hope you'll join me. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
