This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up, welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I am so excited to introduce to you today a brand new segment. I've been working on this for a while. It's called Failure Friday.
You know, like Failure Friday, what's that about? Well, I believe we can learn as much from failure as we can from success. And of course, here on Side Hustle School, we're often talking a lot about successes. Now, I do my best in all the stories to kind of highlight challenges and setbacks and just to point out that it's not always a straight line from A to B or, you know, wherever your destination is. There's often lots of detours and diversions and all kinds of things.
But we thought let's actually shine a spotlight directly on some of those diversions, detours, mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. All right, that's how life works. So just like our Throwback Thursday segment, which conveniently enough happens on Thursdays, this one is on Friday, you know, 'cause Failure Friday, you're gonna hear directly from Sidestalers who have struggled to get something off the ground. They'll tell you a short story of something that went very wrong. And these stories will vary, but often it starts with an idea, what they thought would happen, and then what really happened.
And of course, what they learned. Or it could be something different, but all along that theme. So I wanna say first and foremost, as we kick this off, I really applaud their courage. I appreciate their courage, their vulnerability, their willingness to share. I will share some of my own failure stories along the way as well.
If I was gonna focus on my failure stories, I would need a whole series for that. So, you know, we'll take it slow. On today's feature, our inaugural one comes to us from Sheena Brady from Ottawa, Canada. We told the successful story of her tea's tea business way back in episode 240. Tea Sommelier turns leaves into million dollar business.
But as you'll hear, she's had some struggles along the way, including a pretty big one that happened as she was getting ready to give birth. That's correct, it's a great story. So let's hear from her, let's hear from Sheena about that struggle as well as what she learned. [Music]
My inability to effectively delegate and succession plan cost me one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made with my business. My first hire was my boyfriend.
And that all worked out great because there was a high trust battery there. We were living together, we were building this life together, he quit his job as a civil engineer to help run my company. Side note, obviously that's how I knew he was the one. And you know, that was great. I didn't really have to worry about hiring anyone else.
And while it all worked out then, it certainly didn't work out when we decided to have a family. And so when I got pregnant, I didn't make any plans for succession planning. You know, who is gonna take my place and take over my role and my responsibilities? Who is gonna take over my partners? These were just not things that I made a priority to figure out.
And I don't know if I thought I was superwoman or what, and I just figured I would just handle it all as it came. You know, post baby, obviously not real life. You could tell I was a total mom rookie here. So I went into the hospital for a scheduled induction, basically, to have our child. And while I was there, I was looking at my emails.
Yeah, I know, that's a little bit weird, but just being honest, I was. And so I was looking at my emails and the next thing I know, there's this $50,000 shipment to our client in Los Angeles that's been seized at the US customs border because TST is based in Canada. And I was so frustrated and terrified because this was a special custom order that our client had every right to refuse and send back to us if it didn't reach their very strict deadline. And here I am now at this point in labor. And in between contractions, I'm fighting with customs agents and I'm emailing our client and begging and pleading with them to accept, you know, this entire shipment at a later date that I don't even know what that date is.
And I remember at one point just being in tears and saying to my husband, you know, get me the closest U-Haul truck because the second that, you know, we're out of here, I'm going to physically drive to the border, pick up the shipment and drive it across to Los Angeles myself. Obviously that made no sense but I obviously wasn't in a very sensical state at the time. Anyway, it all fortunately ended up working out but barely and I was able to plead with my client to still take the order. But what I learned in that moment is that I should have trusted and delegated important things as they relate to my business a lot sooner. It made no sense to wait as late as I did.
And the crazy thing that also happened following that is that after I had our daughter, I hired my first full-time employee that wasn't my now husband. And within that year, the year that we had our daughter, our revenue actually doubled. And so it was an interesting lesson in silver lining. I kind of kicked myself today, like had I have hired the right people sooner, could we have grown quicker? Had I have trusted other people?
Could we have grown quicker and done bigger things? And so even though it was a difficult lesson to learn and it was a huge mess up, I guess, well, I not only learned the importance of succession planning it and delegating thoughtfully, but I also learned to triple check customs paperwork. [Music]
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That is gonna be the theme of Failure Fridays, never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. Thank you so much Sheena for helping us get this kicked off.
As you heard from her lessons there, learn to delegate and succession plan properly and triple check your customs paperwork. I don't really know how to do any of those things actually. So I'm gonna put that on my list to study up on, but I will take my inspiration from her. I actually told more of Sheena's story in the book, "100 Side Hustles," and she was recently featured on "Dragon's Den," the international version of "Shark Tank." So I encourage you to check out her business at teast.com. In the original episode, I told the brief story about how she learned nobody wants sexy tea.
She started with this idea to create kind of like flirtatious, you know, names and labels for her tea. And she discovered, you know, it's not actually what people want when they look for tea. So the tea may not be sexy, or it may be, who knows, but it's certainly soothing and delicious, teast.com. And let me know what you think about this new format. You can always reach me on Twitter at chrisgillibo or at chrisguillebeau.com.
My last name is spelled G-U-I-L-L-E-P-E-A-U. And last but not least, today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1511. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm excited about this new segment coming out every Friday for the foreseeable future. And of course, all of our other segments that will continue coming to you seven days a week, tips, stories, case studies, et cetera.
So be sure you're subscribed in Apple Podcasts, in Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. That's it for today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Sideustleschool. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
