This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Side hustle school community, listeners, friends, wherever you are in the world, welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Hope you're doing well, whatever it is you're working on. Hope you take some time today to do something for yourself. Perhaps that could include listening to this podcast and asking yourself, what's my project?
Or how am I gonna move forward with my project? How am I going to build more freedom for myself to do more of what's important to me, potentially through the form of an income generating project? Now this segment today, it is Thursday, it is Throwback Thursday, Where Are They Now? A segment where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. Recently, we have had a guy with a co-working tool for strangers, virtual co-working, a pastry chef who grows her business during the pandemic and more.
Today in our latest feature, we'll hear from the co-founder of the Heroes Journal, which has to be the greatest title ever for a journal. We've featured a number of journals in recent years. I'm always amazed that there can be so many profitable ones. But concept-wise, this has to be my favorite. Again, greatest title ever.
It was also started by one of our longtime listeners who was part of our community for at least two years. Said he listened to the podcast every day for two years. And that made me really happy to hear. I don't take credit for their success, just to be clear, like they did all the work. But it also makes me proud that we were a small part of their brainstorming.
As I said, it's a co-founder, so there's two guys behind it. They grew the business a lot during 2020. In fact, it's now a seven-figure business. Yep, seven figures. And they're running a Kickstarter campaign, I believe this week.
I believe it's still active for something very new. So I wanna make sure we can support that as well. I will give you the URL at the end of the episode. But what has happened since? Well, he grew his business a lot.
That's one thing that happened. But what else? Let's hear directly from Nick and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
- My name's Nick Vidalaro. I'm located in Seattle, Washington area.
My side hustle, which has turned into my main hustle, is called The Hero's Journal. I was featured in episode 1004. So The Hero's Journal is a daily planner that reimagines your goal as a quest. And it helps you feel like the hero of a story as you progress on your goal journey. So since the last time we were featured on the podcast, so many things have happened.
At the time, me and my co-founder were working at the same local startup here. We knew that we wanted to go full-time with The Journal, but we weren't really quite in a place yet to do that. So it was kind of like December of that year, where it was 2019. And we were kind of looking at each other during the holiday rush, packing orders, sitting in our living room with orders literally up to like our shoulders. And we were just kind of like, this is impossible.
We're gonna have to quit our jobs to do this full-time, which was really exciting, but also pretty terrifying. So we actually both quit our jobs and started being full-time entrepreneurs with The Hero's Journal on February 1st, 2020. So just about a year ago. So a lot has happened since then. We moved into a warehouse and office space.
We expanded our team from just the two of us to roughly about nine people, some contractors and some people that are kind of more full-time. And we ended 2020 with seven figures in revenue, which we're really proud of. Our biggest challenge is not being a one-hit wonder. And I guess what I mean by that is when we started The Hero's Journal, the idea was all rooted in storytelling. It was all rooted in everyone's favorite fandoms and kind of relating that to the personal narrative that we all tell about ourselves.
So yes, it's about organizing your day, but it's also about really tapping into that imagination, tapping into that fandom, that storytelling bone that I think everyone has. And so our first journal that we put out really reflected our favorite fantasies, which was kind of like high fantasy type stuff. Think like dragons and caves with treasure in them and castles and that kind of thing. And we kind of realized that that's not everyone's go-to fandom or go-to storytelling. So the big challenge that we're kind of spearheading right now is trying to replicate that secret sauce, that special ingredient that existed in the first journal in kind of a new trope.
And so we're moving from high fantasy to like a wizard school format to hopefully engage some people where that is their kind of ideal fandom. And it's challenging because you have to create a story that is told in the journal that doesn't take away the experience from the user. You still have to keep their personal story and their goal, their organization at the center of what you're creating while also delighting them, putting a smile on their face by kind of giving nods to their favorite fandom throughout. So I think that we're trying to avoid having our first thing be our best thing. And we're wanting to prove to ourselves that we can replicate this concept in different tropes to engage as many people as possible.
I was sitting at my day job using a day planner that was also kind of a goal setting journal that I had been using for a couple of years now. I had just finished watching "Lord of the Rings" and I was sitting at my desk and I just realized how uninspired I was. I was very organized and I was kind of on top of things, if you will, but I was kind of, I just felt like I was lacking this sense of imagination in my life. And so I really thought that there should be a planner that takes on a story structure to it. And I had no intention of creating it in the first place.
I honestly Googled for one. I searched Amazon for one. And when I realized I couldn't buy one, I just kind of thought to myself, well, hey, I think I can make this happen. I think I can create it. And if I want to use this, odds are someone else out there who has kind of like a hybrid brain like I do will probably like it as well.
It's worth saying this here. If it wasn't for a side hustle school, I would not be here. I listened to side hustle school religiously every day for about two years before I ever had the idea for the journal. And I think that there's something about just listening to people, normal people, make an income on the side in a very doable, a very achievable and a very like low pressure way, if that makes sense. I feel like we always hear stories of the extreme cases, right?
Of like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or like Steve Jobs. Like you hear of all these legendary entrepreneurs or you hear about these huge companies. And there's such a big gap between I think what people are able to do. And I think side hustle school really helped shape my imagination and helped shaped my understanding of what was possible. So I don't think that the journal would ever be here if I wasn't listening to side hustle school so consistently.
Like that idea would have never popped into my head at my day job if I wasn't constantly thinking about side hustles, you know? If all I was thinking about was the next billion dollar idea, I probably wouldn't be where I am today doing this full time. So I guess I just wanna say thank you to the side hustle school and the community and the consistency that it's been going for, you know, years and years now. I would definitely attribute some of the success and some of the inspiration to many, many of the podcasts that were produced years ago. [Music]
Nick, thank you so much for that great report.
We heard some really good stuff from him, including some things that didn't make the episode. In my notes here, I see he talks quite a bit about Facebook group live streaming. They started a Facebook group and they have been live streaming to that group two to three times a week, just trying to focus on positive messages, which, you know, there's so many negative things out there in the world these days. And I have to say, especially on Facebook. So I think it's really great that they're trying to provide this positive message to a community of about, I think 11,000 people.
So pretty big Facebook group there, especially a group that started around the concept of a journal. And as you heard from Nick, he doesn't want to be a one-hit wonder. I mean, if he's a one-hit wonder, it's a pretty big hit. So there's that. But you can see their next edition, the new thing they're working on, just go to the herosjournal.co.
So that is the herosjournal, H-E-R-O-S, the herosjournal.co. That's their website where you can see the original product. You can see if that Kickstarter is active for their next thing. And if you happen to be listening at some point in the future, then you can see whatever they have now. I want to make sure I support that campaign myself.
So I will go and make my pledge. I encourage you to check it out. And Throwback Thursday in general was one of the most popular new features of 2020. So as you've heard, we're going to keep it going this year as well. I think somebody actually sent Nick and his co-founder a direct message on Instagram and said, "Hey, you should be part of Throwback Thursday." That's how this episode came about.
So if there's somebody you think we should feature, then let us know. We've got an archive of more than 1,000 stories. We've also got an amazing community of listeners. Thank you so, so much for being part of that community. If you've got a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions.
Be sure you're subscribed wherever you get your podcasts, and I will be back tomorrow. Hope you will be too. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
