Two Friends Create Questionable Card Game

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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When a writer and a game designer want to learn more about their friends' personal lives, they play for keeps and develop a game that puts all the cards on the table. Welcome to Side Hustle School, my name is Chris Guillebeau. So glad you're here. We've got a community of awesome people all over the world who are all interested in creating freedom through the form of a money-making project. Now you might be out there with a day job.

You might be out there taking care of some kids. You might be doing both of those things. You might be going to school. You might be doing all kinds of other stuff, but somehow there is a way in the limited time you have to increase your options so you have more security. You can do more of what's important to you.

And again, without stressing yourself out so much. That's what this is all about, not necessarily becoming a full-time entrepreneur, although many of our listeners in case studies do eventually do that, but not necessarily, right? It's all about finding, again, what's best for you. Now today's story, this one about the questionable card game, as we're calling it, not necessarily morally questionable or strategically questionable, just a card game that's asking a lot of questions. This story includes two interesting diversions that I'm gonna address briefly in the wrap-up.

Number one, these guys do a DIY crowdfunding campaign. So the logical question is why not use Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or an existing platform? Why do it yourself? Like what is the advantage of that? Like we can think of some disadvantages probably.

So what is the advantage? And number two, as you'll hear in the story, hiring a publicist worked out really well for them. But should you do that? Is that necessarily a good idea for everybody? Not surprisingly, it's not, but I'll tell you about that as well.

Two Friends, great questionable card game. That is the story. It's coming up after this quick message from our sponsor. Stay tuned. [Music]

For years, Dennis Hensley was a writer for the magazine industry.

He mostly focused on interviewing celebrities, honing his interview skills over time, and eventually learning exactly what to ask to craft the perfect story. But as the magazine industry began changing, Dennis's job changed too. With less people reading print, there just wasn't the budget to keep someone like him around. It helped that he was ready for something new anyway. So he set his sights on developing a side hustle, something to help pay the bills if his income took a hit during the change.

During this transition period, an idea struck that wasn't all that unrelated to his magazine work. Dennis devised a concept where someone could pay him to be interviewed. In that interview, he would ask all sorts of questions, some general, some cheeky, some probing, things like what was the most trouble you ever got into in school? And when was your first kiss? Afterwards, he'd condense everything into an audio story of the person's life.

He described it as an audio family heirloom. The idea gained some attention. He spent some time launching a website, working with customers, but it never really took off the way he hoped it would. At least not until we fast forward to 2018. A friend of his, Jeb Havens, worked as a game designer.

After hearing what Dennis was trying to do, he thought it would make a great game. Instead of meeting an interviewer, family and friends could pull from a deck of cards and ask the questions to each other. And together, they called the game "You Don't Know My Life." The night after coming up with the idea, Dennis and Jeb ran a quick and dirty play test with friends, based on how much fun was had, they knew immediately the cards were stacked in their favor. They spent another eight months conducting play tests and tweaking the game as they went, adding and removing questions and changing the game mechanics. Eventually, they were left with a game that helped build rapport and foster a true connection in an increasingly disconnected society.

They even created a tagline, "Saving the world." One mildly embarrassing story at a time. Now that they knew the game had potential, it was time to manufacture it. Game on. Jeb had contacts in the gaming world who would do the printing, and as an experienced designer, he handled all the graphic design himself, using Adobe Illustrator. The problem was they'd still have to make an order of 1,000 games for a cost of $10,000.

Since that was money they didn't have, they had to play the cards they were dealt and decided to run an unconventional DIY crowdfunding campaign. Rather than use a platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo to raise the funds, they hit up every single person they knew to pre-sell the game, also encouraging them to share the concept with others. They made a website and added a PayPal button. That way, customers could pay on the spot with the promise they'd receive a copy before Christmas 2018. By turning over every contact they had, they hit their target.

"You don't know my life" was manufactured and shipped right in time for Christmas, December 21st, to be precise. It was the best present Dennis and Jeb could hope for. But they didn't stop there. Now that all their friends and family had copies, they'd run out of people to sell to directly. They'd have to find ways to market the game outside their network.

So as 2019 rolled around, they tried some new tactics. The first was to list the game on Amazon, where they hoped to tap into their millions of customers, many of which might be looking for conversation starter games. They did this through the Fulfillment by Amazon program, which allows anyone to sell their products through the Amazon website. Amazon handles all the logistics in exchange, of course, for a fee on every sale. Later that year, they hired a publicist.

Their hope was that their game would end up on holiday buying gift guides for the fall. The publicist delivered a successful campaign and the game was featured in Parade, Star, and several blogs and websites. The cost to hire that publicist was $4,500, which they consider well worth it. But listeners, be careful. We're gonna come back to that in a moment.

For them though, that Christmas period was significantly busier than the first, and the momentum continued into 2020. Their latest invention is virtual game nights. For their existing customers, they'll host a version of the game over Zoom at a cost of $10 per person. That generated over $9,000 in additional revenue for the year. Add that on top of the earnings the game is bringing in already, and it shows one thing.

Dennis and Jeb may not know your life, but they certainly know how to create a successful side hustle. [Music]

All right, two callbacks as promised here. First of all, why do your own crowdfunding campaign? Why go the DIY route when Kickstarter and similar have wonderful tools and existing platform for that? Well, they said based on the timeline that they had, setting it up ourselves allowed it to seem scrappy and personal.

We called it our friends and family campaign. And they're not against Kickstarter or platforms like it, but it worked for them because it felt more organic. And also they didn't have time to ramp up and create something that seemed more fully produced, polished, you know, with a great trailer and all that kind of stuff. So maybe the lesson is if you can't have one of those high production crowdfunding campaigns, doing it yourself can give you a little bit of an edge. And then second, on the publicist point, I'm so glad it worked out well for them.

Just want to point out that for so many of our listeners in case studies, I hear over and over that they have spent money on a publicist or on some sort of PR campaign, and it has not worked out very well at all. In fact, that is much, much more common. So if you are familiar with the industry and you know what you're doing, you feel confident in that approach, that's great. But if you're just kind of out there trying different stuff, I would not recommend spending $4,000 on something like that. So just my two cents or $4,000 as the case may be.

Of course, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. I hope that you hear these stories and get thinking about what you might do yourself. That's what it's all about. Congratulations to Dennis and Jeb. We're going to link up You Don't Know My Life, their game, anything else I mentioned in this episode on the show notes page, sidehustleschool.com/1541.

If you've got a comment or question for the show, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you'll come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.

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From the Onward Project.