This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to Side Hustle School. So glad you're tuning in today. Thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to invest in yourself and hear about the world of money-making projects that you can start without quitting your job by, as I said, investing in yourself. That's what this is about.
Everyone out there is busy. We've all got lots of different responsibilities and such, but somehow all the different case studies that we have featured on the podcast have found a way to say, you know what? I know I'm busy right now, but I need to do something so that I can have a different future than I have in the present, right? That tomorrow can be better than today and so on. That's what it's all about, ultimately.
And also, I believe we can learn as much from failure as we can from success. Something I've been trying to feature this year, we tell a lot of success stories, of course. That's the nature of the program. I always, even through the success stories, try to look at what went wrong. But now with this new feature called Failure Friday, conveniently it comes out every Friday, we're dedicating the space to a collection of short stories all about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure.
So just like our Throwback Thursday segment, you get to hear directly from side hustlers who have struggled in some way. They'll tell you this quick story of something that went wrong. Often it starts with an idea. It's like I had this idea to do something. I thought it was gonna turn out one way, but of course it ended up turning out differently and what they learned along the way.
So I really appreciate the courage and vulnerability of everyone who's been sharing these stories. Today's story features Katie from Orange County. By day, she is a client services manager at an environmental consulting firm. And we told the successful story of her evenings and weekends project way back on episode 664, Ballroom Dance Enthusiast, Triples Side Income with How-To Guide. But naturally, not everything went well.
So let's hear from her about one of those difficulties. She calls it the book signing that wasn't. So here's Katie and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name is Katie, but I'm better known in the ballroom dance world as the girl with the tree tattoo. I'm a competitive ballroom dancer and writer with three published books and two journals.
While working to promote my latest book, The Solar Practice Guide for Ballroom Dancing, I connected with a local dance shop that specialized in practice wear for ballroom dancers. Our products complemented each other perfectly, so we decided to become affiliate partners. Now, nearly all of my business is online. I primarily reach my audience through the girl with the tree tattoo blog and social media pages. But I wanted to connect more with my local audience.
So my new dance shop partners and I arranged to have a book signing at their store, a meet the author type event. I did my usual promotions through my email list, blog, and social media pages. I was a little nervous to do an in-person event, but mainly excited. The day of the event arrived. My photographer and I arrived at the store early to set up and then waited for the dancers.
And we waited, and waited. I kid you not, literally no one showed up. The dance shop owners and I eat and drink our way through the light refreshments as we exchanged small smiles and shoulder shrugs. My photographer kept himself busy taking photos of us and the book display. The funny thing is I actually made one book sale that day.
A dancer came into the shop to do actual shopping. She had no idea the event was happening. But after talking with her about the solo practice guide, she added it to her purchases. So tell me, what's the conversion rate for one sale out of zero event attendees? Whatever it is, I definitely learned a couple lessons that day.
First, you have to roll with the punches and always take the opportunity to talk about your creations. When nothing went as I wanted or expected, I could have hid in the back of the store wallowing at my epic fail of a book event, but I didn't. I stayed up front and I was ready to share the value I knew my book contained. As a result, I made a sale at an event that no one showed up to. The next lesson didn't come to me until much later.
I realized it made an error in promoting the event only through my usual channels. The usual channels reached some local dancers, but mainly it reached dancers who had found me online and were physically too far away for such an event. To reach a more local audience, I should have utilized more local connections like dance studios. Looking back though, the book signing that wasn't doesn't feel like a failure. I'm proud of myself that I stepped outside of my comfort zone.
I'm proud of myself for adapting to a crappy situation and making the best of it. Finally, I'm proud of myself that over two years later, I'm still dancing, I'm still writing, and I'm still pushing myself outside that comfort zone. [Music]
Thank you so much, Katie. Really appreciate you sharing. And as an author, I very much relate to that feeling of hosting your book signing or your book events, your meetup, whatever it is.
And really hoping that people will show up. Right before I published my first book a few months earlier, I happened to be in Vancouver, BC and walked into a chapter's bookstore and there was an author doing a signing. And it wasn't anybody I knew, I just kind of went to, I was like, oh, I should go and see what this is like. This is gonna be my world, you know, in a few months. And nobody was there, it was very similar to this story.
And so I thought, man, I needed to do, you know, whatever it takes to not be in that situation. And a few months later, I went on book tour all across the US and then Canada as well. And lots of events, I had lots of people, but I also had some events where I was kind of like, all right, you know, if I get five people here or 10 people here, then that's gonna be good, you know? So you gotta start somewhere. I always like this quote, never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
And I also really respect that conversion rate that she mentioned, right? One sale out of zero customers, pretty good there. So I'm grateful to her for helping us out with this segment. Check out her website, thegirlwithatreetattoo.com or follow her on Instagram with the same name, thegirlwithatreetattoo. If you have a question, if you'd like to update us about your side hustle, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions.
Thank you for joining me today. I hope you'll come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
