This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I believe we can learn as much from failure as we can from success, if not, in fact, more. And it is with this principle in mind that we have been publishing Failure Friday, a collection of short stories all about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure.
Sometimes things go wrong. Things go wrong quite a lot, actually. And I feel like we don't talk about it nearly often enough, especially for anybody out there who is struggling to get started and thinking, is it supposed to be easy? Well, it's probably not gonna be easy, at least not always, but it is usually worth it, okay? So just like our Throwback Thursday segment, which conveniently comes out on Thursdays, you're gonna hear directly from side hustlers who have struggled to get something off the ground.
They're gonna tell you a short story of something that went very wrong. So I really applaud their courage. I'll share some of my stories along the way as well. And today's short story features Alex Phillips from Victoria, Australia. Her business is called St. Belford.
Alex and her partner sell these really beautiful lifestyle planners/wellness diaries. She calls them all-in-one lifestyle planners that seamlessly blend everyday tasks with self-care, mindfulness, habits, and goals. Now we told the successful story of these diaries, her business, on episode 683. So that's quite a while ago. Alex had the idea that as her business grew, so it was going really well, she would start working directly with her manufacturer in China instead of using a middleman.
Now it all sounds logical and simple, right? Well, nothing on Failure Friday is ever simple. And of course, it didn't go according to plan. Did you get that, this planner business? You know, it didn't go according to plan.
Okay, I'll stop now. Let's hear from Alex. I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name is Alex, and I'm the co-founder of St. Belford.
We create lifestyle planners and journals that focus on self-care, habits, goals, and personal growth. In our first year of business, we had a middleman here in Australia handle the entire manufacturing process for us. But we weren't overly satisfied with the results. So in our second year, we decided to find a new manufacturer in China and deal with them directly. We naively thought we'd have more control over the manufacturing process and be able to reduce the percentage of defective goods.
We clearly outlined our expectations and our definition of a defective product to which they agreed. They even agreed to compensate us if the percentage of defective goods exceeded the agreed rate of 2%. A sample was made and it ticked all our boxes. There were no red flags that we could spot. A couple of months later, our stock arrived, and this is where the nightmare begins.
We started unpacking the boxes only to find scratches and indents on the front cover, which made them unsellable. The divider ribbons were frayed and unevenly cut, and that wasn't even the worst of it. We didn't discover the worst of it until a week later after sending hundreds of orders. We received an email from a customer explaining that her diary, her planner, was missing September. And this sparked a lot of confusion because we didn't even think this could be an issue.
We quickly started flipping through planner after planner and bam, another planner with missing pages, another planner in the incorrect order. I felt like the business we had built was crumbling. I was crushed. Thankfully, Tom, the other co-founder, is pretty calm in a crisis. He decided the best thing we could do is to own our mistake.
We sent an email to our customers who had purchased, informing them of the situation. We asked them to thoroughly check their planners and to let us know if they had an effective planner with missing pages or pages in the incorrect order. The replies flooded in and I felt sick to my stomach. Fortunately, most of the replies were customers thanking us for our honesty and reassuring us that their planner was just fine. That was our first lesson.
Be honest and transparent with your customers. They'll trust and love you even more. The second thing we learned from this experience is to always use a third-party inspector when manufacturing overseas. If you can't be on the ground to inspect the products yourself, hire a third-party inspector to inspect the products and report back to you before you make your final payment for goods. It's a lot easier to do that than it is to get compensated for defective goods once they've been shipped over, as we later found out.
[Music]
Wow, what a story, right? Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That is our theme of Failure Friday because even when something goes really wrong, you can usually fight your way back. Judging from her website, it looks like Alex and her partner, Tom, have recovered well from this disaster. So I am grateful to her for helping us out with this segment.
And those lessons there, keep that in mind. Be honest with your customers and always use a third-party inspector. When you're dealing with a situation like this, an overseas factory or anything where there's some distance, either physical or otherwise, between you and the person who's making your goods, a little accountability goes a long way. Check out St. Belford at stbelford.com.
You can also go to stbelford.com.au since they are in Australia or follow them on social, some amazing photos there of all these beautiful planners at St. Belford. If you've got a question, if you'd like to update us about your side hustle, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. The notes for today are at sidehustleschool.com/1588. Thank you for joining me.
I hope you will come back tomorrow, subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
