This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. So glad you're out there. Thank you for turning into our long running series all about how to create extra money without quitting your job. Now that is our broad umbrella.
Ultimately it is about security. It is about more options for yourself. It's about building the kind of future that you want so that you can do what you wanna do, more of what you wanna do, more of what makes you come alive. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I'm your host.
And earlier this year, we started a new segment called Failure Friday. Now this segment is all about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. It's because I believe we can learn as much from failure as we can from success. So we have all these short stories that are coming out. The stories vary, but often it starts with an idea, what the person thought would happen, and then what really happened, 'cause there's often a gap between those two things.
And of course, what they learned. Once you realize something is a mistake or a misstep, or maybe it's not even your fault, it could be, you know, we've had a couple of natural disasters in this series as well. But whatever it is, what happens after that is I think more important, you know, than how you actually got there. Because how do you adapt? How do you respond?
You know, do you in fact bounce back? And that phrase comes up in today's story. It features Nick True, a former mechanical engineer who lives and operates his business, along with his wife, Hannah, from an Airstream trailer. Now we told the successful story of their blog and community, it's called "Mapped Out Money." We told that story on episode 889. But before "Mapped Out Money" took off, Nick tried something different.
As you might suspect, that different idea didn't work out so well. So let's let him tell the story, and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name is Nick True, and I'm the owner of "Mapped Out Money." And I started a blog called "True Tightwad" in 2015 and built up a very, very, very small email list, about 150 people or so. And finally, in late 2016, I went to build my first paid product. And I dreamed of this idea of doing a sort of small group coaching program for a few weeks or so.
I reached out personally, I didn't even send out like a broadcast newsletter, just a personal email to 15 of some of the most engaged sort of subscribers and audience members that I had at the time. And I gave them a description of this five-week program. And I was gonna limit it to five people for five weeks and give me an opportunity to really work with them in a one-on-one fashion to help them reach their financial goals. I felt like I had a good product, but ultimately when I sent those emails, all I heard was crickets. I literally didn't get a single response.
And mind you, these are people who open just about every single email, and I've even corresponded with a number of them before about blog posts that they had liked. Not a single one of them replied interested in the product. It was a complete failure, and it ended up really deterring me for a couple of years from launching any other product. To me, when I look back on that time, a couple of things come to mind is the lesson. First off, I really didn't have a proven track record.
And looking back, I totally get why these people didn't trust me to be able to help them with their money. They read my blog, and it was about personal finance, but they had no way of really knowing if I was actually good at coaching people. I had no one-on-one experience, no videos, where they could learn to trust me better, just written blog content. No reviews, no certifications, no technical training, just me writing personal finance content, and then saying, "Yes, you should hire me to help you." Another thing that really stands out to me looking back is that I didn't clearly define the product or the outcome very well. The program had no name, it had no defined goal.
It was basically, "Hey, join this coaching program where I'm gonna help you with your money." It wasn't very clear. It didn't give people an outcome, and I didn't even give people a price in the email. I went looking back on these emails and just cringe. I basically just asked people to reply if they were interested in learning more. And while maybe that would work for certain businesses if you have a really, really compelling product explanation, it definitely didn't work for me.
And I think those two things hand in hand really made it struggle. Looking back, though, the biggest lesson of all was I waited way too long to keep iterating, and it took me way too long to bounce back from this. I stopped blogging for around nearly eight months and finally got started back on YouTube after that. Then it would be another two and a half years before I launched another paid product and tried a group coaching program that ultimately did find success. But that is way too long to bounce back after a failed product launch.
So I just want to encourage you that if you try to launch a product and you launch to crickets, don't be discouraged. It's part of the process sometimes. Keep iterating, don't give up, keep trying to find, and I'm convinced that you can find a winning formula if you just keep at it. [Music]
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That is our theme of this segment, Failure Friday, and some really good advice there from Nick.
So I appreciate him sharing that story so candidly, so honestly. I mean, this is how we learn, right? And I love what he said about don't be discouraged. It's part of the process. I could not say it better myself.
I know we have a lot of listeners who are often discouraged because what they try doesn't work, or they send out those emails, they don't get the response they're looking for, they just can't quite figure out what to do next. But Nick is convinced, as you heard, that you can find the winning formula, and so am I. I also think iterating is key, which he also touched on. You need to increase your knowledge, you need to try different things. It's not just trying the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.
It is adapting and adjusting, which is exactly what he did in his story, as you heard. So I'm grateful to him and to Hannah as well. Check out their website, mappedoutmoney.com, or subscribe to the YouTube channel at Nick True Mapped Out Money. So if you just search for his name or the name of his business, his blog, his community, you should be able to find it. Mapped Out Money, we'll link it up on the show notes page as well.
If you have a question, if you have an update for us about your hustle, let us know what's going on, what is working, what's not. I would love to talk about it. sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Hope you'll come back tomorrow, subscribe, or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
But mostly, make sure you take time to do something for yourself. All right, that's it for today. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
