This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
I believe we can learn as much from failure as we can from success, if not, in fact, more. It is with this principle in mind that we have been running a series called Failure Friday. Today is Friday, so guess what? It's happening again. Failure Friday is a collection of short stories all about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and, of course, failure.
Just like our Throwback Thursday segment, conveniently taking place on Thursdays, you will hear directly from side hustlers who have struggled to get something off the ground, or have made a big mistake, or misstep, or otherwise experienced that big setback, disaster, or failure. So these stories have varied quite a bit, but often it starts with an idea or an assumption, and then the reality of how that idea or assumption plays out in the real world. And, of course, what they learn from it, and how they respond, and how they move forward. So I really enjoyed this series. I've been getting lots of good feedback about it.
I hope you like it too. Today's short story features Alan Perlman, whose business is headquartered in Nashville, but his team works remotely. What he does is drone education. So if you want to become a drone pilot, you need to get licensed. You need to actually learn how to fly your drone so you don't crash it.
That's what his company provides. And it is a company now, as you're going to hear. It's actually grown quite a bit, but started as a side hustle. So let's hear from Alan about a big struggle he had getting started, and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. Hello.
My name is Alan, and I run a training and education company in the drone industry. Not military drones, but the smaller ones you see over high-end real estate listings, construction sites, telecom and energy infrastructure, things like that. So here's the context for my story. It's 2015, and my business is just starting to get some traction. We have thousands of people visiting our website each month, a rapidly growing email list.
We had launched our first online training course. It was about to get real. At the time, if you wanted to fly a drone for commercial purposes, there was this really challenging application process through the Federal Aviation Administration. And the people I was talking to through our website kept asking me about this process and whether or not we could file the paperwork on their behalf. Ding, ding, ding.
Great business opportunity, being at the right place at the right time. However, instead of building this service myself, I decided to partner with someone. And with my incredible business acumen at the time, I did about 10 minutes of research, reached out to the first company I saw, had a call with them the next day, and within a couple of weeks, I was set up as an outside sales rep. We set it up as a 10% commission-based relationship. So we moved really quickly.
In about seven months, I had sent them over a quarter million dollars worth of business. Now, you might be thinking that the story here has to do with the commission. And even though other sales reps were getting paid a lot more than I was, taking credit for many of the leads I was bringing in, and the fact that I was this company's top sales channel, that's not what I want to focus on. The story here is about my customer's complaints. So turns out, after I had spent all this time building the relationship, honing my sales process, educating and teaching folks what this process was about.
After my customers would pay, my partner was totally dropping the ball when it came to communication and to delivering the service in a timely and professional manner. I had also come to find out that this partner had committed a not-so-insignificant white-collar crime in his previous career. So my name and my company's reputation were getting dragged through the mud for a couple of reasons. So here's what I learned. Number one, a partnership is not one-sided.
So when you're setting a relationship up, you need to be really clear about what each side is agreeing to, even if it's just a simple commission-based relationship. I should have had stronger principles. I should have severed the partnership much earlier based on the complaints I was getting from the customers when they reached back out to me. I also learned that running a background check is super easy and something we should have at least considered doing since we were conducting such significant business with this partner. Finally, sometimes you don't need a partner.
Maybe I should have just offered this service myself. Now that next year, when the regulations shifted, I put on my big boy pants and decided to build our own training course without the help of a partner. Yes, it cost tens of thousands of dollars to develop. It took several months, but now we're a seven-figure training company and we own that product, but more importantly, we own that customer experience end-to-end and outright. So partnerships can be great.
Sometimes it pays to move quickly like I did, but with this story, hopefully you'll enter your next partnership with a bit more understanding of what could potentially go wrong. "Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat." Also, lessons from this episode, background checks are easy and don't go into business with a white-collar criminal. Lesson learned, I suppose. I have not had that particular mistake yet myself, but I will be on the lookout. Listen, Ellen's business is super impressive.
I've known him for a long time and it's just incredible what he has done with this business. If you want to see an example of a seven-figure business that started as a side hustle, was just a hobby, but he really invested his time in creating some systems and process. Look no further. I mean, I encourage you to go and check it out. His website is uavcoach.com, uavcoach.com, or they have an Instagram account, uavcoach as well.
This business has served 35,000 plus students, offers drone education training in 20-plus cities. There's also a lot of free info on their site, including the detailed process for how you too can get your drone license. And learn to fly a drone and hopefully not crash it into some important government building. I think they cover that in the training. By the way, today was episode 1700 and we first featured Alan on episode 500.
So, you know, first of all, look how far we've come, all of us together. And second, we seem to save Alan's story for these monumental milestones, which is appropriate since his story is so cool. So again, congrats to Alan and thank you so much listeners for being part of Side Hustle School for all this time. Even if you've just tuned in recently, this community has evolved because of listeners spreading the word, telling their friends about it, giving us those awesome five-star reviews. So thank you.
All right, I'll be back tomorrow. I hope you'll join me again. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. from the Onward Project.
