This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, what's up? Welcome to another episode of Failure Friday, our weekly segment, conveniently taking place on Friday, one day out of seven in the week. Here on Side Hustle School, this is a collection of short stories about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. Just like our Throwback Thursday segment, you will hear directly from Side Hustlers who have struggled to get something off the ground. They'll tell you a short, very honest story of something that went quite wrong.
It's been really fun to work on this segment over the past few months. I'm very grateful to everybody who's been part of it, as well as our listeners who have, well, listened, first of all, as well as left us those nice five-star reviews and perhaps mentioned the show to some friends. So if you've done that, thank you. And if not, well, there's still time. Last week, we heard about the webinar Gone Wrong, a story from Tanya Smith in Ontario, Canada.
I enjoyed working on her story because it reminded me of a very, very similar experience that I had. Today's story is not an experience I have had myself. It features Meredith Golden from New York City. We told the successful story of her dating app ghostwriting business on episode 1024. Now, since then, she has been starting an app called Dharma Dating, which aims to provide transparency and truth in dating.
You know, when you get ghosted and you're like, what happened there? Or maybe you've heard of this phenomenon, she is trying to solve that problem. And it is a big problem. So the app is still in development, but part of the validation process was using online ads to recruit new users. Unfortunately, the marketing plan Meredith pursued didn't work so well, at least at first.
So let's hear more about that from her. I'll come back at the end to briefly wrap us up. [Music]
Hi, I'm Meredith Golden, the proud founder of Dharma Dating. Dharma is the next generation in the dating space. It's a dating app that helps singles improve their dating and feel good about the process.
Dharma helps singles to connect, but it also helps beyond the match. There are many more pain points in dating than just connecting. Dating closure and dating feedback can reveal blind spots in dating, helping a single to improve their experience. Or it can validate that someone's doing everything right and motivate them to keep going. Either way, having intel and having data is helpful.
Dharma also closes the loop for people while they're dating, so they don't have to spend their brain space wondering and continuously asking, what happened? Did I do something wrong? Was it me? Sometimes it's nice just to have closure and to move on. Being a founder, being an entrepreneur isn't easy.
Some days are better than others. Some days I am pulling my hair out of my head and literally want to cry. In addition to being a female tech founder, I'm also a mom of two really active boys. And my time is very limited, just like a lot of people. It is my most precious resource.
And so when something goes wrong, that should have been an easy execution. It drives me crazy. So here's my big fail. In preparing to go to market for Dharma, I had to figure out where I can get the most bang for my buck and had to do various test ads. One of the places where I wanted to test out Dharma was Facebook and Instagram.
Industry standard for a dating app for user acquisition cost is $3.50. I had that as a benchmark while setting up and strategizing. So when I set up my first ad and looked at the data and saw that it was zero people downloaded the app, obviously I was horrified and upset and had my whole world bent over backwards because I thought, oh, have I really just spent the last three years of my life doing this and no one is going to download Dharma? Could I have been so wrong? It obviously shook my confidence and made me rethink everything.
But then I went through and I was really looking at the metrics on the Facebook app and the ads manager and realized that the data didn't add up at all. So I kept reaching out to Facebook and something happens where I was rerouted to a bot, which I wasn't sure if it was a bot because I've never done this before. But then when I finally got in touch with someone and I said, oh, but the last person told me this, they said, well, that wasn't really a person. I was like, oh, well, I'm so happy you're sharing this with me because it was hours of my time going back and forth. But at the end of the day, the $3.50 user acquisition cost, and then I had zero, which blew my mind, I finally kept going and got in touch with someone on Facebook who then reviewed the data and said, you know what, you're not set up correctly.
The app wasn't linked properly, which is why people couldn't download it. That was the first problem. And the second tech problem was that my Facebook and my Instagram weren't connected to the app and I didn't know how to do it. Thankfully, this kind person at Facebook ads manager spent time with me on the phone, walked me through the setup and helped me. It was certainly frustrating because I had spent money and as a startup, financial resources are limited.
But more so, it was just so much of my time and caused so much stress and anxiety. Ultimately, the good news is that Dharma's user acquisition cost was $1.78 and that Dharma had a 55% conversion rate, which really added to the invalidated, the proof of concept that Dharma is onto something, that people do wanna have a better dating experience and they do want closure in the process. And they do wanna know, hey, what happened? Did I do something? I made a point because of my history of my other dating business to make sure that all of the closure data and the feedback data is delivered confidentially and it's from a pre-selected dropdown menu so no one can say anything mean.
But there was a risk in starting and developing the app. I didn't know how it was gonna go other than interviewing a bunch of singles before I set it up. Thankfully, I listened to people saying, "Yeah, I do wanna know," and I started it and eventually got the data I need to go to market. I'm still perfecting the data as much as possible for an entrepreneur and playing around with it before eventually going to launch. But I was happy that I kept going and was able to tolerate the enormous frustration with the tech piece of it and not knowing how to set it up because at the end of the day, a $1.78 user acquisition cost is well below the $3.50 standard in the dating industry for user acquisition cost.
For all the entrepreneurs who are rolling up their sleeves with a side hustle, I'm cheering you on from the sidelines. It is not for the fainted heart. It's really, really challenging. Some days I cry. Some days it's the littlest successes that motivate me to keep going.
But it is certainly not easy. Thanks for taking the time to listen. [Music]
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That is a theme of Failure Friday. Of course, sometimes there's some pretty big failures and you're like, wow, that seems like a pretty substantial defeat, if not a final defeat.
But there's always a way to recover. There's always a way to at least regroup and move forward in some fashion. So I'm grateful in this case to Meredith for helping us out with this segment. Check out her website at spoonmeetsspoon.com. That was the site she was using for her dating app, Ghost Writing Business.
It ended up doing very well. So you can learn more about that there or download the new app Dharma Dating in the App Store. If you want to see more about how that process develops and how she gets the new business off the ground. And of course, if you have a question or an update for us about your hustle, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you for tuning in today.
Thank you for being awesome. There is a project out for you as well. I am cheering you on. I hope you find it. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
You are listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
