This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Thank you for tuning into the podcast. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School," and bringing you our weekly segment known as "Failure Friday." Principle is we can learn as much from failure as we can from success, if not more. It's been our most popular news segment of 2021. It's been so fun to hear lots of different stories, really helpful, interesting, vulnerable, transparent, honest stories from founders, business owners, side hustlers, all about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure.
What went wrong? What was the struggle? What was tough? And what did you learn from it? You know, that's what it's all about.
How did you get through that experience and what has it taught you? How has it helped you to actually succeed more in the long term? Today's short story features Suzanne Tucker. Suzanne is a mom of four, a physical therapist and a parent educator for more than 27 years. She's also the founder of a business called Generation Mindful.
We told the successful story of that project on episode 7-11, 7-1-1. Educator makes playing cards to teach kids about emotions. Now her business has been doing very well overall, but in the early part of the pandemic, her team decided to go all in on applying for a big NIH grant. So a big grant from the government, I think it was like $2 million. And as you'll hear, it didn't work out so well, at least not at first.
So Suzanne's gonna tell us the story and I'll come back at the end for a quick wrap up. [Music]
Hi, this is Suzanne Tucker, founder of Generation Mindful, where we make tools and toys that make learning about emotions fun for children and adults. And I was featured back in 2019 for our first product, Peacemaker Cards, Mindfulness Cards, that create connection and mindful conversations between children and adults. And the team asked me if I'd wanna come back and talk about a failure that we've experienced. And I said, "Well, yes, I would actually." When COVID hit in 2020, we took the time and the opportunity to dive deep and go for a $2 million National Institute of Health grant.
That took us about six months of at least five team members meeting weekly. I estimate probably about $20,000 worth of effort put into market research and preliminary data collection and whatnot. And we did not get it, but we learned so much. It actually led to where we are now in 2021, where we're expanding outside of our original bootstrapped growth strategy. We are actually applying for venture capital right now and we have a bigger vision.
We've expanded beyond our e-commerce B2C strategy as well. And we really see the application of our tools and toys for schools and nonprofits. So it's a much bigger market. And that was thanks to the deep dive market research we did in our big fail of going for a $2 million NIH grant. And so what I would say is if you wanna go fast, go alone.
And if you wanna go far, go with others. You will make mistakes along the way, but as we teach at Generation Mindful, mistakes help us learn and grow. And as a entrepreneur, I know that you know, you can't grow, you can't succeed without making mistakes. And in fact, that is how we learn. We learned so much when we pitched our grant proposal, it's about a hundred pages of effort to the National Institute of Health.
And we got back really valuable feedback, even though we got a no on the funding. They told us, "Hey, we see a bigger market for you." And they loved the products and they saw the value. And they wondered, "Why not a larger market?" And that had us go back and really look at the applications of the tools that we're creating to impact schools, pre-K through early elementary, towards a more just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive learning environment. And I am thrilled with the expansion of our mission. It's always been to raise an emotionally healthy world.
And now we are focused on not only B2C, but B2B sales. We are now have our sites on five big conferences a year, and that will grow as well. And we hired our first sales associate. So we've been in business for five years, selling solely via our website, direct to consumer, using a lot of pay-per-click, Facebook, Google ads, that sort of thing. And because of the big Epic fail we had in 2020, going for the NIH grant and being denied, we really revisited that strategy and expanded it.
So my hope for you is if you have an Epic fail, that you will learn from it as well and leverage it. One last thing I'd like to mention is that we're finalists in a acceleration grant that's $100,000 equity-free. So that 20,000 of effort and time that we invested was well spent. And we are now seeking a million dollars in venture capital to grow and ideally land our tools in the social-emotional learning aisle at Target. So do not be discouraged if you invest money and time in learning about your market and your competition.
That money and time, at least for us, was well spent. So leverage those fails and turn them into successes. [Music]
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That is our theme of Failure Friday. I love how Suzanne added to it.
Mistakes help us learn and grow. She also mentioned if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with the team. Thanks so much to Suzanne for sharing this transparent and truthful story. I want to encourage you to check out her website at jinnmindful.com.
That's a jinn-like generation. Every parent or aunt or uncle or gift buyer for parents should check it out. She is doing some really meaningful work over there and fingers crossed for all that future funding. I hope it works out. Listeners, if you've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions.
Thank you so much for tuning in today. New segment like this coming up one week from today, but a new episode is coming out tomorrow, every single day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
