This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Happy New Year's Eve. Happy New Year's Eve. Happy almost New Year's. It is the last episode of the year. If you're listening to it in the future, you might be in another year, which is crazy.
What a year it's been. I am so grateful to be able to bring you these stories, episodes, updates, and so on all throughout the year. So thank you once again for being part of Side Hustle School. And for this last episode of the year, happens to be coming out on a Friday, which means our segment today is failure Friday. A collection of short stories about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. Just like our throwback Thursday segment,
you'll hear directly from side hustlers who have struggled to get something off the ground. They're going to tell you a short story of something that went very wrong. Today's short story features Jen Earl, originally from Melbourne, Australia, but now living in the UK. We told a successful story of her London chocolate tours on episode 194, long, long ago. And that business has done fabulously well. But as you'll hear,
a new business she started called Taste Tripper struggled quite a bit and getting off the ground. In fact, she finally made the brave decision to close it. So she'll bring us that story. I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap up. I had a business that I ran for three years, maybe a little longer from conception to finally closing it. That was a failure. It felt like a failure. And technically, we made money that
covered the costs of the business that we'd put in, but not the three plus years of work that went into it. It was called Taste Tripper. And it was self guided food tours around London. So I started with a chocolate version, then launched a coffee version and a beer version and had a mix and match for a while. We pivoted three times from a paper based version to a web version when we brought in the mix and match. And then an app and the app finally got rejected by Apple, which is the point
when we realized we just couldn't go on because it really needed to be an app. And they wouldn't listen to our arguments that it was, it shouldn't have been rejected. So even without that, though, there was so many other smaller failures that meant that this was never really going to become this huge business that I had visions of it becoming. I had plans to open in lots of different countries. And so before I started Taste Tripper, I began another business which I still run today, which I started as a side hustle in 2005, running chocolate tours around London. So one of the first
walking food tours that I knew of. And it was great and it grew and it became a really nice sort of lifestyle business. I had ideas that I could do something which was more scalable without compromising the integrity of what I felt like I'd built with chocolate ecstasy tours. So Taste Tripper was a post-out pack where originally it was tear off strips for the eight feature locations. You could do the tastings at your own pace. There was no expiry to them. You could pop into the shop,
you'd hand over your token and they'd give you something to taste and you get a discount. And the cost of the pack was less than the items that you received. I thought that this was just a no brainer. And I was so convinced of this that I didn't tell me many people about it, which was the first failure. I was so afraid that people would steal the idea that I didn't get enough feedback. And the feedback I did get was basically an echo chamber of support. Well,
that's the ones I listened to. There was one or two people I spoke to that didn't get it. And these are people I respected, but I was so caught up in my idea that I didn't listen. So we created a minimum viable product, which was actually pretty significant investing in branding because we knew how important that was. Paid for PR. We even paid to trade market, which ended up costing thousands.
Another mistake. That was frustrating. My final failure was not closing it quick enough. I emotionally invested and I really had my ego attached to it. And it really took a long time.
We eventually stopped. We made it a nine month expiry and then a six month expiry and then a one month offer. You could finish them all in one month up until the time when we knew all of them would have expired. And then we closed the business. So in order to honor people's that had purchased it already, but it was really sad closing it. And why I'm also really disappointed about another
failure that on top of all of those is that I could have used that as a way to connect with my audience online. And I kept meaning to it. And I don't know if it was because my ego was too bruised or there were just other things going on in the world at the time that I closed it that I never sort of put my hands up and said, I started this. It didn't work. So it just kind of disappeared, which until now I have not really spoken about. So yeah, I've learned a lot and
I am glad that I implemented many of those lessons in the mystery chocolate tastings that I pivoted to during lockdown. And they have been fantastic and ironically just made so much more money, so many more customers, so much more easily than all of the years of work that I put into taste tripper. So I'm going to stick to what I know best from now on and try and grow from that base. Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That is the theme of failure Friday.
Thank you so much, Jen. Really appreciate that story. Transparent, honest, brave. As I said, brave decision to close that business. I've had that problem many times in the past where I've just kind of kept things going. And that's not the smart thing to do. I also really liked what Jen
said about the echo chamber of support. You got to be careful about that. When you're asking your friends, "Hey, what do you think about this?" And they all want to be supportive. So they're like, "Oh, that's great. That sounds amazing." And that's not really the feedback that you necessarily need to hear. So always lessons to be learned through these experiences. And yes,
of course, tell the stories of what doesn't go well because people want to know. It creates a closer connection with your customers or followers. Thank you again, Jen. And listeners, check out her website, JenniferEarl.com. That last name is spelled E-A-R-L-E, JenniferEarl.com. Or follow
her on Instagram at Jennifer.Earl. She does updates and stories every single day, very consistent, very solid. And I always enjoy following them myself. All right, listeners, everybody, that's it for 2021. I can hardly believe it myself. But in fact, tomorrow begins a new year, a new year,
a new season for the podcast. I've got some exciting stuff I've been working on behind the scenes. I'm excited to share it with you very, very soon. So do come back, do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, et cetera, all of that. But mostly, thank you again. You're awesome. Don't stop believing.
I hope to see you in 2022. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You've been listening to Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
