This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up? Thank you for tuning in today. Excited to bring you this brand new segment. This is week two of our brand new segment called First $1,000. Okay, so as we enter season six, upside us all school, we've been going for more than 1,800 days in a row.
All thanks to you. All thanks to your support because you're awesome. Naturally, we are looking for ways to evolve and grow, bring you more helpful, insightful and interesting content. So this new segment, your first $1,000, as you might surmise, it's all about how someone made their first $1,000. Last week we heard from Dea Kunle, who encouraged you to think of your future self when you're starting your side hustle.
I loved her advice. She was like, your future self will thank you for the time and energy you invest now. Today's feature comes to us from Taylor Molly. We first featured him and his story way back on episode 1214. Guess that's more than 600 days ago.
Writing teacher rolls the dice on metaphor game. And that's in fact what he sells. Taylor sells the writing tool that plays like a game. Specifically, it is a poetry prompt generator that helps writers of all levels think and write more figuratively. It's pretty cool.
You can buy it on Amazon or from his website. Tell you more about that at the end. He's also got a pretty cool contest. This segment here is all about how someone made their first $1,000. How did they make it happen?
What did it feel like? What did they learn? And so in this update, Taylor's gonna tell you a little bit about his first $1,000, but he's also got a contest he's running where he's going to pay out his first $1,000, or at least something close to that, okay? It is $1,000. It may not be his first $1,000, but he'll tell you more about it.
What's synchronicity? Taylor's update. I'll be back at the end with a quick wrap up. [Music]
This is a story about the first $1,000 that I earned off of metaphor dice. So a single box of metaphor dice, which contains 12 dice, retails for $20, which is sort of the sweet spot for little packaged games like ours.
That means that my cost of goods sold should really be no more than $5 because you want the MSRP, the manufacturer suggested retail price, to be four times the unit cost, ideally. Now, I'm finally there now after six years of doing this, but in the beginning, because of some mistakes and missteps, it cost me more like $10 to produce a single set of metaphor dice. And there was no way I was gonna charge $40 a set. So to earn my first $1,000, I had to sell 100 sets. Now, how did it feel?
Amazing. I had conceived of and developed a product and brought it to market, and 100 people were basically willing to trade me a $20 bill for it. But here's the thing about earning your first $1,000 that I feel no one talks about enough. It's income, sure, but it's not profit. I had to spend at least 20,000 of mostly my own money to get to that point.
So sure, I sold 100 sets of metaphor dice, but I still had 4,900 in my basement that I needed to get out into the world. So I'd tell anyone just starting out to realize that it's going to take a while until you get into the black and start earning money that you have not already spent. And the last thing I would say is that you should absolutely hire people who really know how to do what you only think you can do. For me, that's graphic design. For a long time, I really thought I was a great amateur graphic designer.
And what was my favorite computer program for designing these graphics? Because I'm a writer, it was Microsoft Word. That should have been a red flag right there. But when I saw what a professional graphic designer could do, I realized that I was way out of my league. Actually, that's not quite true because you need to have someone on your side of the company who can mock up what you want so you have something to show the real graphic designer and say, see, I want something like this, but you know, like better.
So metaphor dice will probably never be my main job. I'll never have a corner office in the metaphor dice corporate headquarters, but we could get purchased by a larger game company. And until then, I'm happy to sell more and more sets wherever I can and to organize contests like the one we're running now called the Golden Die Contest, where we're gonna give away $1,000 to the best poem ever written with the help of metaphor dice. Of course, that $1,000 isn't the first $1,000 we ever earned, but it kind of feels like it and it makes for a better story. So let's say it is.
Hey, thanks a lot, Taylor. Really appreciate you telling us about your first $1,000. And listeners, I hope you found that story encouraging and also honest, you know, when he's like, I had to spend $20,000 to get to $1,000 in income. Sometimes that's how it goes, especially with a physical product. There are real tangible costs that go into making something like this.
You know, it's not a digital product, it's not an app. Also, I love what Taylor said about Microsoft Word for Design. I've been there, you know, like I am a Microsoft Word designer, which is also why I'm not a designer. Anyway, check out his website, metaphordice.com, or go directly to the new contest at metaphordice.submitable.com. metaphordice.submitable.com.
As you heard, the Golden Die Contest will award a prize of $1,000 to the best poem written using metaphor dice. So who knows, perhaps one of our listeners can win that prize. Let me know if you do, and then we can tell your story of how you made $1,000. I mean, that would just be the ultimate synchronicity. So let me know what happens.
Listeners, let me know what's going on with you as well. If you've got a question or an update for us, some feedback about this new segment, sidehustleschool.com/questions, the show notes page with those links again, and anything else I mentioned, sidehustleschool.com/1836. Thank you for tuning in today. I hope you will continue to join me every day this year. I'll be here.
I hope you will be as well. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
