This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Let's go on a scavenger hunt. A really big, difficult one. That's what today's listener proposes, the world's most difficult hunt. I always love hearing your ideas. I love knowing what you're working on, what you're thinking about, different ways to make extra money without quitting your job, or by starting something new with the skills you already have.
Now I wanna give a shout out to Chris, Damian Acos from Cash Hunt. I thought about him this morning while I was working on this episode. He produces perhaps not the world's most difficult scavenger hunt, but one of the longest running and most successful. I believe he's from Boston originally, but now operates this in multiple cities. We featured Chris way back in episode 128 when we were first getting going our first year, and then also in the 100 Side Hustles book.
So today, will this listener follow in his footsteps or get lost along the way? Because it's a scavenger hunt, get it? All right, let's talk about this idea, see if it has some merit, see if we have any ideas or feedback for our caller. It's all coming up after this quick message from our sponsor. [Music]
Hey Chris, this is Bradley from Arizona, and I started listening to the show after reading 100 Hustles.
So you featured a couple of businesses that offer scavenger hunts. I was thinking I'd like to create one, and I was gonna call it something along the lines of the world's most difficult hunt. To complete the quest, the winning team would have to visit at least four cities and complete all sorts of absurd and difficult tasks. They need to meet a real celebrity, swim across a river, find a Christmas tree in the middle of the summer, and you know, more stuff like that, crazy things, you know? The list just goes on.
And like, the difficulty is part of the appeal, you know? I don't wanna dumb it down because the market is people who are into really hardcore adventures like this. I could see it becoming a reality show one day, but first I need to gain traction. So where would you suggest that I start? Thank you.
- The difficulty is part of the appeal. I love that. It reminds me of a race, I believe it takes place in Tennessee, called the Barkley. It's an ultra marathon that is nearly impossible to complete by design. So every year I believe there's 100 or 200 people that enter and very few of them actually finish.
As I said, it's designed to be nearly impossible. It's actually almost impossible to enter. There's some secret process you have to go through to figure out how to actually enter the race. The whole thing is comically absurd and therefore that's part of its appeal. So that said, you know, I do think for a scavenger hunt like this, it has to be at least somewhat accessible.
I don't think it can be an impossible quest. It just needs to be something that you have to work really hard at. So I definitely would keep the difficulty. And as for the business model, you know, this is the kind of project that will absolutely benefit from a PR strategy. For lots of our stories and lots of our case studies and examples, a PR strategy is not that effective.
There's a lot of money being spent paying publicists for things that, you know, never actually result in any sort of positive outcome or coverage. But for this kind of thing, it's perfect. I mean, just, you know, can't you imagine lots of news articles being tweeted and shared? An article comes out and everybody's talking about it. Did you hear about this scavenger hunt?
It's so difficult that, you know, X, Y, Z, there's various facts. Some of the challenges and tasks are, you know, just kind of outlandish like the crossing the river and visiting multiple cities and all that. So PR I think would be really important. Rather than spending money on ads, for example, you know, you want to spend time and energy on getting attention one way or another. I mean, I also think there's a possibility for corporate sponsorship.
But the way forward is to chase the audience, not the money. Because if you have people who are talking about it, if you've got that attention, if it goes viral or even not quote unquote viral, but it's just getting a lot of attention, then it's much easier to present it to potential sponsors as opposed to going to sponsors first. With audience comes money, not the other way around. So good luck. I think it's cool.
I would love to know what happens. If you do move forward, let us know. We will do our best to spread the word as well. Listeners, if you've got an idea, got a crazy idea, or just an interesting idea, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Love to know what you're working on as well.
We will continue this ongoing dialogue with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects. So grateful for you today. Thank you for tuning in new episode tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
