This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Welcome as well to a brand new month. I'm excited to kick off April, 2022 and welcome as well, finally, to Failure Friday.
This is our weekly segment, one of my favorite things to work on, a collection of short stories all about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. It's built on the principle that we can learn as much from failure or from things that go wrong as we can from success. And so it's been so fun to work on these stories, very transparent stories from our side hustlers that we featured in days, months, years past, usually it's months or years past. So these stories vary, but often they begin with an idea, an assumption, somebody thinks, oh, this will be a good idea. Maybe someone told me I should do this.
In fact, that's quite common. Somebody said, this is how you're supposed to grow your business. So I tried it and it didn't work or maybe something else unexpected happened along the way. And that's kind of what we've got here, the idea of following traditional advice, okay? So today's short story features Chris Spear from Frederick, Maryland.
He's actually a private chef who works throughout the Maryland, DC, Virginia area. We told the successful story of his culinary adventures on episode 1557. So in addition to being a private chef, he has a podcast, he does a whole bunch of stuff, lots of resources for anyone in that industry. And as you'll hear in this story, there's this notion of how when you're starting out, you're supposed to do whatever it takes to get in front of customers. Well, that's not always a good idea because sometimes you just end up giving things away with no return at all.
You end up giving away your energy and time, but also some real cost and resource. Okay, so let's hear the story from Chris. I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap up. Chris Spear. [Music]
Hi, this is Chris Spear and I'm the chef and founder of Perfect Little Bites, a personal chef business that services the Washington, DC area, as well as the host of the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast.
I was featured in episode 1557 of the Side Hustle School Podcast. There are many different types of personal chefs, but for my business, what I wanted to focus on was giving the customer a restaurant style experience and the comfort of their own home. For me, what that means is not only planning a personalized menu for each guest, but also bringing my own cooking equipment and dishware and serving it to people at their table just like they're in a restaurant. So the failure that I wanna talk about today is part of the marketing strategy I'd employed over the years. This is not a singular failure, but one that I unfortunately repeated a couple of times.
When you're starting out in business, I think a lot of people feel like they need to do whatever it takes to get in front of potential customers. For those in the food business, not only personal chefs, but also restaurants, food trucks, and caterers, that often means attending events and often giving out free food. On a number of occasions, I paid money to attend events where I had a table, got to set up a little display with all my info, and hand out free food. Unfortunately, having done this three or four times now, I don't think I've ever converted a single person into a paying customer this way. People love to show up to these events, shove a little bite of food in their mouth, and then move on to the next table.
You're lucky if they even take a business card. One time, an event organizer convinced me that it would be a great opportunity to do this at our local mall for a spring bazaar they were having. I think the table maybe cost me 100 bucks, which isn't a big deal, but giving out a couple hundred portions of free food, that's where it starts to add up. Another time, I was convinced to do a dinner on a boat. I was told it would be a great opportunity, and there would be so many people from the food media there, and I'd get lots of jobs out of it.
The night was a disaster. I had to drag all my stuff down this long pier, carry it up to the top floor of this boat, and then prepare food all on a grill there. As for the food media that showed up, they were a bunch of 20-something bloggers. They weren't really the food media I was expecting. They were people who just ate the food, took a bunch of photos, posted it on their Instagram stories, and that was it.
And as far as I know, I didn't get any gigs because of that. So what was the problem? Well, I spent a lot of time and effort positioning myself as the chef who provides an in-home dining experience. As I said, that includes personalized menus as well as table service, and usually a pretty entertaining show. I don't think there's a way to appropriately translate that same experience when you're standing behind a six-foot table in a shopping mall on a Sunday afternoon.
And of course, the caliber of food that I'm giving away for a little free bite is not gonna be remotely close to what I'll be serving at these dinners. So why did I think this would work? I think I just kept hearing that you needed to get in front of people and that events would be a fantastic way to do that. To be honest, I've talked to a lot of people on my podcast about this, and I don't think anyone I've ever spoken to has said that one of these events turned out to be really successful for them. I think this is something that a lot of people, especially in creative and service lines of work, need to think about.
I have a lot of friends who are DJs, photographers and such, and they all get hit up for free work. I know there's a lot of business gurus out there who preach doing things for free, but in my experience, if you've got the skills, you don't really need to do that. At this point now, what used to be my side hustle has been my primary source of income for five years. I've had plenty of customers without having to attend expos or work for free. I really hope this was helpful.
Thanks for letting me share my two cents. [Music]
Hey, Chris, thank you so much for sharing that story. Really appreciate it. Our theme of Failure Friday is never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. Fortunately, Chris recovered from his days of providing free food to Instagram influencers who never really did anything to him, and now he's doing really well.
So he has made it through the pandemic. He is providing his private chef services, but also, as I said in the beginning, lots of resources for others in that field. So I'll mention his podcast in a moment. Just wanted to pick up on this point here. Chris mentioned a lot of business gurus preach doing things for free, but that's not always a good idea.
Well, the thing here is it really depends on what kind of business you have, because there are cases, there are times when it is good to do things for free, especially when you're getting started, and that can help you grow your business, and we've seen that in lots of different stories. However, as I said, it really depends on the type of business. In this kind of business, Chris has real costs, and so it's not just a matter of providing something that takes a little bit of his time. There are real financial costs associated with it, but there was also a mismatch between giving things away at the mall or to the Instagram influencers. That's not really his target market, okay?
So two issues there. One, the type of business, and then two, if you are giving things away for free, you wanna make sure you're giving them to the right people in the right context, because really, context is everything. All right, listeners, check out Chris's website, perfectlittlebytes.com. Create a name for a business, perfectlittlebytes.com. He has also got a podcast, "Chefs Without Restaurants," because remember, you can hear that wherever you get your podcasts.
"Chefs Without Restaurants," he's also on YouTube, lots of places, so do check him out. Chris, thanks again. And listeners, if you've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Today's show notes, including links to everything mentioned, sidehustleschool.com/1917. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope you'll subscribe and come back for more, and I also hope you'll do something for yourself today. That's all for now. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
