This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, thanks for tuning in today. Today's episode is part of a new feature we've been doing called Your First Thousand Dollars. We've actually been doing it for almost six months now.
And as you might guess, it's all about how someone made their first thousand dollars. I think it's really insightful to break down this entry point to perhaps eventually going on to make $100,000 or more. But that's a much longer story. How does someone actually get started? And once you begin to earn real money, the steps required to go to the next level, whether it's a thousand to $2,000 or 5,000 or 10,000, whatever it is, those steps are often easier than that first real paycheck.
So that's what we're doing here. With that in mind, today's feature comes from Jennifer Sobel. We first featured her on episode 1704, the Six Figure Belly Dancing course. Six Figure Belly Dancing, that's right. It's pretty much exactly like it sounds.
She has done very well with this online course, a series of them now, if I'm not mistaken. So obviously that's become a huge success, but what about her first thousand dollars? How did she make it happen? What did it feel like? And what did she learn?
She's got several insights for us here. So let's hear it from Jennifer. I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap up. [Music]
Hello, hello, this is Jennifer Sobel, the creator of the Belly Dance Solution and Feminine Fire. And I was on Side Hustle School, episode 1704.
And today I wanna share with you the story of how I made my first thousand dollars in my business. I want to tell you a little bit about the struggles that I had, how good it felt to win, finally, and also some lessons that I learned along the way that will hopefully help you as well. So when I was thinking about this, I thought, okay, actually the first thousand dollars that I made in my business was doing live performances and parties. And I remember the first time I got paid doing what I absolutely loved. It was a private event and I had the best time.
And afterwards the woman paid me and I really sincerely had this moment where I was like, oh my God, I am getting paid to do this. I just had a blast and I'll never forget that moment. So that was actually the first money that I made in my business. But what I really wanted to do was to turn this passion and this joy into earning money online so that I could really leverage my time and I could literally earn money while I was sleeping. So obviously it took me some time to do that, but the first thousand dollars that I made in my business happened when I did a three-day Facebook Ads launch.
Now I had launched my funnel, my program, before about a couple months earlier and there was a lot wrong with it. When I analyzed it, the price points were off. I really had to change things in the design, in the copy. And so when I went to refurbish my sales page and it felt good, it felt solid enough to really put some ad spend behind it. And one of the biggest mistakes that I made in the past and what I see so many people who advertise doing is they don't give Facebook or whatever platform it is enough money to really get the data and to really give it enough juice to see what is going to work.
And it was so scary for me, but I committed to doing a three-day initial launch for a thousand dollars ad spend, which really felt like a ton of money to me. And I had so much anxiety during that time, like was I just gonna lose all that money? What was gonna happen? But one thing that's really important to know is that when you spend money initially on advertising with a new product, a new launch, you really need to see that as you're paying for data. 'Cause you really need to know how is my sales page doing?
How is it converting? How are my audiences? How are my ad creatives resonating with people? And if you don't give it enough money, you don't really give it enough chance. And then you wind up assuming that the idea that your product isn't good.
And that's not accurate and it's not fair and it'll give you a false impression. So I did that and I definitely didn't lose money. I made a little bit of money, but within that first month, I would say, I hit my first thousand dollars. And a lot of it, a lot of how that happened was just really committing to what I was doing and putting the money behind it initially so I could get the data that I needed. So that's a really important lesson.
And throughout the next six months, 12 months, I had some good days, I had some average days, but overall it led to me earning six figures in my business that year. And so I just want to give you inspiration, give you hope that if you believe in your product, you need to give it the energy, the confidence, the faith and the commitment to do whatever it takes to get it right. And that can involve tweaking it a number of times. Whatever it takes, you can do it. It's just a formula.
Anybody who's made money online, they do certain things really well. You have to have your copy dialed in, you have to have your sales page, your advertising, but these are just elements of the formula. And just step by step, little bit by little bit, which is what I did, you can do it. Don't ever give up on your dream on what you want to bring into the world. And that's my message for you today.
I hope that was helpful. I hope it inspires you to keep going no matter where you're at. Awesome, thanks so much to Jennifer for telling us about her first $1,000, which as you heard led to six figures in the first year. Hope you found it encouraging. I love what she says about giving it the energy, the confidence, the faith, and sometimes even the investing in ads.
Now, as we have seen multiple times here on the podcast, you got to be careful with that. You want to make sure you kind of have some things lined up before you go and spend a bunch of money on ads because it can be a great way to waste a lot of money. But once you have that sales page that offer all these elements that have been developed, then indeed you can get some great data by spending a pretty small amount of money. So I totally believe in committing fully. I just want to encourage you to go carefully when it comes to actually spending money on ads.
But anyway, thanks so much, Jennifer. Listeners, check out jennifersobolt.com, S-O-B-E-L jennifersobolt.com. Learn about belly dancing. Learn about feminine fire, all kinds of topics there. If you've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions.
Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1983. That is all for today. I hope you'll subscribe. Come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
