This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Side Hustle School listeners, friends, community. Welcome, my name's Chris Guillebeau. This is our weekly segment known as Failure Friday. One of my favorite things to work on every week. It's because I believe we can learn as much from failure as we can from success, if not in fact more.
So in this segment, we have a collection of short stories about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course failure, all those things that are not super amazing, at least not at first. And so you get to hear directly from a side hustler who struggled to get something off the ground or otherwise encountered a pretty significant difficulty along the way. These stories are usually pretty candid and honest, and often there's something we can take away from them. And if it's not a direct practical tip, sometimes it's just the sense of belonging or the sense of feeling inspired and motivated that things can go wrong. If there's something that hasn't gone super well in your life or in your side hustler business, just knowing that there's a way out, like there's a way to get through this, you can get through something that's difficult and go on to have much more success.
So without further ado, today's short story features Lou Haverty from Philadelphia. And as you're gonna hear, Lou had learned how to set up and operate affiliate websites. He had done this several times. He'd got to where they earned up to $2,500 a month. He then often sold them for a good profit.
But after he had the unfortunate experience of being hit by a car, the public knowledge of his business was used against him in the settlement process. So it's bad enough to be hit by a car, but then, well, things got worse. So let's hear the story in his words. I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap up. [Music]
Hi, my name is Lou Haverty.
I'm the founder of Enhanced Leisure, which is an e-commerce business that sells home leisure products. I originally started dabbling in side hustles about seven or eight years ago when I taught myself how to build and sell affiliate websites. Learning how to be successful with affiliate sites required making many mistakes and learning from each of those mistakes along the way. In 2017, I finally started having some success with the affiliate sites. Sold a few sites, and a new site I had started from scratch was starting to build momentum.
A big part of that momentum was learning how to build links, which required me to market my website using my real name. In 2018, I was hit by a car crossing the street. The accident and its aftermath turned my side hustle and everything around me completely upside down. The value of my website steadily deteriorated because I was no longer able to publish articles as frequently. In fact, I was barely able to keep track of much on the website at all.
My website also became an albatross around my neck. The previous link building that I did for my website was used against me when I tried to recover medical expenses that I incurred after the accident. Instead of being an asset like it would be in a normal world, my website became a convenient diversion used to distract the focus away from my very real and significant injuries. Rather than being looked at as an accomplishment to be proud of, my website made me the target of suspicion even though I learned the skills and built the website before the accident. Prior to the accident, my website was earning close to 2,500 a month.
By the time I was able to sell my website, the earnings were closer to the 450 a month range. During that time period, affiliate websites could be sold for a multiple of 28 to 33 times monthly earnings. So there's no way to know exactly how much I could have sold my website for prior to the accident, but based on the estimates of the earnings multiples, it's possible my site could have been worth 70 to 80,000. The entire situation was a nightmare to live through and I'm still in the process of digging myself out of it. The accident forced me to start all over again, but I decided to do so in a different direction.
I recently started an e-commerce business on the Shopify platform based on home leisure products. I can use the same skills I learned from the affiliate sites, but I can also drive paid traffic to the store, which diversifies my traffic and reduces being 100% reliant on organic SEO traffic. The nightmare I lived through taught me the importance of letting go of the things that are out of your control. Rather than focus on what my old website could have been, I decided to focus on a new business model altogether. I'm sure I will make plenty of mistakes as I go down the e-commerce path, but I'm looking forward to those mistakes because they will make my business better in the long run.
I know it will take a lot of work and effort, but I hope to be able to tell you how successful my store is in future months. Good luck to everyone out there with your own side hustles and thanks for listening to my failure story. [Music]
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That is the theme of Failure Friday. Lose advice for you today.
Let go of things outside your control. Man, I have been there so many times. That is advice that I give myself because I keep forgetting it. So I try to keep that front of mind whenever I'm encountering difficulties of whatever kinds. And I also just respect the positivity in the midst of difficult circumstances that comes through in Lou's story.
I don't think we've ever had a story of someone being hit by a car and then things got worse after that. So I too hope to feature Lou's future success story. Until then, check out his current website, enhancedleisure.com, enhancedleisure.com. We'll link it up on the notes page. If you've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions.
Thank you so much for tuning in today. Take care of yourself out there. I hope you'll come back again tomorrow for a new episode. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
