This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Welcome listeners, this is Chris Guillebeau, your host of Side Hustle School. Today is our weekly segment known as Failure Friday. Failure Friday, a collection of short stories about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. You get to hear directly from a side hustler or small business owner who has struggled to get something off the ground or otherwise encountered the situation that I call assumption meets reality. And they're going to tell you this story in their own words of something that went very wrong. Today's short story features
Leanne Antonio, owner of Bad Day Box. Bad Day Box features snail mail self care. I love that tag line snail mail self care. She's gonna explain more about what that is in her story. But as she prepared to launch, Leanne invested a ton of time and drew on 15 years of marketing experience.
Just one problem, as you'll hear she planned to launch on Kickstarter and the platform had a different idea. Alright, let's hand it over to Leanne for the full story. Hey, everyone, I'm Leanne Antonio and the founder of Bad Day Box, which is a modern care package you can send to a friend. Self care is personal and can come in many forms. When people are going through hard times, they might find comfort in staying at home and focusing on wellness, or being distracted by traveling, getting outside or trying something new. Bad Day Box brings personally curated gifts
featuring handmade, small batch, women owned, BIPOC owned, LGBTQI owned, eco friendly and charitable products. The road that led me to Bad Day Box stemmed from heartbreak. When life didn't go as planned a couple years ago, I channeled my bad days into finding healthy ways to heal. I was fortunate to have so many people show up for me. At a time when there was definitely no card for this. They found ways to express love and remind me to eat, sleep and be kind to myself.
All of this would later lead to my inspiration for Bad Day Box. I looked around and saw friends going through health issues, grieving deaths, struggling with heartbreak. What really resonated in the world surrounding me is that there is no shortage of bad days that need a little brightening. There are times when we don't know what to say, but we still want to show that we care. The traditional flowers, plants or edible arrangements can feel generic and in some ways not inclusive. I identified a need in the market to explore. I soft launched my business pre-pandemic
in late 2019 with intentions of launching a Kickstarter in March 2020 on International Women's Day. What followed no one could anticipate. The pandemic brought a lot of unexpected bad days for so many of us. It didn't feel like a good time to ask for money, so I hit pause. Fast forward to 2021. I gave it another go with the same intent to capitalize on International
Women's Day. I spent an incredible amount of time creating branded assets, taking many days off from my day job to prepare. This was a combination of all my marketing experience, but now the stage was set for me. My creativity was on fire and I was so eager to share this campaign with everyone. I submitted my project to Kickstarter a week ahead of my launch date to review.
In less than 48 hours before my launch date, Kickstarter rejected my project because my project included a resale component. I read the email over and over again and this was their explanation. Curating from various small businesses is still considered resale, which is prohibited under our rules. For example, offering a basket of homemade pastries is perfectly okay, but a basket of muffins from a grocery store is not. And while this rational logical statement is true, I stand firm these boxes wouldn't exist without me coming up with a theme, selecting products and naming them. They told me they would reconsider the project if the
incentives were something else. I didn't want to rob myself of all the hard work only to modify my plan for a platform that wasn't guaranteed to approve me. I had to act fast if I still wanted to launch on International Women's Day. I could cut out a platform completely and host all on my website. The audience would be limited and it would take a lot more time to set up. I worked
in marketing for over 15 years. I could probably figure it out, but this would probably mean I couldn't launch on International Women's Day. I did not want to pause this campaign yet again because I failed to read the fine print. I remembered a Facebook group I belong to that is dedicated to women in e-commerce. I entered crowdfunding in the search bar and iFundWomen came up. I went immediately to their website and wondered if I could submit everything I already
created and guess what? I could and I did. They approved it overnight and I was elated and relieved and ready to raise money. And that is how I pulled off a launch within 24 hours of International Women's Day. The hindsight is always after the fact. Could I have prevented
this crazy turn of events? A hundred percent, but as entrepreneurs we are often wearing all of the hats. We are moving fast and oftentimes juggling a whole other full-time job. And while this could have been a huge fail, in a lot of ways the stars really align for me. The iFundWomen community is much smaller and invested personally in the success of women-owned business. They provided
me with guidance throughout the entire campaign, included bad day bucks in a ton of promotion, and even gifted me a grant for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. All things I would have never received with Kickstarter. So while this was a cautionary tale, it allowed me to become part of a great community who has continued to help my business succeed. For anyone who is looking to crowdfund, I recommend finding a tribe, even if you were just to fly on a wall in a Facebook group. Chances are you'll find someone who successfully crowdfunded, someone who learned a lot of lessons along the way, and someone who will validate everything you're feeling. Thanks to Side Hustle School for featuring me. It's so important for entrepreneurs
to share the reality of our hard lessons, but also celebrate our wins. I'm looking forward to more business growth and hearing about your Side Hustle dreams and journeys. Thank you. Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. As you just heard, Leanne was able to turn this around, have a big success come out of that initial failure. So listeners, I encourage you,
first of all, check out Bad Day Box. So Leanne's business is baddaybox.co. Also Bad Day Box on Facebook, Bad Day Box CO on Instagram, but also maybe check out ifundwomen.com. This platform that Leanne worked with as she transitioned from her initial goal to something that ended up being, as I said, much better. So thanks again, Leanne, for sharing that story.
Listeners, if you've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Today's notes, including links to everything mentioned and more, are at sidehustleschool.com/2050. I hope you'll join me again tomorrow. A new episode coming out every day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
From the Onward Project.
