This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Everything was going so well, and then I got a call from the police. That's the title of today's episode. Welcome to Sadosl School. My name's Chris Guillebeau. Today's segment is part of Failure Friday, a collection of short stories on mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure.
All of the things that go wrong. Just like our Throwback Thursday segment, you get to hear directly from a Sadosler who has struggled in some way. They're gonna tell you this short story of something that went very wrong. These stories will vary, but I don't know if we have ever had one in which the police were involved. Not sure.
In any case, today's short story features Dev Chakravarti from the UK. Dev had an idea to start a rental car company for blue electric vehicles. Very specific. Electric vehicles in a color blue, as you'll hear about, and this turned out to be much more difficult than he expected. But it does have a good ending.
I'll just tell you that much. It just takes a little while to get there because of all the challenges. So I really enjoyed working on this story. I think you'll like it too. Let's hand it over to Dev.
[Music]
Hi everyone. I am Dev Chakravarti, and I am the CEO of Deepflow Limited, which runs at Plug-in Hybrid Cars in London. My paid job is as an IT consultant, but in 2019, feeling disillusioned with the IT sector, I started a side hustle that would hopefully expand one day to become a full-time job. I'm no environmentalist, but I accept that we need to change our habits for the sake of the planet. And where there is a more sustainable alternative, we should at least consider it.
As a lifelong car enthusiast, I previously found environmentally friendly cars very uninspiring to petrol heads like me. However, I feel there is no genuine choice with most manufacturers offering electric or hybrid versions of their most popular models. A chance photo with my then car, Blue Jaguar, next to a blue Bentley, somehow gave me the idea for a fleet of environmentally friendly rental cars that are all blue. And thus the business was born. And yes, I have since swapped the Jag for a hybrid Volvo, which accelerates just as fast.
So what things have gone wrong? Obviously having a car rental company with a country in and out of lockdown for two years was a problem. But there are two incidents that really stand out. Someone who had rented one of my cars, a silver Volkswagen Golf plug-in hybrid, started extending the rental by a day at the time. He said he needed the car for a new job and is only getting paid daily, so can only afford to extend the car one day at a time.
It seemed a bit strange, but I let it continue. Then one afternoon, I got a phone call from the police saying they had pulled over the driver, they never did tell me why, and asked if the car was mine and was the driver insured. Despite my explaining the rental to their satisfaction, the car was impounded and I had to travel two hours to another city to go and pick it up. When I got the car back, it looked like the guy had been living in it. There was a layer of grime inside the car and discarded pizza boxes and drinks bottles.
It had to go for a major valet before it could go back on rent. This was nothing compared to what happened a few months later. I was startled to see two police officers on my doorstep. They gave a car registration and asked if it was mine. It was the same Golf as the previous incident.
They said it had been in an accident severe enough to deploy the airbags and wanted to check what had happened. I explained it as being rented and gave them the details of the renter so they could contact her. Then things got stranger. The renter emailed me to say the car had been stolen. Something seemed a bit suspicious, so my wife and I went to check.
We initially drove past the location given by the police and didn't see it. On the second pass, something caught the corner of my eye. The car was actually in a field, completely wrecked with police crime scene tape around it. It had been on fire and the interior was completely gutted. Then things got even stranger.
The insurance company took several days to send someone to pick up what was left of the car and when they turned up, the car had disappeared. We checked with the owners of the field, the police, the local council, and nobody had it. Thankfully, I eventually got the money from the insurance to replace the car. So what lessons are to be learned? This is a tricky one for me.
I'm not sure much could have been done to prevent either incident. So the lesson could be that you have to accept that some things are just out of your control and everyone who has been successful has had their setbacks. My business is still going and made a tiny profit last year despite the lockdowns. Or here's another possibility. My initial idea was a fleet of blue cars.
The Golf was silver. I chose it because it was on sale for a good price and at a local dealer instead of far away. Maybe the lesson is you should stick to your vision. All the cars in my fleet are now blue. [Music]
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
That's the theme of failure Friday, a very apt theme in this episode, if I say so myself. My favorite part here is the things got stranger. You know, Dev said things got stranger after the first impounding. And then after the second incident, then the car was incinerated, then it disappears. It just kept getting stranger and stranger and stranger.
But thankfully Dev has learned some lessons here and he's still going strong. You can get a blue electric rental car using the get around platform the next time you're in London. Also check out Dev's website at dukeflow.com or follow him on Instagram at dukeflow_cars. Dukeflow.com, dukeflow_cars. Dev, thank you so much for sharing that story.
As I said, I enjoyed working on it. I know our listeners are going to appreciate it too. And listeners, if you have a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thanks for tuning in today. Take care of yourself out there.
Hope you'll subscribe, follow, come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From The Onward Project.
