This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, thanks for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Sidle School," and specifically today is our weekly segment known as "Failure Friday." "Failure Friday," our featured case study describes her story as being super embarrassing looking back. But you know what? Super embarrassing stories are good stories.
And also, if we don't have these embarrassing moments or if we don't learn something from experiences that we're never going to grow, we're never gonna have the successes that we want to have without going through these, what I call, mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. So that's why I enjoy working on this segment, and I'm so grateful to everybody who has contributed a story. So without further ado, or without much further ado, just a little bit of ado, today's short story features Kayla Hutchinson from Atlanta. In addition to her full-time day job, she's the owner of a wholesale and retail stationary brand called Lucky Dog Design. Now, last year she decided to create a new revenue stream.
Sounds good, right? We talk about that all the time. And she wanted to be careful to not cannibalize her existing business. She also did a lot of research, as she's gonna describe here. But of course, this segment is not devoted to success stories but to things that go wrong.
So let me step out of the way. We're gonna hand the mic to Kayla, and I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap-up. [Music]
I'm Kayla Hutchinson, and myself and my pup Odin run my stationary shop called Lucky Dog Design Co. I've had my shop for over five years and have always run it alongside my full-time corporate job. I started making cards by scratch at the age of two, and I haven't stopped since.
About seven years ago, I turned to digital design for my cards, then I realized I wanted to share them with the world. Alas, onto my costly mistake. Last year, I decided I was going to start selling on Amazon. Adding another revenue stream could help diversify my income. However, I knew that my $5.50 cards wouldn't turn any profits selling individually, and I didn't want to spoil my brand reputation with my current customers and stockists across the US and Canada.
So I decided to sell greeting card packs of 12 with new designs, different materials, and a different brand name, doing business as essentially. So lovely little letters was born. And I got to work. I did my research, looked into how to get into Amazon, what the costs were, how to get into Amazon Prime with them fulfilling everything. I got the cost of them handling that, what the shipping costs would be, all of the nitty gritty details that I could find.
I then researched a print shop that can maintain my large print orders and deliver timely, all while still keeping my costs down. I also made sure I knew what my pricing would have to be and making sure it was comparable to others on Amazon. I was feeling pretty good at this point. I was sticking to the rule of thirds idea that you take a third of the revenue, Amazon takes a third and the cost to produce is another third. Once I found this was a profitable option, I moved on to design and setting up my account.
I designed four different packs, birthday, holiday, Christmas, and a miscellaneous of different types of cards. I started the process of getting my account up and running, but it took almost three months because my identity documents didn't match up to their standards. So if anyone's having this issue, it was a long, ridiculous journey that resulted in my only having to convert my JPEG to PDF. So hopefully that helps someone who may be having that issue as well. In the meantime, I printed thousands of cards and ordered thousands of envelopes and started getting them all prepped and ready to be shipped off, including having all of those marketing materials ready with them.
That way, once I was in Amazon, I could ship, list, and move on from there. This is super embarrassing looking back and hell very much in the moment too. Once I got into Amazon, set up my account, billing, shipping address, everything, I made the listing. Just one of them to start. The numbers I received and calculated for Fulfilled by Amazon were wildly different from what I was given once the listing was created.
For a $12 pack of 12 cards, Amazon took almost $8 of it. Not to mention you pay $40 per month plus for the shipping to get them to an Amazon warehouse and for any customer chat logs that come in about your products. Once seeing how different the calculations and reality were, I dug into even more research. Amazon makes more money on seller fees than they do their AWS, which is what powers most of the internet, including my website, Mind Blown. I canceled my account and I'm now sitting on thousands of cards, not in my official brand name, but at least I didn't sell them on Amazon to be giving them all of the profit.
A costly mistake of more than $3,000. Moral of the story is I still would go back and do the same thing if given a second chance or a similar situation. It also gave me a reason to think creatively about how to sell these cards that I'm now sitting on. Failure is a part of business and I'm a firm believer that it takes failure and just putting yourself out there to find success. However, I learned a lot from this big mistake and I'm better armed for my next jump into the abyss.
[Music]
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That's our theme of this segment. Amazon really does not work for everyone. Maybe a lesson here is buy Amazon stock because they're taking over the world, but be careful about giving them all your money in seller fees. So I really appreciate this perspective.
Oh, also convert your JPEGs to PDFs. A weird, but no doubt helpful lesson for someone out there who is navigating this process. And in conclusion, I love what Kayla says about going back and doing the same thing. I totally understand that. You know, you make the best decisions with the information you have.
And if it ends up being the wrong decision later, it's not that you made the wrong decision at the time. I mean, you did the best you could with what you knew. So now you've acquired this knowledge, you've had this experience, your next attempt is most likely going to be better. Or at least if you have a problem the next time, it's going to be a different problem. Thanks so much to Kayla for sharing this transparent and truthful story.
Check out her website, lucky dog design.co, or follow her on Instagram, lucky dog mail club. She's got some really cool greeting cards. They're also sold in many retail shops. My favorite is a housewarming card that says, wishing you nothing but good in your new hood. She's got lots of clever designs and phrases.
Anyway, if you have a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thanks for tuning in today. I hope you'll subscribe, follow, come back for more. This is Chris Guillebeau, your host of "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
