This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Welcome to Side Hustle School. Welcome as well to our weekly segment known as Failure Friday. It's all about what can we learn from something that doesn't go well. In fact, it's usually something that goes very poorly, a mistake, a misstep, a disaster, and of course, failure. So just like our Throwback Thursday segment, you get to hear directly from a side hustler or entrepreneur, small business owner, somebody out there who has struggled to get something off the ground.
Or in some cases, their business is going along just fine and it's already off the ground, but then it comes crashing into the ground or maybe it's not quite that bad. But the point is they encounter some significant obstacle along the way. How do they respond, not just to the immediate situation, but usually what is the long-term lesson? What do they take away from that experience? I know that experience produces confidence, even when the experience is a negative one.
So I like to just kind of share these stories as a lesson for all of us. And without further ado, today's short story features Thomas from Maryland. He started a membership site, I think it was started during the pandemic, not totally sure on that point, but his membership site is going along really well. But unfortunately, he took his eyes off the ball. That sounds like a baseball pun.
I don't think it actually has anything to do with baseball, but just seemed to make sense because he stopped paying attention. So let's hear more from him. I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap-up. [Music]
Hey there, for the past few years, I've worked remotely for a company, but have also been trying to branch out on my own. A membership site that I started seemed to have the most potential.
I opened the site for 100 initial members and the signups went pretty quickly. Then I closed it down for a while, which seemed to help increase the perception of scarcity every time I opened it back up again. For our one-year anniversary, I held a big sale and was floored by the response. I thought I'd unlocked the secret. People like sales, at least as long as they don't happen too often.
And the deadline produces built-in urgency. I could do no wrong, or so I believed back then. But by the time our second year anniversary rolled around, I wasn't paying as much attention to the site. It was still bringing in a lot of money. I just wasn't as excited about it.
I'd noticed that more people were canceling, but I just assumed that was the normal ebb and flow of subscription sites. The second anniversary sale, however, proved otherwise. It was an epic fail, bringing in less than half the number of signups that the one-year sale did, and also generating some pretty negative feedback from existing members who felt like it was just a cash grab. Long story short, I'd been overconfident. I didn't listen to what my members were saying, and instead of growing, my five-figure membership site declined in monthly revenue to high four figures, which is still great, of course, but would have been much better to see the trend go the other way.
I spent the rest of the month talking to members, trying to regroup, and so now we're coming up on our third-year anniversary, and I'm curious to see the results of this next sale. Either way, though, I've promised myself not to get too attached to the outcome. Perhaps that's another lesson I've learned. [Music]
Thanks so much for sharing that story. I can definitely relate to that.
I've had some membership sites over the years, and for me personally, I tend to be really excited about starting something, and a little bit less excited about maintaining it. So the lesson I've taken away from that for myself is I need to focus more on starting projects, starting projects that don't necessarily require a lot of long-term maintenance from me, just to kind of play to my strengths. But of course, there's more than one way to do it. If you have that motivation to build something over time, continue devoting your energy and attention to it, and often a membership site is a wonderful model for that. So never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
That is our theme of Failure Friday. Thanks again to Thomas for sharing this story. Thank you listeners for tuning in. I hope you'll subscribe, follow, come back tomorrow. We've got a new episode every single day.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
