This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Happy Black Friday! Guess what? I got nothing for sale for you. True story. I do not have a Black Friday sale. If you are shopping today, I'll be going to get some good deals. If you are just
trying to escape from all that, well, good news. As I said, nothing for sale. But I do have a new episode for you. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. And today our episode is
within the segment known as Failure Friday. It is a collection of short stories about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. Just like our Throwback Thursday segment, you can hear directly from a side hustler who has struggled to get something off the ground. We've had a range of these stories. All kinds of, as I said, mistakes, missteps, disasters, some really epic stories. Also just some things where you're like, oh,
I can totally see how, you know, that could happen. Or I could make that mistake. Or even if it wasn't a mistake, I would really not want to be in that situation. But the whole point of the story is to like go to that moment. And then also like what did they learn? How did they come out of
it? Right? So I enjoy working on these stories and bringing them to you every week. So without further ado, today's short story features David from Phoenix, Arizona. He's going to tell us the story of borrowing money for an investment. Doesn't that sound like the lead off to a great success
story? Well, not really. And not just because it's failure Friday. But honestly, if I said, how do you feel about borrowing money for an investment? You might think this is not going to end well. And you might be right, but let's hear the story from David.
Hey, this is David from Phoenix, Arizona. I've been following for a few years and wanted to share a timely story with you. So here we go. If you've ever heard don't borrow money from a friend, well, I'm here to tell you that it's terrible advice. Just kidding. It's perfectly reasonable
advice that I ignored. First, let's go back to the spring of 2021. A year after I started working remotely, my company was thinking about bringing people back to the office. And I was thinking about making a change. Some of my investments had performed very well in 2020. And I wanted to double
down. A wealthy friend offered to loan me some money to leverage my investment in a crypto project. At first I said no, but I kept thinking about it. Then I ran the numbers and thought, okay, well, the worst that can happen is that the price doesn't appreciate a lot. But the best case scenario is that it doubles or triples. And I can capture all those gains before going out on my own.
Look, I know how it sounds now, but I was just so used to seeing prices go higher that I didn't consider the obvious that prices can drop too. And of course, that's what happened. My original investment declined and my leveraged investment crashed. I didn't lose all the money, but I definitely didn't make anything. I had to sheepishly explain to my friend that I need more time to pay back the loan. But the worst part was that he also invested more of his own money based on my
experience. And I know that isn't my responsibility, and he was clear about that too, but I still feel bad, you know? So the obvious lesson, don't borrow money from your friends, especially for an investment that feels like a sure thing. Now I'm back to working on a side project that has nothing to do with cryptocurrency or meme stocks, so hopefully I'll be able to report in with a more positive story on it soon. David, thank you so much for sharing that story. I really appreciate
your honesty. I feel like a lot of people have had this problem or some variation of it, but most people don't want to share the story. So it honestly does help me and so many listeners, I'm sure, you know, just don't borrow money from your friends. But also, if you do, you can recover, you know, life goes on. There's all kinds of mistakes you can make. In fact, the theme of
the series when I first started thinking about designing it, I was like, what should we call it? Well, we're going to call it failure Friday, but the tagline is going to be never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. So David in this story experienced a single defeat. It is not a final defeat. He's going to go on live to fight another day. And I hope you will too, listeners. If nothing
else, you got to make it through Black Friday. And all those emails you're getting about various sales. Cyber Monday, more around the corner, I'm sure. Hang in there, keep your head held high. And of course, subscribe, follow new episode every day. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host
of Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
