This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello and welcome. This is Chris Guillebeau, your host of Side Hustle School here with you episode 2,344 in the theme of Failure Friday. Failure Friday, our weekly segment, a collection of short stories about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course failure, all of the things that go wrong. So basically the opposite of a case study of success, more like a story of, well, you know what that is, the opposite of success. And just like our Throwback Thursday segment, you get to hear directly from a side hustler who has struggled to get something off the ground, something just doesn't work at all, or maybe it works for a little while and it stops working, maybe some disaster comes along.
In this case, it just did not work at all. I mean, that's probably the best introduction I could put on it. This short story features Billy from Denver. He is a serial and adventurous side hustler who isn't afraid to try different ideas. So I really respect that.
This particular idea that you're gonna hear about, however, just didn't work and maybe it wasn't the best idea, but let's let him tell the story. Fake wedding guest business fizzles out. [Music]
It all started with a brilliant idea of a side hustle. I thought, what if I could make a living by attending weddings as a professional guest? I could help brides, I could help grooms fill seats, I could add some extra pizzazz to their day, make some extra cash on the side too.
So I set out to become the world's first wedding guest extraordinaire. I carefully crafted my online persona and I launched a website promoting my unique services with a wardrobe full of fancy suits and a collection of colorful ties. I was ready, I was ready, man, to just set the wedding world on fire with my sparkling personality and my dance moves. They're all right. I envisioned myself as the life of the party and, you know, just sitting there, making money, bringing joy and laughter to newlyweds across the country.
But as it turned out, (sighs) my entrepreneurial dreams were more of a, let's just say a pipe dream than a profitable reality. It seemed that for some reason couples weren't exactly lining up to pay for a stranger to attend their wedding. My first and only gig for a couple names, Sarah and Mark. They had a last minute cancellation and decided to give my services a shot. Thank you so much.
Excited to finally put my skills to the test, I arrived to the wedding with a beaming smile and an arsenal of small talk topics. Yeah, I practiced them. However, things took a turn for the worse when I accidentally spilled red wine on the mother of the bride's pristine dress. Mortified, I tried to salvage the situation by, you know, dabbling in some lighthearted conversation, only to find out that I had mixed up the bride and the groom's names. Yeah.
I spent the rest of the evening avoiding eye contact and eating dry wedding cake in the corner. [Laughter] As the day drew to a close, I realized that my dreams of becoming a sought-after wedding guest were crumbling as fast as the cake. My side hustle was turning into more of a cautionary tale than a lucrative business endeavor. So, after that initial experience, my inbox was dry as the Sahara. It seemed that no one really wanted to pay for a fake friend to attend their special day.
Who would have thought? In hindsight, I can't help but laugh at my short-lived career as a wedding guest extraordinaire. Though it was a failure, it taught me the importance of knowing my audience and understanding the market before diving headfirst into a new venture. I may have had to hang up my dancing shoes and retire from the world of professional wedding attendants, but the experience left me with a valuable lesson. And man, I got some stories.
So, you know, who knows? Maybe one day, I'll find a side hustle that plays to my strengths and doesn't involve spilling wine and staining the dress of the mother of the bride. So, in the meantime, I'll continue to search for the perfect project, knowing that sometimes, you know, the most memorable experiences come from our most spectacular failures. [Music]
Hey, Billy, thanks for sharing this story. And listeners, remember, never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
Billy is a serial side hustler. He's gonna try something else next. As I said, I respect both the courage to try different ideas as well as the willingness to, you know, then share transparently about what happened, and also just the ability to get back up and try something else. So, Billy, we're cheering you on. Hang in there, man.
And listeners, if you have a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. New episode every day. Got a couple of listener questions coming your way tomorrow. A first $1,000 story next week. And of course, just so much more.
I so enjoy making this program for you. It's all completely free. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
