This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Well listeners, I gotta tell you, I like doing the failure Friday segment, which of course comes out once a week on Fridays. But you know, it's even better than failure success. Like it's fun to look at the process of getting vulnerable and understanding the disasters and mistakes and all that kind of stuff. But of course we started science school to highlight success stories, okay? So today you're gonna hear a quick success story along with a question.
Sometimes success produces some questions and some obstacles to overcome. But it's a cool story from Chloe, a San Francisco based entrepreneur who's hit the jackpot with her e-commerce store. Now interesting point, Chloe doesn't want to say what she sells, okay? And this is sometimes common in e-commerce. People have found like a good market and it's working really well on Amazon or another platform or Shopify sometimes.
But they don't wanna say what it is because then they're worried about somebody kind of coming in to sell the same thing. There's a lot I could say on that topic, but I wanna say on topic because the point is she's making $10,000 a month at this point, which of course is wonderful, but she's feeling a bit overwhelmed with the rapid growth. And that's the issue here. That's what we're gonna focus on. It's a common feeling when a side hustle takes off.
So let's explore how she can handle this exciting yet daunting situation. I'm making $10,000 a month, but I feel overwhelmed. What do you do? Chloe's question coming right up. [Music]
Hi, I'm calling with a positive report and also an interesting dilemma.
After a few other projects that never got off the ground last year, I launched an e-commerce business that really taken off. Surprisingly, it's been more successful than I could have ever imagined. And now I'm earning around $10,000 a month. And while I'm thrilled, it's also a little overwhelming to handle this all on my own. It feels like I've jumped into the deep end and now I have to think about all sorts of things I never considered.
Like, should I try to scale it further? Should I quit my job? In short, help. How do I navigate this big success? And what are the next steps I need to consider?
[Music]
Let's all give a big round of applause to Chloe just for steering this side hustle into such a success. This is a huge milestone, $10,000 a month revenue. And it sounds like it's been going for a while. So not just one $10,000 a month, but hopefully some recurring income or at least a trend of $10,000 a month or higher. So that's fantastic.
And I also understand the overwhelm that comes with that. So I was trying to think about, what's the best way to answer this question? Should I give you some tips and such? And I just kind of kept going back to some other stories that we've heard that are so similar. And like, what do other people do in this situation?
And I thought of somebody in particular who had an e-commerce side hustle that took off. I think it was actually at even higher revenue level. And she was like, what do I do? I'm juggling the e-commerce business with the full-time job. And what she did, like eventually, I think she did quit the job, but that was later.
Like the main thing she did was she focused on organizing her business, focusing on creating processes. So just some like really clear systems and documentation, like trying to like work herself out of a job, the job of running her side hustle, in fact, instead of her day job at first. It's just so that she could handle the scale of operations better. And in doing so revenue continued to be steady, but she didn't have to spend as much time on it. And so then she was in a really interesting place of like, what do I do now?
And so I think just by focusing on that optimization is the first step, regardless of what happens later in terms of quitting the job, going all in or not. That can go one of two ways, especially with e-commerce, which is so dependent on algorithms and organic search results. So like SEO and then Amazon optimization and so on. I have seen businesses that get to this level, whether it's $10,000 a month or higher, and they just continue month after month, year after year. And then I've also seen where it goes for a while, then all of a sudden something happens, maybe a competitor enters or maybe something changes in the algorithm, and then they effectively lose like a big chunk of their business every month.
So both scenarios are possible. I wouldn't be honest if I didn't point that out, right? So you don't know for sure. That's why I think it's best to invest in the business, invest your time in optimizing so that whether you choose to quit your job, whether it grows further or scales further, whether it eventually kind of ramps down, you're making the right decision that allows for multiple outcomes. That's my two cents, but mostly, again, congratulations.
This is a good place to be in. I understand the challenge, but it's a good place to be in. So don't forget that. Chloe, good work, listeners, good work. I'm cheering you on.
I want you to have a story like Chloe's or in your own way, whatever it is, maybe more than $10,000 a month. Who knows? But of course, I'll keep bringing you new episodes every day, different questions, features, archive, highlights, all kinds of fun stuff. I'm excited to get on the road in a couple of weeks as well and talk with readers across North America. So I'll share more about that as it goes.
For now, my name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
