This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hello, hello, what's up and welcome back. My name is Chris Guillebeau, here with you on Side Hustle School. Today's story is all about a game show host. Well, he's actually a TV producer for his day job, but heavily involved in producing live comedy game shows in Los Angeles. He gets this idea to create Game Night in a can.
I'll tell you a bit about what that entails. And he used Kickstarter to fund the project. Yesterday, we featured another crowdfunding platform, High Shell. I know with Kickstarter, most people are familiar with that. I think sometimes people say, well, that's great, but what if I can't do that?
Like, I don't know a lot of people to promote my Kickstarter. The key point in this story, and I'll highlight it as we go along, is that he raised about $20,000 with his Kickstarter. Within the product itself did something like $75,000 in additional sales throughout the rest of the year. So Kickstarter really was just a bump in this case, and that's what it can be great for. But you definitely don't have to depend on it, and there's lots of other ways you can do it if you're trying to create a physical product.
Also in this story, a smart marketing idea that I've never heard of before. I've seen a lot of marketing approaches, but this was a pretty creative thing he did for his website, which is not that complicated, like lots of people could do this. And it plays on the idea of reality TV. But not to get too far ahead of things, I'll tell you first about this person, how he got this idea, how he set about creating this product, getting it manufactured, and then how he got it out to the world, along with a significant challenge he experienced, and then, of course, how he overcame that challenge. Today's story, "Game Night in a Can," is coming up right after this.
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The stage is usually where the best ideas of speakers and comedians reach their final destination. By that point, they've been edited and reworked so they're ready for the public to experience. It's rarely the place where new ideas are formed, unless that is your Jason Lautenschlager. Around his day job as a director of development and TV production, Jason and his wife spend their time running live comedy game shows for the people of Los Angeles. And on one particularly fateful night playing the games that they'd invented, Jason sensed an electricity and energy from the crowd that he wanted to bottle up.
He wanted to share this feeling with people all over America, maybe elsewhere, and allowed them, too, the chance to feel what the crowd felt that night. Although they couldn't actually bottle the energy, tried a couple things, gave up on that approach, Jason came up with the next best thing. He thought of creating a can, like a physical can that contained all of the improvised games and their variations so that people could play along at home. They decided to go with a pretty self-explanatory name. They called it Game Night in a Can.
The obvious choice is often the best one, and Jason set about turning this idea into a side hustle reality. The first step he took was to get the project funded on Kickstarter, or at least get it started. He knew that by putting his idea there before he'd invested much money would help him test how the product would be received by people and potentially tap into an existing market of folks to fund games on Kickstarter. By reaching out to people through social media and email, Jason was able to raise $22,000 for Game Night in a Can. He even managed to get mentioned by Chris Hardwick on the popular Nerdist podcast.
Jason believed he had a real viable product to work with, and using his frugal mentality, he'd now be able to use that sum of money to take the product a long way without having to dip into his own savings account. However, in order to bring the can to life, he needed to find a manufacturer who would be willing to create the game. And this part was not easy. It was actually much harder than he expected. He found a list of 30 toy manufacturers and pitched all of them.
Guess what? 29 of them turned him down. Fortunately, he had made that 30th pitch, and that company was willing to work with him on a small order of 1,500 units. Remember, a lot of times these manufacturers work in much larger print runs, especially for custom production like this. So that's why I suspect it was a challenge, but fortunately he overcame.
The next few months, there was a lot of back and forth between Jason and that manufacturer to get the product just right. Jason had complete control over how that product would be developed, but he was also willing to listen to guidance from professionals to help him find the right look and feel for the game. Nevertheless, despite all the conversations and all the back and forth, when the first order of games arrived, disaster had nearly struck. Because after spending $8,500 to order them, he found the spinners under the lid just didn't work. Jason's free evenings over the next several weeks were completely taken up, as he sat for countless hours using a knife, sandpaper, and oil, applying his own handcrafted touch to make each individual spinner work.
Jason is a pretty positive guy. He said this was meditative. With the spinners in working order, it was time to take the product to the world. After creating an affordable website using the platform Wix, Jason, working together with his wife on this part, had the genius idea to build the website around videos of people playing the game. So they hired a few friends paying them 50 bucks and free food to play along and get recorded.
And now when you visit the site, you can see people experience the game before you choose to make a purchase. I thought this was really cool. You should go and check it out just to see how they did it. After production, the main expenses for Game Night in a Can have come through getting a trademark in LLC for the product, which costs around $600, as well as investing in website hosting and some advertising on Amazon and Facebook. He also took some of the money to invest in going to trade fairs and industry events.
Jason was skeptical about this at first, but he says it turned out to be worth it, especially in an industry that was totally new to him. Not counting the $22,000 that they raised, Game Night in a Can has made over $50,000 in its first year with online sales and $25,000 through retail stores. Jason feels they've been able to achieve this by testing their product at multiple stages to make sure they had a viable idea before they thought about going to market. Going forward and looking to the holiday season, Jason has opted to hire a PR firm to help with distribution, as well as thinking about expanding the games they have on offer in addition to that flagship can. Sounds like he's having as much fun growing it as his fans are playing it.
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Well, like I said, I thought that idea of having videos on their website, showing people actually playing the game is really smart, especially for something like a board game or a family game or something you kind of sit around and play this physical product. 'Cause I imagine if most people heard about it, they would say, oh, it's interesting, but like, what does it look like? And it's important to kind of capture the energy and the cooperation or the competition or maybe both. So being able to do that visually seems really compelling, at least from the outside. Also, like I said, if you're trying to figure out what to name your product or your service, sometimes the most obvious choice is the best choice.
My new book is called "Side Hustle", and that's probably the most literal title I've had for any one of my five books. I did a radio interview the other day and the host was asking me, so what's your new book "Side Hustle" about? And, you know, I almost started to go down this thread. I was like, well, it's about French philosophy. And it's kind of rooted in this modernist idea of how humankind has evolved, you know, especially in the 21st century, political, social, economic structure.
And I thought that was pretty good, but I don't think the host got the joke 'cause he's just kind of pausing. So finally, I was like, oh, it's also about how to turn an idea into income in 27 days. It's a very step-by-step practical plan to start your "Side Hustle" without quitting your day job. And he's like, oh, that makes sense, that sounds good. So I'll continue to play around with that when I get that question and I'll let you know how it goes.
Friends and listeners, I hope you enjoyed this story. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes, including links to "Game Night" and "A Can," all right, www.sidehustleschool.com/242. I'll be back tomorrow with another story. I'm Chris Guillebeau for "Side Hustle School." [Music]
