This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey friends, hey listeners. SIDUS whole school community. Thank you for tuning in. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau. Today I'm gonna bring you our final failure Friday episode of September.
New month coming up around the corner. This is episode 2,463. Now of course, the theme of failure Friday is looking at experiences and ideas that don't work out. And it's because not every idea does work out. Not every SIDUS or business succeeds sometimes while the opposite happens.
So we're looking at mistakes, missteps, disasters, and not only what was the problem, but then ultimately how does that person recover, or at least what do they learn from the process and so on. I want you to know that it's okay to fail. It's okay for things to go wrong. Ultimately, things go wrong on the road to success, right? Not everything you do will work, at least not right off the bat.
Unless you're an incredible genius and maybe you are, but most of us are just real people. So these stories tend to vary a lot, but they often begin with that idea, what the person thought would happen, and then of course what really happened. So without further ado, today's short story features Sarah. She's a grade school teacher who moonlights as the host of a fall festival. We've actually got Halloween coming up here in a few weeks.
So in Sarah's case, the big downpour that arrived on the big day turned out to be the least of her big problems. All right, let's hear the story from Sarah. [Music]
I'm Sarah, a grade school teacher with a penchant for all things spooky. When October rolls around, my inner witch cackles with glee. So you can guess my excitement when I decided to turn my love for Halloween into a full-blown, one-night-only Halloween festival right in my own backyard.
We're talking pumpkin carving stations, a mini haunted house, and a trick-or-treat lane for the kids. It was gonna be amazing there, so I thought. I worked for weeks stitching together costumes, painting creepy signs, and enlisting the help of my friends to make it financially viable. I sold tickets online for $10 apiece. Within days, more than 200 tickets were sold, thanks to some free promotion from my school.
This is gonna be the event of the year, I thought. Spoiler alert, it was, but not for the reasons I'd hoped. The day of the festival, the skies decided to show up in costume too, as a dark, looming storm cloud. Despite my fretting, I pushed forward. The little rain never hurt anyone, I told myself.
As the first guests arrived, so did the rain, in torrents. Before I knew it, my beautiful festival turned into a mud pit. Kids were slipping and sliding more than they were trick-or-treating. And my mini haunted house? More like a mini swamp shack.
But the night's main attraction was yet to come, the hayride. I had borrowed a tractor from a farmer friend with the idea that it would take festival goers around the block for a haunted hayride. I had forgotten the one minor detail that I'd never actually driven a tractor before. My attempts to steer that hunk of metal was like a horror film in the making. That was the final straw.
The event was a washout, quite literally. After apologizing profusely, I sat down, muddy and defeated. My dream event had turned into a frightmare, but not the fun kind. This was a full-on disaster. So what did I learn?
First, always have a backup plan, maybe a tent for outdoor events. Second, know your limitations. Don't drive tractors if your experience is limited to bumper cars. And third, sometimes the best memories come from the most unexpected and messy places. If I were to do it again, I'd definitely invest in a big tent, hire a real tractor driver, and maybe even throw in some mud wrestling as a planned activity just in case.
I'll let you know how it goes with any future attempts. [Music]
Well, you know what I like to say, never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That's the theme of "Failure Friday." You just got to get back up and try something different, probably not try the same thing, at least not in the same way, but either try the same thing with something different, different approach or strategy, or a completely different idea. And so I applaud everybody who's willing to share the story of something that didn't go so well. Thanks a lot to Sarah for sharing this one.
And listeners, if you have a question, an update about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. You can also follow me on Instagram at 193 countries, or Chris Guillipo on LinkedIn and Facebook, otherwise, other places, and so on. Lastly, today's notes, sidehustleschool.com/2463. Thank you so much for being out there. You're awesome, you're an inspiration to me, and I hope you'll continue listening.
It's all completely free. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
