“Dessert Goals” Team Creates Sweet Success

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Are you serious about dessert? Do you have dessert goals? Well friends and listeners, this is Cytosol School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and I was in Atlanta recently, was really excited about having some peach cobbler. It's actually one of my favorite desserts.

I also love pecan pie, or pecan pie, depending on where you're from, and bread pudding, which I think is just bread pudding everywhere. And this is just the start of a long list. I mean, I could go on. But I know you're not here to just hear my list of favorite desserts as fascinating as it is. You wanna hear about how people have taken a passion or a skill and turned it into extra money.

Sometimes a lot of extra money without quitting their job. Well, that's what you'll get today. Two women in New York City tap into the urban sweet tooth with a series of desserts-only festivals. Why have I not been to these festivals before? I don't know.

I'm gonna join the mailing list as soon as I finish recording this episode. But to keep the focus on them, they actually end up making more than $10,000 each, and then $20,000 each per festival. Naturally, it's a lot of work, but it's all for a good cause. I'll tell you how they came up with the idea and how they made it happen in just a moment. [Music]

When the side hustle goal is dessert, there's just one word to describe it, sweet.

But this project, called Dessert Goals, a creation of New York-based women Maria Burke and Liang Xi is worth many sugary sentences, not just one word. Dessert Goals is Maria and Liang's production company for periodic dessert festivals in New York and Los Angeles. If you think festival is too lofty a word for eating sugary morsels with your friends, well, you haven't been to an event produced by Dessert Goals. And sadly, I have not either. The two women shared a delight in finding and eating quality desserts together.

And since Maria is an event planner and Liang is a freelance designer who works on events, it was a canned-eat certainty they'd come up with the concept. The idea gelled while they were talking, over dessert, of course, about all the festivals in New York, and that they weren't the only people who loved dessert. That thought was cheerily confirmed last summer when they put their first event up on Facebook. They made an event page and sent it out to all their friends they knew in New York City, encouraging them to share the word as well. That invitation first went to 500 people, but with some viral vigor, they had 10,000 people express their interest overnight.

When they later sold out the first 1,000 tickets in a few minutes, they were in shock. They met afterwards for Japanese food and shared a bottle of sake in celebration. While Maria and Liang don't prepare the sweets, but rather curate them through local vendors. All the offerings at their events are from dessert vendors, but they also provide complimentary boxed waters and fancy coffees, as well as a salt bar, where salty snacks are offered as palate cleansers. Vendors obtain their own permits to prepare and sell food, and dessert goals reviews them for accuracy and relevance.

At first, they cold-pitched vendors on the concept, creating a slide deck that explained the idea, venue photos, and their bios. But after the first festival, vendors saw the success of the event and began reaching out directly to them. Dessert Goals manages all the location scouting, security, admission, and cleanup on their own. And that's where Maria's background in event production comes in handy. For their first event, they invested $10,000 and made $5,000 each in profit.

The biggest upfront cost was the venue deposit of approximately $5,000, which they had to pull from savings. They also paid out-of-pocket for some PR company fees. However, with their design and production skills, they were able to do a lot of things in-house. The second event brought them $10,000 in profit each, and the next one close to $20,000 each, with all events again going viral through Facebook. Having experience in event work, both partners know how hard it can be to make money.

They made the effort to build a business model that wasn't reliant on partnerships because so many aspects of that would be outside their control. They say that being conscientious of your business model and budget is critical, particularly if it's a partnership like theirs. They say it's essential to be on the same page regarding commitment levels, work duties, and expectations. Both partners attend the events, making sure that people are having a good time and dealing with any unexpected challenges, like having to make emergency shopping runs or fixing decor that gets damaged, or making sure the salt bar doesn't run low, perhaps even sampling a dessert or two just for quality control. They're currently planning more festivals in both New York and California for next year, and also researching new cities for good venues.

And just to bring it back to the personal, Mariah's favorite dessert is the classic chocolate chip cookie, and Liang's favorite is the classic strawberry shortcake, and they will defend their choices. This is a team that took a candy sushi-making class together. Dessert is a serious subject for them, but it's also now a profitable one. [Music]

Well, I love the sweet success of the story. I too take dessert seriously.

If you've ever produced events or you're thinking about doing an event, there can be a fair amount of complexity to it, especially doing it at scale. But to me, the most interesting and promising thing about this project is that they found a way to do events without sponsorship, or at least by building a model that's not reliant on sponsorships or partnerships. I think that's such a key thing because so many people do events, and the whole outcome of the event, success or failure, rests on whether some corporation or organization is gonna write a big check. And that is a very risky thing, I think. Like, nice work if you can get it, but so much better, in my opinion, to create a sustainable experience just like Mariah and Liang have done.

And yes, I am gonna join their mailing list so that I can plan my next trip to New York City or Los Angeles around their festival. Maybe I'll see you there. If not, I hope to see you somewhere else. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes, including links to dessert goals, are at sidehustleschool.com/284.

Hey, if you've got a comment or question about the show, give me a call on the Hustle hotline. It's 844-9-HUSTLE, or 844-948-7853. I hope you have a fantastic day. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]