This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
The virtual workout fitness flock. Welcome back to Side Hustle School, Chris Guillebeau here. In this week's Failure Friday segment, we're gonna follow a fitness coach's journey into the world of virtual workouts where their DIY approach to social media marketing ends up leading to disappointment. Well, that doesn't sound very exciting. Why are we telling you these stories?
We're telling you these stories once a week to highlight things that don't go well. Mistakes, missteps, disasters, and also failure. Hence the name, Failure Friday. And it's kind of like our Throwback Thursday segment or our first $1,000 segment where you get to hear directly from each side hustler. In this case though, rather than telling you a success, they're telling you about this difficulty that they ran into.
And it could relate to a lack of foresight or lack of knowledge or just wasn't the greatest business idea. Or maybe they actually did have a lot of insight and it was a great idea, but something came along, some outside circumstance that kind of derailed the project or created this great, as I said, obstacle. And then what did they do in that situation? That's what it's all about. How do we overcome these obstacles and move forward more positively?
Lots of variations to the stories. And this one, you're gonna hear from Brittany. She's in Las Vegas. She's gonna tell the story of her virtual workout business and spending some money on social media marketing that didn't work out so well. So let's hear the story from her.
I'll have a few words of wrap up at the end. [Music]
I've always been the go-to person for fitness advice among my friends and family. So when the pandemic hit in 2020 and gyms closed, I saw an opportunity. Virtual workout sessions seemed like the perfect side hustle. I mean, low overhead, flexible hours, and a chance to help people stay healthy from home.
With a decade of personal training experienced under my belt, I was confident in my ability to create killer workouts. And the tech part was easy too. I set up a decent camera, figured out how to work zoom, and I bought a ring light, simple, right? But then came the challenge that I was not expecting, marketing. I was scrolling through Instagram and I thought, how hard could it be?
I mean, I'll just make some posts, run a few ads and watch the signups roll in. I was naive. I spent hours making what I thought were clever captions and eye-catching graphics. I even made a few tech talks convinced that they would go viral. When it came time to run the ads, I figured I'd save money by handling it myself instead of hiring a marketing pro.
I set my target audience as people interested in fitness and let Facebook's algorithm do its thing. My budget wasn't huge, $500 for the month, but I was sure it would be enough to kickstart my business. The results were mid. My first live class had two participants, which were my mom and my best friend. The next had zero.
My TikTok videos got a handful of views, mostly from people I already knew. And the Facebook ads, well, they reached thousands of people but resulted in zero signups. I was burning through my investment and my confidence was taking a big dip. I mean, how could this be happening? My workouts were solid, my prices are competitive.
What was I doing wrong? It took a brutally honest conversation with a friend in marketing to open my eyes. My ads were too generic and my audience was just too broad. People interested in fitness was a way too general target audience. I wasn't leveraging the platform's tools effectively and my content wasn't optimized for the algorithms.
My friend told me, you are a fitness expert, not a marketing guru. Would you expect someone to get fit without proper guidance? Marketing is the same. It takes expertise and strategy. That conversation was a turning point.
I realized that in trying to save money on marketing, I'd wasted money and more importantly, time, the most valuable resource for any side hustler. So I swallowed my pride and I hired a part-time marketing assistant, which was a college student studying digital marketing. And the results were immediate. I mean, she refined our targeting, crafted more engaging content and helped me understand the metrics that really mattered. And slowly but surely, the signups started rolling in and they were real ones this time, not just sympathetic friends.
And by month three, I had a stable stream of regular clients and was actually turning a profit. And the lesson was clear. I mean, load your strengths and don't be afraid to invest in your weaknesses. And as a fitness coach, I always told my clients that proper form was crucial. And it turns out in business, proper strategy is just as important.
[Music]
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That's the theme of Failure Friday. Really appreciate Brittany sharing the story. And yes, I always encourage people to be careful in not spending too much money on social media ads just because so much of that money ends up being wasted. And you also wanna be careful hiring someone to do it.
I don't always think the lesson here, she's saying like I wish I had hired a marketer essentially. Well, maybe, but also it's not necessarily the right use of your funds. Maybe this business idea wouldn't have worked well with social media ads or there's lots of different factors. It's really kind of hard to just break it down with a little bit of information. The point is be careful about spending money on ads.
If you've got some money to spend and you want to experiment, go for it. But if it's basically all the money you have or it's something that's gonna be a hardship for you, I would encourage you not to spend that money. There are lots of businesses you can start and market without spending even $500. In fact, I wrote a book about it long ago. It was called the $100 Startup.
It was all about people who didn't spend any money at all effectively or maybe they spent $100 or something, but very, very little. So it is possible. And I'll leave you with that today. That's my little soapbox for you. But again, thanks to Brittany.
Thank you, our listeners. I'm so excited to keep making this show for you. New episode every day. This was episode 2,869. I'll be back again tomorrow.
Follow or listen for free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
