This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Guess what day it is today? Well, first of all, this is Side Hustle School. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. Today is the 300th day of the year. How do I know that?
Because today is the 300th episode of Side Hustle School. Day 300, I remember it back when we started. Then I remember when we got to that milestone of 100 episodes, then 200 episodes. And here we are still going strong, thanks to you, the listeners, and all the great stories we've been getting. I'm having so much fun, I hope you're enjoying it too, and I hope you're learning through the process.
I hope you're learning something that you can apply to your own life in your quest for more freedom. If you wanna start a Side Hustle without quitting your job or otherwise in the midst of lots of busy responsibilities, this show is for you. And today's story on our 300th day is about a guy who builds a conference into a six-figure business. Now, conferences and events are not usually a great way to make money unless you know what you're doing and you have a long-term plan. We've featured a couple of success stories recently, and both of those people had some background in event planning.
And for those exceptions and today's story as well, when it does work, it can effectively be a version of recurring revenue if you build it in a sustainable way. And that's what today's featured Side Hustler did. A manager in Silicon Valley decides to create a conference. In two years, he builds it to that six-figure business level while working his day job. I'll tell you all about it in just a moment.
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Today's story comes from Hung Pham in Northern California. He's the founder of Culture Summit, a conference that helps companies build strong company culture from the bottom up. But before he quit his corporate job to pursue his hustle full-time, he was working as a program manager at Cisco. He worked on his side hustle for two years while he had that full-time job and just quit last summer once his side hustle became a six-figure business. Hung had spent 10 years working various jobs in Silicon Valley and was often frustrated with the culture of companies he worked at.
He didn't work in HR but he assumed it was HR's responsibility to fix the culture. That didn't happen and he got tired of waiting for change. So in 2014, he began looking for events in the culture space so that he could learn more. But the events he found all targeted HR leaders and they were all very expensive. Because there wasn't an event for everyday employees who weren't executives and didn't work in HR, he decided to make one.
This would be a conference that focused on building culture at the employee level. When Hung first had this idea, he pitched it to other organizers for feedback. They told him that the concept of workplace culture is too fluffy, the idea wouldn't work, and even if it did work to some degree, not to expect to make any money. But he knew if he felt disengaged and frustrated, others had to have this problem too. Three months later, Hung launched his own conference, announcing it with a partner.
But unfortunately, it didn't go so great. They couldn't sell a single ticket or get any big-name speakers on the lineup. A few months later, when they were still struggling, his partner quit. Discouraged, Hung thought about quitting himself for a couple of weeks, but his wife encouraged him to push through. So he went back to the drawing board and interviewed 10 founders of companies.
They told him that culture was important, but not as important as making payroll or keeping the lights on. One founder told him he wouldn't have time to go and would send someone else in his place. That's when Hung realized he was targeting the wrong audience. Shifting tactics, he began looking for people on LinkedIn who were chief culture officers or VPs of culture or otherwise had culture in their title, and he cold emailed them. He actually got a 25% response rate of people writing back and a number of people bought tickets for their team right away.
He would then call to say thanks and ask where he could find more people like them. Then he reached out to those people or those communities to ask for help in promoting the conference. It didn't happen overnight, but eventually the culture summit sold out in its first year. 200 tickets at $250 each for a total of $50,000. In the second year, he raised the price and sold more tickets, a total of 300 for $150,000 in revenue.
And this year, year three, they sold 500 tickets for $325,000 in revenue, and Hung was able to leave his job to manage culture summit full-time. Next year, he's hoping to bring in $500,000 in revenue. But how did he do it at first? Well, in that first year, Hung got a small venue for free and had about four or five founders he knew come to speak at the summit. The conference is now a day longer and includes a workshop day dedicated to helping attendees learn real, actionable materials they can use to improve their workplace.
Next year, he's thinking of having three days since people are eager to do more group work and have more time to interact. The culture summit doesn't just talk the talk, they received feedback that the audience wanted more female speakers, so they moved from a 50/50 split in 2015 to a 60/40 split in 2016. In 2017, they worked on other types of diversity as well, even turning down some big-name speakers and brands that didn't seem like the right fit. In three years, the culture conference has now featured speakers from Salesforce, Airbnb, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google, all of whom volunteer their services. The biggest expenses are venue and catering, but they also have things like photography, videography, and workshop materials to pay for.
The ticket price has gone up. Tickets now range from $5.99 to $9.99, that's in the hundreds of dollars, so $600 to $1,000, just about, for two days and $3.99 to $4.99 for one day. As I said, this year they did $325,000 in revenue and net profit was $150,000. 80% of the revenue comes from ticket sales, 20% comes from sponsors, and usually the companies that sponsor have products that are in the employee engagement or HR culture space. So that is a natural fit, and the sponsor packages are $7,500 or $15,000.
Hung's advice for anyone wanting to make a conference is to start with a small meetup, then do a series of meetups to build a following. If you do a series of small events, you can get an initial group of ticket buyers. Then, just as he did, make sure you're finding the right people. Make sure you're targeting the people who are the best fit for the conference or event. If you can host one event well, especially one paid event, it's not that hard to then do a repeat and then another, all the while improving the experience and making more money.
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Well, as someone who has produced events, I appreciated this story. Congrats to Hung for tackling a topic that was important to him and he felt was underserved by other events and conferences. And I really liked how his initial success came from targeting a clear group of people. That first targeting didn't work because seemingly CEOs in Silicon Valley were sadly too busy to attend an event on improving company culture, which of course could lead to a whole other topic. But the relevant point here is that Hung found his tribe, his group of people who gladly said, "Yes, this sounds great, this sounds like something we need." And if he hadn't made that shift, he very likely wouldn't have been successful with the event.
Then he nurtured that project for the second and third years, raising the price and creating package options for people to choose from, two smart and easy things to do as you grow your hustle. It's not just events and conferences that can do this, by the way. Raising the price and creating package options are two of the very first things you should at least consider once you've got something that's working and you're asking yourself, "Okay, what do I do next? How do I grow it?" And then lastly, on this 300th day, I actually kind of liked the fact that his partner dropped out. It can be really difficult to do something like this as a partnership because two people don't necessarily have the same motivation for something, even if they both think it's a good idea, even if they both like to work on it.
Almost inevitably, one person is gonna be more excited about it, more willing to commit time and resource to it. So then how do you sort that out six months later or two years later, once it's a successful six-figure business? So I think it's actually good that he was able to go it alone after those first few months. Well, my friends, thank you for listening as always. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.
I am still out traveling, meeting people, hearing stories every day of people applying the side hustle plan to their life. I hope you're doing that in some way. I'd love to hear about it at some point. And today's show notes are online at sidehustleschool.com/3hustle. 800-300-300.
You're a rockstar. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School, and I'll be back tomorrow for day 301. [Music]
