This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
But we used to run this episode called Failure Friday, or a regular episode, a segment in fact, we did that for a couple years, it was all about, you know, success stories gone wrong, basically, like the opposite of a success story, mistakes, mishaps, disasters and such. And how does one recover from such a mistake or disaster, whatever the case may be. And I thought about that in working on today's episode, we've got a listener question, how do I prepare for tech failures without overloading my setup? Basically, well, you'll hear the story from the caller, but he had a mishap where his point of sale system, basically how you take credit cards from customers, completely bonked out and did not work in a high pressure situation, such as one where he's trying to take money from customers. Sometimes even the best laid plans can be thrown off by an unexpected glitch, especially when this is not your full time thing. You've got all kinds of
other stuff you're trying to look after and worry about. And a big part of what we hope to do at Side Hustle School is to simplify and reduce the complexity so that you can spend more time doing what really matters. So in this situation, we've got Neil here, he's going to tell the story of the glitch basically, and I'll offer some comments, suggestions on how to avoid this in the future and how anybody else out there can also avoid it. All right, detailed question from Neil and my answer coming right up. Hey, Chris, this is Neil. I ran a booth at a local gathering recently
and everything was great. So my payment system crashed, leaving me to scribble each sale on random pieces of paper. The event didn't totally derail, but it was a big wake up call about how vulnerable I can be to small tech failures or random glitches. What are some practical ways to prepare for these unforeseen hit ups without turning my entire operation into a fortress of backup system? And how do I keep a bump in the road like this from stalling my momentum? Neil,
that sounds really frustrating. I'm sorry you went through that experience. Good job keeping your cool and managing the situation as best as possible. Kind of reminds me a little bit of, well, a couple of stories, but just to tell one, one time I was doing an event in Atlanta, a book event, I forget which book it was, but I had this book launch event there, had a whole bunch of people, a lot of people who were excited to buy books, I had had books shipped in, I think from Barnes and Noble or another retailer. But I heard just like a few hours before the event, that for some reason, the venue did not have a license to sell anything. And so even I as like a private seller or just an author
coming in to give a talk was not allowed to sell copies of this book. Now I'd already ordered all the books, right? I had people there wanted to buy them. It's like, what am I going to do? So basically, I had my own kind of point of sale failure, even though it was not a technological one. And in that case, I was basically like, I just told everybody what happened. I said, look,
here's the situation. I'm not allowed to sell these books to you here. So if you want a book, basically put your name down. And I'm going to send you an invoice on PayPal or Venmo later for 15 bucks or whatever the cost was. And you can just pay then like it's on the honor system. So I
kind of found like a low key way to do it. I think most people paid and I wasn't terribly worried about the ones who didn't. So the overall answer is you just do what you can, right? You try to maybe create some redundancy or maybe have a low tech backup plan. But for the most part, you hopefully these situations are not common, right? So it's good to just ask yourself sometimes what
could go wrong, like if you're putting on an event, if you're selling something online, if you were sending out an email to a large number of people, whatever you're doing, it's like, what's the troubleshooting potential? You know, if something goes wrong, if I lose this file, right? It could be anything, right? If something goes wrong, if I lose the relationship with a supplier, perhaps, and you may not always have perfect answers to everything, but just thinking about redundancy and thinking about how will I respond? And as you kind of encounter difficult situations in your, you know, side hustle or small business, then you inevitably gain confidence because you see, you will be able to figure it out. Like it's going to be frustrating like it was for Neil,
but he figured it out. It was frustrating for me in my book experience in Atlanta, but I figured it out. So I would say don't overbuild your backup systems. Like it's good to have a contingency plan, but there's also some real value in simplicity and just trusting that most of the time things are going to be okay. Don't let it hold you back. Maybe that's the most
important thing. Do not let these kinds of things or the fear of these kinds of things hold you back. The rewards are going to be so much greater than whatever frustration you encounter. That's my encouragement for you today. Thanks for listening.
sidehustleschool.com/questions. If you've got comments or questions or experiences of your own, you can always subscribe, follow wherever you get your podcast. New episode every day. I'm also out on the road meeting readers for my new book, Time Anxiety, readers and listeners, time anxiety.com. Some information there. The book is available at every retailer,
online and offline. All right, that's it for now. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
